I do indeed recall the previous discussions, and I'm as opposed as anyone to the
practice of public custodians of our heritage attempting to claim a fresh copyright for
their reproductions of public domain art.
Although Bridgeman v Corel is highly influential for the USA, we must be aware that the UK
sets a low bar for "sweat of the brow". The best we have is the 2015 statement
from the Intellectual Property Office that says "it seems unlikely that what is
merely a retouched, digitised image of an older work can be considered as
‘original’". Unfortunately that depends on the Court of Justice of the European
Union, and there's no case law I'm aware of that will guarantee the IPO's view
will prevail as we withdraw from the EU.
What this means is that it's okay for US citizens to upload reproductions of 2D art,
but UK dwellers need to be cautious, as some public bodies have been known to spend
taxpayers' money on pursuing their copyright claims. A private citizen might not have
access to the resources needed to defend themselves even from a frivolous action.
--
Rexx
On 29 April 2020 at 19:36 Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Public domain for 2D works applies for old 2D artefacts, like
manuscripts or flat decorated objects. The examples I've seen include
objects like 15th C. drawings, which the claim of "copyright of the
Trustees" may be safely ignored as there is no new creativity in the
likely automated scans being made. Obviously, if the 2D object is
modern and has some original copyright, then reproductions of it are
copyrighted.
There are past archived discussions on Commons, including deletion
requests, which cover this specifically for the unrealistic and
unenforceable claims of copyright of public domain material by the
British Library.
Hopefully, you recall this is a very old discussion, indeed Roger and
myself presented many years ago to a full staff meeting at the British
Library on this exact topic. As a result, most of the BL website had
the copyright claim removed, so it's unfortunate that this
announcement is effectively walking back that progress for open
knowledge and instead promotes the use of "noncommercial" which very
much hampers public value and reuse, including scaring off many
academics from using public domain images in publications.
Fae
On Wed, 29 Apr 2020 at 17:39, Rex X <rexx(a)blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
I'm pretty sure CC BY-NC-SA is not compatible with the licences on Commons.
They could be uploaded and used on en-wiki with a fair use rationale, the same as any
other non-free image.
--
Rexx
On 29 April 2020 at 13:30 John Byrne <john(a)bodkinprints.co.uk> wrote:
So can we put them on Commons? Or use them from a Wikipedia file?
John
On 29 April 2020 at 13:00 wikimediauk-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
Send Wikimediauk-l mailing list submissions to
wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
wikimediauk-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org
You can reach the person managing the list at
wikimediauk-l-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Wikimediauk-l digest..."
Today's Topics:
1. British Museum makes 1.9m images available under CC BY-NC-SA
4.0 (Owen Blacker)
2. Re: British Museum makes 1.9m images available under CC
BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Katie Crampton)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2020 11:43:06 +0100
From: Owen Blacker < owen(a)blacker.me.uk>
To: Wikimedia UK list < wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikimediauk-l] British Museum makes 1.9m images available
under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Message-ID:
< CALh-06k65DctkxK9VbD_8Y6bFEDPT0yyGk_y17HBsaxQytZNDQ(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
That it's a non-commercial licence is really disappointing, but that's
still a little better than nothing…
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2020/04/28/british-museum-makes-1-9-millio…
The British Museum has revamped its online collections database, making
over 1.9 million photos of its collection available for free online under a
Creative Commons license.
Under the new agreement the majority of the 1.9 million images are being
made available for anyone to use for free under a Creative Commons 4.0
license < " rel="noopener" target="_blank"
data-mce-href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/>&…s/by-nc-sa/4.0/>.
Users no
longer need to register to use these photographs, and can now download them
directly from the British Museum.
Under the terms of the Creative Commons license, you are free to share and
adapt the images for non-commercial use, but must include a credit to the
British Museum.
[continues]
--
Owen Blacker, London GB
@owenblacker <
http://twitter.com/owenblacker>
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK:
https://wikimedia.org.uk