Volunteers interested in GLAM may be interested to read the letter to The Times today from an extensive list of highly respected academics and museum directors, lobbying against arbitrary image fees charged by UK national museums and their doubtful claims of copyright.[1][2]
Quote: "Fees are also charged despite the fact that the artworks in question are not only publicly owned, but out of copyright (that is, made by artists who died more than 70 years ago). Museums claim they create a new copyright when making a faithful reproduction of a 2D artwork by photography or scanning, but it is doubtful that the law supports this. Museums' rules for using images are confusing and inconsistent, and do not raise meaningful funds once costs are taken into account."
Copyfraud used by GLAMs has been discussed within the Wikimedia community many times in many forums. This letter may be a useful model for the UK chapter to follow and to have a stronger public position on. The potential of GLAM projects using WMF funding may take the requirement correctly to license public domain images as public domain, as an ethical precursor for any GLAM partnership to be proposed.
Links: 1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae/Museum_fees Letter text and summary article for research purposes 2. http://www.arthistorynews.com/articles/4810_Museum_image_fees__a_call_to_arm... Bendor Grosvenor's article "Museum image fees - a call to arms" 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud Definition of copyfraud
Thanks, Fae
On 6 November 2017 at 11:01, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
Volunteers interested in GLAM may be interested to read the letter to The Times today from an extensive list of highly respected academics and museum directors, lobbying against arbitrary image fees charged by UK national museums and their doubtful claims of copyright.
Images of the text of the letter, and full list of signatories, are on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/arthistorynews/status/927434064222662657
https://twitter.com/arthistorynews/status/927434156992290816
Has anyone from WMUK reached out to Bendor Grosvenor, and. or the other signatories?
If not, I'd be wiling to contact the former, with whom I have previously corresponded.
On 6 November 2017 at 13:25, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
On 6 November 2017 at 11:01, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
Volunteers interested in GLAM may be interested to read the letter to The Times today from an extensive list of highly respected academics and museum directors, lobbying against arbitrary image fees charged by UK national museums and their doubtful claims of copyright.
Images of the text of the letter, and full list of signatories, are on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/arthistorynews/status/927434064222662657
https://twitter.com/arthistorynews/status/927434156992290816
Has anyone from WMUK reached out to Bendor Grosvenor, and. or the other signatories?
If not, I'd be wiling to contact the former, with whom I have previously corresponded.
-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
Andy, did you hear back from anyone in the UK chapter in the past week? I'll be happy to support any initiative involving the Wikimedia community and Grosvenor's work to put pressure on UK museums to give free access to high quality public domain images. It would be a reasonable activity to ask for WMF grant money, should there be any related volunteer expenses.
Thanks, Fae
Apologies - I read this email at the airport in Stockholm on Monday last week, following the Wikimedia Diversity Conference, then promptly forgot about it when I got back to the office.
It's great to see a letter like this signed by so many people, representing a wide range of organisations. As a (hopefully) interesting aside, I was at a roundtable meeting with Baroness Neville-Rolfe late last year to discuss the proposed EU copyright directive. She was amazed and appalled by the idea that institutions would try to claim copyright for a digital copy of an artwork that is out of copyright. Of course when she found out where I was from at the start of the meeting she complained that her Wikipedia profile was out of date and said she would 'get her sons to update it'...she thought I was some sort of tech genius when I had updated it by the end of the meeting ;)
Anyway, back to the question in hand...I have sent a tweet to Bendor Grosvenor this morning briefly explaining what we do and suggesting he gets in touch. I don't seem to be able to send a private message to his Twitter account but hopefully he will respond to the tweet. However I'm sure it can't hurt for him to hear from interested volunteers as well.
Thanks for sharing this. Lucy
On 14 November 2017 at 09:52, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On 6 November 2017 at 13:25, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
On 6 November 2017 at 11:01, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
Volunteers interested in GLAM may be interested to read the letter to The Times today from an extensive list of highly respected academics and museum directors, lobbying against arbitrary image fees charged by UK national museums and their doubtful claims of copyright.
Images of the text of the letter, and full list of signatories, are on
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/arthistorynews/status/927434064222662657
https://twitter.com/arthistorynews/status/927434156992290816
Has anyone from WMUK reached out to Bendor Grosvenor, and. or the other signatories?
If not, I'd be wiling to contact the former, with whom I have previously corresponded.
-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
Andy, did you hear back from anyone in the UK chapter in the past week? I'll be happy to support any initiative involving the Wikimedia community and Grosvenor's work to put pressure on UK museums to give free access to high quality public domain images. It would be a reasonable activity to ask for WMF grant money, should there be any related volunteer expenses.
Thanks, Fae -- faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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