[Foundation-l] British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies sides with NPG

[Pedro Sanchez]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 10:48 AM, Mathias Schindler <
mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 5:46 PM, Thomas Dalton<thomas.dalton at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=866109
> >
>
> I am getting timeouts on this server. Does any have copy of their
> statement for me?
>
> Mathias
>
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NPG and BAPLA at war with Wikipedia

 The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies has waded into a
tense showdown between the National Portrait Gallery and Wikipedia, which
erupted after thousands of NPG images were uploaded onto the social
encyclopedia.

In March 2009, more than 3000 high-resolution files were taken from the
National Portrait Gallery website and published on Wikipedia without the
gallery's permission. The National Portrait Gallery released a statement,
describing itself as 'very concerned that potential loss of licensing income
from the high-resolution files threatens its ability to reinvest in its
digitisation programme and so make further images available. It is one of
the Gallery's primary purposes to make as much of the Collection available
as possible for the public to view.'

Over the past five years, the National Portrait Gallery has spent £1m on
digitising its collection of images, with 60,000 already available online in
low-resolution.

'Wikipedia has not responded to our requests to discuss the issue and so the
National Portrait Gallery has been obliged to issue a lawyer's letter,' the
NPG's statement continues. 'The Gallery remains willing to enter into a
dialogue with Wikipedia.'

BAPLA has thrown its support behind the National Portrait Gallery, with
executive director Simon Cliffe adding that the issue was a very important
one for the organisation's members. 'We understand that other people who
have had similar experiences with Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons have been
told that they regard all images of out-of-copyright material as public
domain, and dispute there is any copyright in a copy of an original work,'
he says. 'This is contrary to UK law. The copying of original works for
commercial use requires skill and expertise and has a financial cost to the
producer. The 1988 CDPA recognises this.'

He continued: 'If owners of out-of-copyright material are not going to have
the derivative works they have created protected, which will result in
anyone being able to use them for free, they will cease to invest in the
digitisation of works, and everyone will be the poorer. Protection of
derivative works is not about restriction of access to those works, it is
simply about protecting the works from commercial exploitation by those who
have not invested in the creation of the new work. As we can see from the
NPG case, they do not want to restrict access to the public, but to assert
the protection the law provides for their commercial interests. In this way
they can raise more funds to invest in making even more material available.'

Jay Walsh, head of communications for the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns
Wikipedia, issued a statement on 14 July calling the National Portrait
Gallery's action unfortunate. 'The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to
empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop
educational content under a free licence or in the public domain, and to
disseminate it effectively and globally,' he says. 'To that end, we have
very productive working relationships with a number of galleries, archives,
museums and libraries around the world, who join with us to make their
educational materials available to the public.

'The Wikimedia Foundation does not control user behavior, nor have we
reviewed every action taken by that user. Nonetheless, it is our general
understanding that the user in question has behaved in accordance with our
mission, with the general goal of making public domain materials available
via our Wikimedia Commons project, and in accordance with applicable law.'