UK's National Portrait Gallery Threatens To Sue Wikipedia User

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/07/11/1239244/UKs-National-Portrait-Gallery-Threatens-To-Sue-Wikipedia-User?from=rss

by gasull • 17 years ago

14 15 17 years ago

yro.slashdot.org

summary: user uploaded photos of public domain works, and the impression i get from comments on slashdot, is that in the uk they'd have a case because the photos are copyright of photographer but since this is a US user and US servers, the user will be fine due to Corel v Bridgeman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corel_v._Bridgeman) which decided that photos of public domain stuff is not copyrighted.

looks as if things are going to be k.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

They claim copyright of the photographer. IANAL but don't think they have a case. Otherwise you could copyright a Shakespeare play based on the time you spent typesetting its text.

dtf• 17 years ago

There is a doctrine in UK copyright law known as "sweat of the brow". I imagine this is what the NPG's lawyers are referring to when they mention "painstaking effort":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow

cesther• 17 years ago

IANAL JALS - also may be jurisdictionally biased

There are multiple copyrights associated with most content items. You don't get copyright based on time nor the effort involved - rather it is based on originality of the work.

So you can't claim the copyright of a play by typesetting it - but by typesetting it one can have the copyright in your original typographical arrangement of that play.

So just because the underlying work is in the public domain does not mean it safe to copy a representation of it which has been created in a way which allows the person who created the representation to claim copyright over their work.

Compare a person selling a photocopied 17th century print of a book against a person who retypes the text of that book and lays it out in an original way.

IMHO the issue here is with the policies of the publicly funded museums - there is an argument that if a public funded organisation creates a new copyright work based on public domain material then they should place that new work within the public domain or at least license it using CC.

gaius2• 17 years ago

If you want a public domain photo of a public domain artwork, then take such a photo yourself and assign it to the public domain. Simple.

weavejester• 17 years ago

Which is why galleries in the UK usually forbid photography.

ZeroGravitas2• 17 years ago

It's not quite as simple as searching the net for a suitable image which is entirely legal in the US and may be legal in the UK too.

It's also not simple to take such a photgraph of these paintings as the gallery prohibits it.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dcoetzee/NPG_legal_th... is the full letter. I hope this goes to court. I'm really looking forward to seeing how they intend to argue that copyright extends to documentary copies of public domain work.

fauigerzigerk2• 17 years ago

Public domain work published by a government funded institution.

cstross• 17 years ago

Your US-centric assumptions are faulty in the UK legal context; stuff funded by the government isn't public domain, it's Crown Copyright.

gort• 17 years ago

Putting aside the legal questions, the Wikimedia Foundation's moral position appears to be this:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:When_to_use_the_PD...

ZeroGravitas2• 17 years ago

I was going to post the same link but for the subtleties of the wikimedia policy, e.g. Photos of coins aren't public domain but flatbed scans are.

UK's National Portrait Gallery Threatens To Sue Wikipedia User

Related Stories