On 12 Aug 2020, at 13:05, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Dear Lucy,
It's just over 3 months ago that your offer to talk with the British
Museum about claiming copyright over public domain images, and
consequently charging academics and other reusers large fees to use
images which should be free to the public. Has there been any progress
and what came of the plan to discuss this topic at the recent AGM?
As a further reference case study of the British Museum continuing
using what Wikimedians call "license laundering"[0], this week they
have claimed all rights reserved for my own photograph released on
Wikimedia Commons a decade ago to support Wikipedia editathons working
with the Museum, as CC-BY-SA.[1][2] The BM has removed EXIF data, and
not attempted to apply a simple attribution, or perhaps fail to
understand what is required to respect moral rights. A remarkable
failure considering the museum and their online presence sets the
standard for many other UK GLAM institutions.
Thanks,
Fae
Links
0.
1.
2.
----
On Thu, 30 Apr 2020 at 16:20, Lucy Crompton-Reid
<lucy.crompton-reid(a)wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
Dear all
As a number of people have noted already, it is indeed disappointing that the British
Museum has released these images under a non commercial licence, given the obvious
restrictions to people actually accessing and using them. Whilst staff at Wikimedia UK
have many partnerships within the cultural sector, including larger institutions, the BM
is not currently one of them. However I will get in touch with them and point out the
issues with the licence they’ve chosen. If anyone has any contacts at the Museum they
would be able to share with me that would be very helpful - and of course, you are also
welcome to lobby them as individuals.
I’m not sure that I quite agree with the characterisation of Wikimedia UK as “advocating
for a position at variance with that of the wider movement when it comes to claiming non
commercial copyright on out of copyright material”. Indeed, in a talk I gave at a
Westminster Media Forum policy event on the EU copyright directive last year, I said:
“Access to and re-use of centuries old paintings, part of our cultural heritage, is being
increasingly restricted by an array of laws and in-house rules within cultural
institutions aiming to maintain control of their digital copies. This causes many
classical works, for instance, to be unavailable to the public online, despite them being
part of the public domain.
Part of the social balance under copyright and related rights is that at some point the
exclusive economic rights expire and the works become part of our shared cultural
heritage. This makes up a large portion of the public domain and ensures wide access to
our culture and the freedom to create and innovate. Unfortunately, in the past decades we
have seen increasing attempts to restrict our cultural heritage by claiming copyright on
public domain works, or by establishing new rights on exact digital copies of old works.
These practices complicate and sometimes prevent the digitisation of and digital access to
our culture.
The [EU copyright] Directive therefore provides for a safeguard of public domain works.
We must make sure no new rights are applied to digital copies of artworks whose copyright
has expired. This includes both no copyright term extension for such rules and no related
rights. The current situation in the UK on this is quite inconclusive, with works that
would be considered to be public domain under US law potentially subject to copyright
under UK law. Indeed the courts in the UK traditionally applied a very low test for
photographic originality, based on the "skill and labour" required to capture
the image. In the IPO’s updated copyright advice notice in 2015, it acknowledges that
there is a degree of uncertainty regarding whether copyright can exist in digitised copies
of older images for which copyright has expired. However it also states that according to
the Court of Justice of the European Union, copyright can only subsist in subject matter
that is original in the sense that it is the author’s own ‘intellectual creation’. This
higher standard should be unequivocally applied to UK cultural heritage institutions, who
might be inadvertently engaging in copyfraud.”
Previously, at a ministerial roundtable on the directive, I raised this very point with
the Minister (at the time), who seemed completely unaware of the practice of copyrighting
digital reproductions of public domain works, and remarked that this was certainly
“outside of the spirit” of existing law and proposed legislation. Both of those policy
interventions point to our general approach towards non-commercial licenses and to issues
around copyfraud.
However it’s true that we do, as a chapter, work with a broad range of institutions, some
of whom claim non commercial copyright on out of copyright material. We challenge this
where we see it, albeit usually through meetings and discussions, rather than in public
fora. Indeed, much of our work with the cultural sector involves this kind of internal
advocacy, and we can see the impact of this in the institutions who go on to change their
policy and practice and release a substantial amount of content onto open licences. We
also continue to talk to grantmaking organisations to encourage them to move away from non
commercial licences for themselves and their grantees - although again, we primarily do
this in collaboration/discussion rather than on a public forum. It’s probably fair to say
we take a carrot, rather than a stick, approach on this - but I think that’s a question of
tactics, rather than of policy.
Having said all of that, I don’t want to shut down debate and would be very happy for
there to be questions and discussions on this at our next AGM (which is indeed going to be
online, for reasons that are clearly outside of our control). As a staff team we have
recently started planning this event, which is going to be on Saturday 18th July, and have
already started thinking about how we ensure the Q&A part of the day is as productive
and inclusive as possible, particularly given the unusual set up.
To come back more specifically to the BM issue, I will follow this up next week. I think
it will be relatively easy for me to find someone to talk to there but as I say, if anyone
does have an existing contact/relationship at the museum I would be very pleased to hear
from you.
All best wishes
Lucy
On Thu, 30 Apr 2020 at 12:48, Harry Mitchell <hjmwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I agree that it's only a matter of time before somebody does it but, as with the NPG
a few years ago, the BM are likely to be quite upset if we can't get them to see it
from our point of view. If anyone has any relevant contacts it might be worth reaching
out. It could be that they don't fully understand the difference between CC-By-SA and
CC-By-NC and how the latter prevents use on Wikipedia. On the other hand, it could be that
they're claiming copyright based on the "sweat of brow" doctrine, which
hasn't been fully tested in British courts.
On Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 12:21 PM WereSpielChequers <werespielchequers(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> Andy makes some important points.
>
> We know that even if editors in the UK respect what the British Museum is doing and
don't upload those images to Commons or Wikipedia; where they are public domain images
under US law, it is just a matter of time before someone in the movement, anywhere in the
world, uploads any of those British Museum images that are of old two D objects to Commons
as Public Domain images that can be used without attribution to the photographer or the
institution.
>
> Of course large parts of the British Museum collection would involve images of three
d objects. In those case we can't use the BM images, but outside of lockdown people
can either go there and take photos, or if you can't get yourself to the British
Museum with a camera, make a request via the London Meetup, and if the object is on
display we can get results such as at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_altarpiece_(WB.232)
>
>
> The chapter remains in the awkward position of liaising with institutions that regard
it as acceptable to claim a non commercial copyright on out of copyright material, and of
in effect advocating for a position at variance with that of the wider movement.
>
> One option that the chapter could consider would be to shift policy and instead start
to diplomatically lobby UK Museum's to, as Andy put it, stop " trying to
appropriate rights that belong to us all." Perhaps those on this list who are still
members of the chapter might consider raising this for a debate at the next AGM?
>
> Regards
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>
> On Wed, 29 Apr 2020 at 21:06, Andy Mabbett <andy(a)pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, 29 Apr 2020 at 11:43, Owen Blacker <owen(a)blacker.me.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>> That it's a non-commercial licence is really disappointing, but
that's still a little better than nothing…
>>
>> With the emphasis on the "little". There are two things wrong with
>> this, which we as a movement (and individually) need to challenge; at
>> very reasonable opportunity.
>>
>> Firstly, there's the way they're spending public money making non-free
>> original content. we need to persuade GLAMs - and lobby funders - that
>> such material should be freely reusable.
>>
>> But far more troubling is the attempt to claim copyright in works
>> whose copyright - if the work didn't pre-date copyright completely -
>> expired decades or centuries ago. The latter means, in effect that
>> they are trying to appropriate rights that belong to us all.
>>
>> --
>> Andy Mabbett
>> @pigsonthewing
>>
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk --
Lucy Crompton-Reid
Chief Executive
Wikimedia UK
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