[WikiEN-l] Application of the {{pd-art}} tag

[Fastfission]

On 4/11/06, Mak <makwik at gmail.com> wrote:
> According to a number of librarians I've spoken with, a number of US Museums
> and libraries would differ with you on that. They believe that if they own
> the original work, unless they license copies, all images of that work
> belong to them. They could very well be wrong, but that's what they think,
> and would probably eventually be willing to test in court. For a lot of
> items they'll severely restrict access, just so that this sort of thing
> won't happen, and if the precedent is upheld, this is likely only to get
> worse. It's unclear to me whether we should use this case as a precedent,
> although it's clear that both Wikipedia and the Commons does.  </armchair
> lawyering>
> Makemi

Well of course they would differ on that. They see revenue going out
the window as they tried in vain to claim active authorship rights on
something that was made two hundred years ago. The only claims I have
seen against the reasoning in Bridgeman and Feist are along the lines
of "but we'd like the money" and "it takes effort/resources to make
this product." Those are realistic economic considerations for a
business but it is a sort of argumentation which should have nothing
to do with copyright law -- it is the sort of argumentation which
leads you down the horrible legislative paths like the Sonny Bono
Copyright Extension Act ("We'd like it extended because it's worth
money, so fuck the principles"). Fortunately librarians and archivists
are not as potent a constituency as the music industry, or else
Congress would probably get involved. I have very little tolerance for
archivists who think that ownership is the same thing as authorship,
and do not care that copyrights are supposed to be LIMITED monopolies
on culture.

The long-term effects of Bridgeman v. Corel -- which I don't think
anybody is predicting a swift overturning of -- are worth
contemplating but are really beyond our personal control. Whether it
will result in restriction of access (for the purpose of preserving IP
without resorting to IP law) is a possibility, but just one of many.
There are other ways to make revenue besides trying to misuse
copyright law, thank goodness.

Since Bridgeman v. Corel currently IS the law (whether the archivists
like it or not) and has BEEN the law for the past six years, I think
we shouldn't be too worried about using it. In any event, if something
horrible happened which changed the legal situation we can always go
back over the images tagged as such and delete them.

FF