[WikiEN-l] Interesting article on restored copyrights in US works between...

[Carcharoth]

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 7:20 PM,  <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:
>>>In a message dated 1/16/2009 4:27:00 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
> carcharothwp at googlemail.com writes:
>
> The  usual solution to that is to point to the museum/library/archive
> image as a  way to verify the self-created image (similar to how people
> point to Google  Books now to verify books they are using as
> references). But what if there  is no museum/library/archive image?>>
>
> "Point to" versus "take".  Two separate things.

I agree.

> I'm not disputing the right to link to an image on bible.org.  I'm  disputing
> the right to take that image and post it to flicker.com

Ditto.

But you do realise the reason why there is such a thing as "public
domain" in the first place, right? It's a balance between encouraging
free access to public domain material, and discouraging restriction of
access to public domain material.

> And "what if there is no museum image" only means that we are in the same
> position as "what if we have no free image of Britney Spears eating a hot dog
> for our hot dog page??".  I.E. we're not worse off than we've been for five
> thousand years.

I preferred the bible example.

> The mere fact that an image now exists, doesn't mean we get the right to do
> whatever we want with it.

I agree. But you avoided my other question:

If the *object* is public domain, who has the right to access it?

If you buy an expensive first edition public domain book (hundreds of
years old and thousands of US dollars), what do you say to someone who
turns up on your doorstep saying that the book is part of the
collective heritage of humankind, and that they have a right to look
at it and scan it, and that you have no right to keep the item locked
up in a display cabinet for only you to look at?

This is private collections, not museums, but what distinctions should
be drawn? There *are* some private collections of very old material
that are not under government control and are not about to be released
to the public anytime soon. Is this a problem? What can be done about
it?

You talked about capitalism. That creates markets in old stuff. Which
leads to hoarding.

Carcharoth