[Foundation-l] Considerations for museums and archives to gain their cooperation

[Milos Rancic]

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 12:35 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am talking to a few museums and archives and several of them are
> interested in considering Commons for their collection. At the same time
> they are also considering Flickr.
>
> The issue they have with Commons is its restrictions. One of the museums
> said it like this: "We have done our best to ascertain the copyright status
> of much of our material. We have not been  able to find the original
> copyright holder or someone who inherited these rights. When we post our
> material to Flickr, we just remove the material when a copyright holder
> turns up and asks us to. Doing it in any other way requires much more
> effort. Effort that we rather spend in more productive endeavours like
> digitising and annotating."
>
> My question is, will it be acceptable when a museum or archive provides us
> with their material and when we learn about a request to take down material,
> we do this when requested by the copyright holder.  This is not considered
> an issue with Flickr !!

Once again, if we have non-free.wikimedia.org repository, with precise
rules, we wouldn't be able to have all kinds of materials which policy
of Commons prohibits:
* Orphan works.
* Somewhat more flexible conditions for the situations like you mentioned.
* Logos and other trademarks at one place.
* Strictly defined fair use images (like on en.wp) at one place.