[WikiEN-l] NYT: Wikipedia May Be a Font of Facts, but It’s a Desert for Photos

[Durova]

Geni is right; professional photographers who own an uncontroversial
copyright over an image are completely within their rights to relicense and
upload a low resolution version.  That's what the Bundesarchiv did with
100,000 images last December.

It doesn't really facilitate those negotiations, either with photographers
or with cooperative institutions, to sidestep discussion about the
cooperative alternatives and refocus on one legal threat.  This is our
opportunity to build upon Noam's article and create new synergistic
relationships; let's make the most of it.

-Durova

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com>wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 5:06 PM, geni<geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2009/7/20 Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com>:
> >> It would be interesting to compare why low-resolution is considered OK
> >> here, to support and encourage the revenue stream of a professional
> >> photographer, but not in the case of the National Portrait Gallery
> >> (where the underlying works are public domain), and the revenue stream
> >> is (in theory) supporting the digitisation costs.
> >>
> > Because the photographers copyright claim is legit. Under US law the
> > National Portrait Gallery's isn't.
>
> Not copyright. Revenue stream.
> Freedom. Not beer money.
>
> Something being in the public domain doesn't mean you can't make money
> out of it. The question is whether you are restricting access by
> others to the originals. If the NPG gave people the option of either:
>
> a) Buying our high-resolution images to fund our digitisation program
> and our general cultural mission (because the government says we have
> to generate some of our own funding).
>
> Or:
>
> b) Allowing access for professional scanners and photographers to
> obtain scans to release under a free license.
>
> What would the response be?
>
> This strikes at the heart of why some people do react as if people are
> stealing something from the NPG. In effect the NPG are restricting
> access (and in a sense 'stealing' the public domain), and in another
> sense, people are 'stealing' by piggybacking on the efforts of the NPG
> who digitised the images. Ethics, here, not copyright.
>
> The NPG almost certainly wouldn't agree to (b), but if they did, what
> would the case be then? "Oh, we can't afford to pay for people to come
> and scan the pictures, so we will just use the ones you've produced
> instead." Or would Commons and the WMF organise a parallel scanning
> effort that would duplicate what had already been done? Seems a waste
> of time and resources, doesn't it? But when someone says "there is a
> photograph here of something on public display, can we use it?", and
> the answer is "no, the photograph is copyrighted, go and take your own
> photograph", we see the same duplication of effort and resources.
>
> Carcharoth
>
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