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

[Teofilo]

My reaction to this report is tears, because it is terrible : they use
the keyword "public domain" only once, talking about a set of 4500
American Library of Congress pictures on Flickr (1), only to
contradict it a few lines below when they talk about "rights holder"
for the works by Ingres (2), a painter who died more than 70 years
ago. French GLAM administrators live in old castles like the Louvre
which were built during the Monarchy, before 1789, and they have kept
the mentality of that era. Their idea of government is to increase the
King's properties and benefits. Despite their claim to the contrary,
they ignore the interest of the public.

See also page 19 (3) the connection they make between "libre de
droits" (a very polysemic wording which can mean anything from public
domain, to royalty free, or even free licenced) and "non commerciale"
(and they say they have a lawyer among their editorial team!). Not
even once do they hint that commercial use is allowed when a work is
in the Public Domain.

(1) recommandation n°1 page 17 (pdf OCR version page 12)
(2) recommandation n°2 page 18 (pdf OCR version page 13) (that part is
translated into English in the message forwarded by Kat Walsh
2009-09-22)
(3) recommandation n°3 page 19 (pdf OCR version page 14)

pdf OCR version: http://david.monniaux.free.fr/pdf/rapport_culture_ocr.pdf

2009/9/22, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com>:
> Well done!
>
> That sounds like the most constructive engagement any part of the
> overall project has had on opening up large swaths of external
> content, that I can recall.
>
> Congratulations to everyone involved in France.