On Wed, Aug 04, 2004 at 04:41:09AM +0000, wikipedia-l-request@Wikimedia.org wrote:
Message: 8 Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 21:38:28 -0700 From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" jwales@wikia.com Subject: [Wikipedia-l] [bhorrocks@npg.org.uk: National Portrait Gallery images on Wikipedia website] To: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org, wikien-l@wikimedia.org Message-ID: 20040804043828.GM23467@wikia.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
It would please me greatly to be able to respond that their claims are preposterous. Shall we research this carefully?
I don't know about UK law, but the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia (with the shared legal tradition I believe the copyright laws are similar) seems to believe that they own the rights to any photographs of the artworks they own, even if the artworks themselves are in the public domain. You will note the copyright notice on this Australian website:
http://www.artistsfootsteps.com/html/Artists_mccubbin.htm
This is despite the fact that McCubbin died in 1917.
I have been meaning to get around to making further enquiries into this in the Australian context, but haven't got around to it. Given this enquiry, it just got moved up my priority list.
The simple solution is that we need to find as many nicely printed art books from the PD era, and do some mass scanning and uploading, documenting carefully the sources.
--Jimbo
Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
On Wed, Aug 04, 2004 at 04:41:09AM +0000, wikipedia-l-request@Wikimedia.org wrote:
Message: 8 Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 21:38:28 -0700 From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" jwales@wikia.com Subject: [Wikipedia-l] [bhorrocks@npg.org.uk: National Portrait Gallery images on Wikipedia website] To: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org, wikien-l@wikimedia.org Message-ID: 20040804043828.GM23467@wikia.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
It would please me greatly to be able to respond that their claims are preposterous. Shall we research this carefully?
I don't know about UK law, but the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia (with the shared legal tradition I believe the copyright laws are similar) seems to believe that they own the rights to any photographs of the artworks they own, even if the artworks themselves are in the public domain. You will note the copyright notice on this Australian website:
http://www.artistsfootsteps.com/html/Artists_mccubbin.htm
This is despite the fact that McCubbin died in 1917.
I have been meaning to get around to making further enquiries into this in the Australian context, but haven't got around to it. Given this enquiry, it just got moved up my priority list.
--
Robert Merkel robert.merkel@benambra.org http://benambra.orgThis is a non-story. Pakistan is our ally in the war against terrorism. They're the good guys. Nuclear weapons in the hands of the good guys are NOT WMD's. Now if it were learned that Saddam had access to designs for constructing paper airplanes, THAT would be front page news. --Beth, poster at http://atrios.blogspot.com, 31/1/2003, in response to low-prominence media reports of an Israeli national arrested for selling US nuclear technology to Pakistan.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Alas, that era predates high-quality color printing. Art galleries are likely to be pretty zealous about protecting their sources of revenue, not just the reproduction rights, but also as encouragement for visitors to come and see the pictures in person, rather than getting their fill online.
I wonder if they could be convinced to GFDL thumbnails, as a sort of quasi-advertising. One might also exploit a little national chauvinism, pointing out that the PD status of most US government images is causing Wikipedia's historical imagery to be dominated by US pictures; for instance, a bunch of Royal Navy ship pictures come from US archives, can't imagine the Brits being particularly proud about that. :-)
Stan
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
The simple solution is that we need to find as many nicely printed art books from the PD era, and do some mass scanning and uploading, documenting carefully the sources.
--Jimbo
Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
On Wed, Aug 04, 2004 at 04:41:09AM +0000, wikipedia-l-request@Wikimedia.org wrote:
Message: 8 Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 21:38:28 -0700 From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" jwales@wikia.com Subject: [Wikipedia-l] [bhorrocks@npg.org.uk: National Portrait Gallery images on Wikipedia website] To: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org, wikien-l@wikimedia.org Message-ID: 20040804043828.GM23467@wikia.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
It would please me greatly to be able to respond that their claims are preposterous. Shall we research this carefully?
I don't know about UK law, but the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia (with the shared legal tradition I believe the copyright laws are similar) seems to believe that they own the rights to any photographs of the artworks they own, even if the artworks themselves are in the public domain. You will note the copyright notice on this Australian website:
http://www.artistsfootsteps.com/html/Artists_mccubbin.htm
This is despite the fact that McCubbin died in 1917.
I have been meaning to get around to making further enquiries into this in the Australian context, but haven't got around to it. Given this enquiry, it just got moved up my priority list.
--
Robert Merkel robert.merkel@benambra.org http://benambra.orgThis is a non-story. Pakistan is our ally in the war against terrorism. They're the good guys. Nuclear weapons in the hands of the good guys are NOT WMD's. Now if it were learned that Saddam had access to designs for constructing paper airplanes, THAT would be front page news. --Beth, poster at http://atrios.blogspot.com, 31/1/2003, in response to low-prominence media reports of an Israeli national arrested for selling US nuclear technology to Pakistan.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
The simple solution is that we need to find as many nicely printed art books from the PD era, and do some mass scanning and uploading, documenting carefully the sources.
We could also encourage some in-person photography by Wikipedians. Some galleries have obnoxious no-photograph rules, but many, especially those owned by governments with some interest in freedom, don't. To just take two examples from my recent travels, the National Archaeological Museum in Athens and the Prado in Madrid both permit no-flash photography. The main trick is how to get high-quality photographs of paintings without a flash, since both do prohibit tripods. But we can at least start tackling some of them: photographs of statues and other artifacts are an easier no-flash/no-tripod target.
-Mark
Delirium delirium@hackish.org writes:
The main trick is how to get high-quality photographs of paintings without a flash, since both do prohibit tripods.
One can ask for an exception. When I was a student I was allowed to take some pictures of Low Saxonian art objects with a tripod. Some day I may find these old shots again.
Karl Eichwalder wrote:
Delirium delirium@hackish.org writes:
The main trick is how to get high-quality photographs of paintings without a flash, since both do prohibit tripods.
One can ask for an exception. When I was a student I was allowed to take some pictures of Low Saxonian art objects with a tripod. Some day I may find these old shots again.
The no tripod rule is often based on the experience that some kinds of tripods can damage floors.
No flash can be justified because some of these old things can be eventually be damaged by repeated exposure to bright lights.
The increasingly improved quality that can be achieved with digital photography has the effect of making the rules about flashes and tripods less relevant.
Ec
On Wed, Aug 04, 2004 at 02:36:40PM -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
The no tripod rule is often based on the experience that some kinds of tripods can damage floors.
Have a elder one with crooks with you, perfect one-pod tripod ;-)
ciao, tom
On Wed, Aug 04, 2004 at 02:36:40PM -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
No flash can be justified because some of these old things can be eventually be damaged by repeated exposure to bright lights.
Which is a funny thing to observe: try Louvre/Paris, where you're mostly forbidden using flashes... but you may do whatever you please in the section of famous paintings, including [[Mona Lisa]]. Either they're fake (don't think do), or they're made of flash resistant 15th-18th century painting. :)
I believe most artifacts in the Louvre are free to photo, and they indeed have a *HUGE* collection of *everything*. French wikipedians with good cams are a good source of PD pictures. :)
Probably the same at many museums as others mentioned.
But I'm really curious about those claiming rights over PD material, whether they stand any chance. If they'd do it's pretty scary.
Peter
Peter Gervai wrote:
On Wed, Aug 04, 2004 at 02:36:40PM -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
No flash can be justified because some of these old things can be eventually be damaged by repeated exposure to bright lights.
Which is a funny thing to observe: try Louvre/Paris, where you're mostly forbidden using flashes... but you may do whatever you please in the section of famous paintings, including [[Mona Lisa]]. Either they're fake (don't think do), or they're made of flash resistant 15th-18th century painting. :)
The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the no flash policy may be doing the amateur photographer a favour. It prevents the situation where he gets back home to find nothing but pictures of the glare back of his own flash equipment. :-)
Ec
Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
wikipedia-l-request@Wikimedia.org wrote:
From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" jwales@wikia.com Subject: [Wikipedia-l] [bhorrocks@npg.org.uk: National Portrait Gallery images on Wikipedia website]
It would please me greatly to be able to respond that their claims are preposterous. Shall we research this carefully?
I don't know about UK law, but the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia (with the shared legal tradition I believe the copyright laws are similar) seems to believe that they own the rights to any photographs of the artworks they own, even if the artworks themselves are in the public domain. You will note the copyright notice on this Australian website:
http://www.artistsfootsteps.com/html/Artists_mccubbin.htm
This is despite the fact that McCubbin died in 1917.
I have been meaning to get around to making further enquiries into this in the Australian context, but haven't got around to it. Given this enquiry, it just got moved up my priority list.
I would be curious to know what policy these galleries apply with regard to photography by individual visitors to the gallery.
I think too that there is a question of burden of proof involved. Even if their principle legal premise is correct they need to prove that our picture was taken from their website, rather than us needing to prove that it was from somewhere else. Also if their premise is correct that there is a copyright in these reproduction, an individual who has taken his own photograph of a picture would not lose his own copyright on the basis that he had violated a no-photography rule.
Another observation that I would make is that any copyrights to these reproductions must be determined separately. Without that, how can we know the copyright date of a specific photograph? Without the copyright date, how can we know when the copyright expires? What is meant by publishing? If the same photograph was used to produce a postcard in 1930 the copyright on that would certainly have expired. Whose courts have jurisdiction?
Naturally, taking a stand on this requires more research than these off the cuff remarks. Still I think that it is inevitable that as the putative copyright holders see their revenue streams threatened they will take action to protect those streams. Sooner or later there will be a legal confrontation; what we need to know is which actions are worth defending.
Ec
On Wed, 04 Aug 2004 11:25:34 -0700 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I would be curious to know what policy these galleries apply with regard to photography by individual visitors to the gallery.
Probably they either disallow it, or require such photographs to hand over copyright.
I think too that there is a question of burden of proof involved. Even if their principle legal premise is correct they need to prove that our picture was taken from their website, rather than us needing to prove that it was from somewhere else. Also if their premise is correct that there is a copyright in these reproduction, an individual who has taken his own photograph of a picture would not lose his own copyright on the basis that he had violated a no-photography rule.
I agree. In general copyright laws are there to protect artistic works. If publishing the reproduction breaks copyright, then apparently the reproduction has some artistic merit - which means that it should be distinguishable from other reproductions of the same work. Thus, if they have any ground for claiming that the reproductions are copyrighted, they should be able to say which reproduction's copyright was being infringed upon.
Then again, I am not a lawyer, and these laws often do not go with my layman's opinion (in fact, they often go with whoever is willing to pay their lawyers most, I'm afraid). It would be good to have a real expert opinion on this.
Another observation that I would make is that any copyrights to these reproductions must be determined separately. Without that, how can we know the copyright date of a specific photograph? Without the copyright date, how can we know when the copyright expires? What is meant by publishing? If the same photograph was used to produce a postcard in 1930 the copyright on that would certainly have expired. Whose courts have jurisdiction?
That's a very good point too. Let _them_ prove that it is not an image from before they got the work, or from more than 50/70/100 (depending on country) years old.
Naturally, taking a stand on this requires more research than these off the cuff remarks. Still I think that it is inevitable that as the putative copyright holders see their revenue streams threatened they will take action to protect those streams. Sooner or later there will be a legal confrontation; what we need to know is which actions are worth defending.
I agree. It would also be good to have a discussion going with a gallery like this - what about offering them a link for each work of 'theirs' that's on our site. Problem is of course the GNU/FDL - as we do not believe them to be copyright holders, we cannot require of downstream users to keep that kind of thing.
Andre Engels
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