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

[Carcharoth]

You are right Durova. I apologise for sidetracking things there.

Do you have views on how to address situations where we have a free
pictures of someone when they are very old, but all the pictures of
them when they were young (and famous) are copyrighted? This can
happen with sports stars and others. Does the presence of an arguably
less relevant free picture (of them when they are old) dissuade people
from attempting to get a free picture that may be more relevant to the
article (from when they were young)?

Carcharoth

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 5:58 PM, Durova<nadezhda.durova at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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>
>
> --
> http://durova.blogspot.com/
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