[WikiEN-l] Copyright question

[Carcharoth]

On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 12:43 PM, David Gerard<dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/7/18 Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com>:
>
>> Could someone link to Erik Moeller's blog post and to any of the press
>> releases from the WMF?
>
> There's been no press releases from WMF as such - Mike Godwin is,
> funnily enough, treating this as a legal issue, i.e. a combination of
> chess and poker.

I saw something on the en-wikinews article talk page. What was that?

> Though Erik's post pretty much served as a press release:
>
> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/16/protecting-the-public-domain-and-sharing-our-cultural-heritage/

Thanks.

> I've started a thread on foundation-l (and on my own blog) asking what
> things people would like to see from a compromise agreement, and what
> they think would work for both sides.

One thing that needs clarification is what the NPG are saying in
public and private:

"But the gallery insists that its case has been misrepresented, and
has now released a statement denying many of the charges made by
Wikipedia."

Is there a link to that anywhere?

Also note:

"A spokeswoman also said that the two German archives mentioned in
Erik Moeller's blog had in fact supplied medium resolution images to
Wikipedia, and insisted that the National Portrait Gallery had been
willing to offer similar material to Wikipedia."

They are now directly saying that they *had* offered medium-resolution
images. That needs sorting out: when, where and who were they talking
to? Possibly they thought they were talking to someone who could do
something, but in fact they weren't (they were possibly talking to a
random volunteer, or the WMF rejected the offer as "not free enough" -
strange to laymen's eyes in light of the example of the German
archives).

One more point:

"The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies has backed
the National Portrait Gallery's stance."

We don't have an article on BAPLA, but we do have five references to
it (article on three of their members, one of the founding members,
and the current president). BAPLA is the UK trade association for the
picture library industry. Wikipedia is weak on its coverage of trade
associations, but if you want to get an idea of the range of picture
libraries and agencies in the UK, have a look at the BAPLA website:

http://www.bapla.org.uk/

"With over 380 member companies, we represent the vast majority of
commercial picture libraries and agencies in the UK."

"Companies range from small specialists to multinationals,
collectively managing in excess of 350 million images, within an
industry estimated to be worth over £500m per year in domestic revenue
alone."

Most of that is the sale of contemporary copyrighted photographs (by
living photographers earning money from their trade). But some of that
will be the commercial sale of scans of PD stuff that gets free
culture people up in arms. The root of this issue is the commercial
exploitation of the public domain.

My view is that if people are prepared to spend time, money and effort
in finding, collecting, keeping and conserving public domain material,
and then scanning it and digitising it, then there is nothing to
prevent people selling the end product of such labours. And people
will pay for that service.

Whether it is morally right to exploit the public domain (by selling
such scans for money), and whether it is morally right to appropriate
the scans made by others (by insisting the scans are also public
domain), is something I can see arguments for on both sides of this
divide.

Carcharoth