[Foundation-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the French cultural authorities

[Teofilo]

David Monniaux said : "release lower resolution pictures under free
license, keep high resolution pictures (those suitable for art books,
posters and so on) proprietary."

I disagree. I think the priority is to have the full resolution
pictures of Public Domain works. Because this is what the French
copyright law is saying. There is no need to negociate anything. There
is no need to change a single word from the current French copyright
law. Simply have the French government's cultural institutions
(museums, archives) recognize that they have been wrong until now, by
adding copyright notices on Public Domain works (in France:
non-poshumous works whose authors have been dead for more than 70
years).

If someone has another opportunity to write an article in Libération
or elsewhere, please denounce the copyright notices added by the Musée
d'Orsay on a picture like the photograph of Louis Blanc by
photographer Etienne Carjat who died in 1906 (1).

Please denounce the copyright notice added by Musée Carnavalet on a
bidimensional work like the Declaration of Human Rights by Le Barbier
(who died in 1826) (2). And don't tell me that a school teacher can
use this work at school with a 400x400 px size, like what is available
to them through the new agreement signed between the French ministry
of Education and authors' representative bodies (3). A teacher needs
to show his pupils every details on the picture.

Negociating small size pictures could be only a lower level priority
concerning truely copyrighted works when the artists are still alive
and need money to buy their bread.

(1) ©photo musée d'Orsay / rmn on
http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/index-of-works/notice.html?no_cache=1&zoom=1&tx_damzoom_pi1%5Bzoom%5D=0&tx_damzoom_pi1%5BxmlId%5D=064037&tx_damzoom_pi1%5Bback%5D=%2Fen%2Fcollections%2Findex-of-works%2Fnotice.html%3Fno_cache%3D1%26nnumid%3D064037%26cHash%3D73f82dabb3

(2)  © musée Carnavalet, © direction des musées de France, 2008 Droits
photo © musée Carnavalet / Roger-Viollet  on
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/public/mistral/joconde_fr?ACTION=CHERCHER&FIELD_1=REF&VALUE_1=11040000384

(3) http://www.education.gouv.fr/cid48874/menj0900756x.html

2009/9/22, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net>:
> Hello, I think this is worth a larger audience. Yann
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [Commons-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with
> the French cultural authorities
> Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:51:12 +0200
> From: David Monniaux <David . Monniaux @ free . fr>
> To: commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > [...]
> I proposed a way out: release lower resolution pictures under free
> license, keep high resolution pictures (those suitable for art books,
> posters and so on) proprietary. The suggestion has been retained by the
> commission - even though they still seem to toy with this idea of
> "negotiation".