Ray Saintonge wrote:
Copyright in photographs also links to the ownership of the original negative or plate. Two independently photographed images of the "Mona Lisa" would not impinge on each other's copyrights. If I remember correctly the Louvre does not ban photography, but does ban flash equipment and tripods.
I don't like such policies, but I do understand them. The museums say a lot of sanctimonious tripe about wanting to protect the public from poor reproductions, but that's code from "protect ourselves from someone selling high quality reproductions without paying us".
But, for our encyclopedic purposes, a pretty decent photo is really all we need. We're not really the right place to serve as a repository of GFDL extreme-high-quality digital photos of not-copyrighted art, although such a thing should exist and I would be excited to hear about it if it did.
But, we're doing something different I think.
--Jimbo