[Foundation-l] About that "sue and be damned" to the National Portrait Gallery ...

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 3:57 PM,
Falcorian<alex.public.account+WikimediaMailingList at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why are these images on Commons? According to [[Commons:Licensing]]:
> "Wikimedia Commons accepts only media [...] that are in the public domain in
> at least the United States and in the source country of the work."
> Is it because they are potentially PD in the UK, but it's unclear?

Wikimedia's long standing position is that if copying a public domain
work makes it copyrighted it would effectively eliminate the public
domain.

It's far from clear that the NPG's position will stand even under UK
law: The specific matter hasn't been tried, and the US court that
tried it also reached the same conclusion under UK law.


 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:When_to_use_the_PD-Art_tag#Why_do_we_allow_the_.7B.7BPD-Art.7D.7D_tag_to_be_used_for_photographs_from_any_country.3F


Consider the incentive system that you create when you combine a
copyright system which is effectively perpetual through retroactive
extensions plus the ability to copyright any work in the public domain
by making a slavish reproduction:

New exciting viable business plans emerge, such as:

1) Obtain classic works of art and slavishly digitize them.
2) Destroy the works of art
3) Perpetual profit!