[WikiEN-l] Copyright question

[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 1:52 PM, Jussi-Ville
Heiskanen<cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
> FT2 wrote:
>> I just got curious and read up on Bridgeman vs. Corel. To my complete
>> surprise, though heard in the US, it cites UK precedent (Privy Council,
>> House of Lords) in forming its opinion -- it is /not/ purely a case based
>> upon US law.
>>
>> It turns out the case was heard under UK law (!). It cites as authorities a
>> Privy Council case ruled by the UK Law Lords, *Interlego v Tyco
>> Industries*(on which we have an article):
> (snip some very interesting stuff, well worth reading from the
> parent in this thread)
>>
>>    Given that Bridgeman has been cited as a purely US based precedent, this
>> could be quite a major change in my understanding of the legal position :)
>
> Purely on grounds of curiosity (never mind the legal niceties)
> personally I would like to know what the photographer who
> actually was there in the gallery, pulling the trigger of the
> camera for NPG thinks today about all this stuff going on
> about the work she/he is/was doing. Did they think they
> were engaged in a noble act without revenue streams
> flickering in the back of the retinas of the people who
> actually hired that photographer for the job. That is, if
> one were to even provisionally stipulate, purely arguendo,
> that there was even a vanishingly small possibility that the
> NPG's case had even a rickety leg to stand on, what would the
> view of the "author" whose "creativity" the NPG is claiming to use
> as a justification for trying to "Dredd Scott" works already escaped
> into PD, "back south" into Copyright Protected dominion, be? Did the
> photographer get payed a proper artists dues? Or did they do this "ever
> so creative work" in largely conveyor-belt fashion, without much thought
> into what it was precisely that they were *reproducing*?

My view is it is unlikely that the high-res images were obtained by a
single photographer taking photographs in the galleries (I may be
wrong here). It is more likely they were digitised professionally
using a team that did proper scans with techniques that conserved the
paintings and artworks in question.

Have a look here for examples of what the NPG offer:

http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/about/primary-collection.php

"The Primary Collection contains more than 11,000 portraits. Of these
about 4,000 are paintings, sculptures and miniatures, approaching 60%
of which are regularly displayed, with the intention to show a further
selection. In addition, there are almost 7,000 light-sensitive works
on paper, shown on a rotating basis of about 300 items a year to avoid
excessive light exposure and thus to minimise deterioration and
fading. The Gallery also holds a Reference Collection and a
Photographs Collection."

http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/about/reference-collection.php

"The Reference Collection is held in the Heinz Archive and Library and
contains more than 80,000 portraits of important and lesser known
figures in British history.  The majority of these portraits are
prints, but the collection also includes drawings, silhouettes,
caricatures, paintings, miniatures, medallions and related items."

http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/about/photographs-collection.php

"The Photographs Collection consists of more than 220,000 original
photographic images of which at least 130,000 are original negatives."

Take a moment to think about what is involved in cataloguing and
digitising a collection like that. I know the US public institutions
have done just that (think Library of Congress), but it is certainly
not cheap, not easy and not quick.

I would hope it involved a lot more than pointing a camera at a
portrait on a wall, even if you are mounting it on a tripod and using
infrared technology as well. And where do you start on access to the
library collections? If they are properly funded (not a given, I
know), there is likely to be an array of hi-tech scanning machines and
technologies used to produce the hi-resolution images. Think art
restoration and preservation techniques. And a wide range of media and
scanning techniques developed for those different media. 3D scanning
techniques, scanning techniques for light-sensitive materials, ways to
scan large portraits (the really big ones can be many feet across and
be very heavy). Even producing a flatbed scan of a normal print or
negative requires careful cleaning and scanning and then
post-processing of the scan itself.

Remember that  the number of (highly skilled) staff required to
operate that sort of process may not show up on the NPG payroll, as
they may contract that sort of work out to others.

And my guess is that the photographer or scanners or other people paid
to do this were doing nothing more nor less than as professional a job
as they could do, to earn the money they were contracted to be paid.
Not everyone has noble thoughts about free culture and freeing public
domain material, running through their minds all the time.

Carcharoth