On 10/27/2010 06:19 AM, Birgitte SB wrote:
--- On *Tue, 10/26/10, Andrea Zanni /zanni.andrea84@gmail.com/* wrote:
I actually wrote this mail for understanding the issue,It is a difficult issue to understand.
A shorter answer is that different opinions exist regarding the possibility to copyright reproductional photos (scans). It is my opinion, that those who scan (or photograph) old books should not claim new copyright to their images. The Internet Archive, the Library of Congress, and several other digitization projects do not claim copyright, but allow and encourage free copying. In the cause of free information, this is an offer that we should use. We should establish a practice of copying scanned books without asking, to make this behaviour the "normal" way of doing things.
Google Book Search, in a preface page to each scanned book, kindly asks for their books not to be reused commercially, but we have always disregarded this. When we find books at Google, we download them, remove the preface, and then upload the resulting files to the Internet Archive and/or Wikimedia Commons as public domain works. There is no formal agreement with Google for this.
If BnF would also subscribe to this point of view, there would be no need for any agreement with Wikimedia France, since we could just copy their scanned books without asking. The agreement might give other people the impression that reuse of scanned images (of out-of-copyright books) is not a universal right, but something that you need a special privilege or permission for. I think this impression is harmful, and should be actively suppressed by a clarification.
Whether you claim copyright to scanned images or not is entirely unrelated to whether such a claim will actually prevail in a court of law. Different courts in different countries in different times might decide differently. The important thing is that we should discourage book scanners from claiming copyright.