The public catalog foundation has been busy digitising the nation's
art. All those paintings held by government institutions and local
councils. Pretty nice. Their website is here:
http://thepcf.org.uk
and the paintings can be found here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/
Some very nice stuff there.
Unfortunately they claim copyright. My favorite example is this. It's
a Fayum mummy portrait about 1700 years old:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/portrait-of-a-lady-31089
And yet if we open up the meta data:
"Copyright Victoria and Albert Museum / Supplied by The Public
Catalogue Foundation This image is copyrighted."
The artist for this painting
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/the-launching-of-hms-roya…
died 1873 and yet we open up the meta data and
"Copyright Hampshire County Council Museums Service / Supplied by The
Public Catalogue Foundation. This image is copyrighted."
The rest of the text runs:
The Public Catalogue Foundation is committed to respecting the
intellectual property rights of others. The copyright in paintings and
images reproduced by the Public Catalogue Foundation belong to a
variety of organisations and individuals including the collections
that own the paintings and third party rights holders. Permitted Use
of This Image: This image and data related to the image may be
reproduced for non-commercial research and private study purposes. For
ALL other uses other than those outlined above, including commercial
uses, users should contact, in the first instance, the contributing
collection using the contact information provided on the Your
Paintings website. Where the underlying painting is in copyright,
further permissions will also be needed. Protection of Image
Copyright: This image is protected with a secure invisible digital
watermark that allows the Public Catalogue Foundation to identify
unauthorized use of the image. Further Information: Any queries should
be addressed to copyrightofficer(a)thepcf.org.uk
Lovey. We could just ignore this and let the Americans take care of
matters but it might be smarter to stage an intervention before we get
NPG mark 2.
--
geni