Forum Moderators: not2easy
The battle over Wikipedia's use of images from a British art gallery's website has intensified.The National Portrait Gallery is threatening legal action after 3,300 images from its website were uploaded to Wikipedia... by a Wikipedia volunteer David Coetzee.
The gallery also explained how David Coetzee was able to obtain the high resolution files from its site. They were made available to visitors using a "Zoomify" feature, which works by allowing several high resolution files to be seen all together.
It claims Mr Coetzee used special software to "de-scramble" the high-resolution tiles, allowing the whole portrait to be seen in high resolution.The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies has backed the National Portrait Gallery's stance.
A right royal row developing it seems. Note that the BBC uses just such a photo of a painting to illustrate the story. As they don't credit the source, I wonder where they got it from ;-)
Full story from the BBC [news.bbc.co.uk]
Syzygy
In this case, I must side with the National Portrait Gallery: technically, Wikipedia could have a legal right to upload these images, the problem is that the National Gallery is a (probably) a state body (aka owned by the people), whose mission is to preserve art and display it. Preserving art is very very expensive, and we all know galleries and museums don't roll in piles of money, they usually scrape by with whatever they can. I read that the National Gallery makes a hefty part of its budget from re-prints in books of the paintings it is storing. Free high-rez images, under the GPL license, completely destroy this business model. So basically, Wikipedia would cut the grass under an institution that has an the "noble" purpose of preserving art.
I believe that Wikipedia should reduce the resolution of the images, and that's it, why do they need high rez versions anyways? Wikipedia is not an art book, as far as I know.
Seems to me that Wikipedia is in trouble under UK law, and arguably isn't in the clear under US law--the Corel precedent might not apply, since the NPG had added creative value to the photos they published by setting up the Zoomify feature....
Good luck with that is my opinion. I'd like to think the gallery has some say to protect the images but, we'll see.
edit: didn't realize it was a museum, I don't think that will matter though, it's still public (which makes protecting digital images harder).
Anyway, giving people extra copyrights because they need the money is a bad idea.
Where is the creative step in photographing or scanning a painting?
Its like a fax or photocopy.
Who owns faxes and photocopies, BTW?
It is extremely difficult to defend a position when you don't own the paintings and you leave them in a publicly accessible place, not to mention the "pictures" in question are digital. Even if there are "cameras not allowed" signs in the gallery it's still likely legal to take photographs because some "rules" aren't legal to begin with.
Ownership is not in question - and UK law explicitly provides copyright protection for these photographs. These are professionally taken, high resolution images, with hours of post-production work afforded to them, and are not comparable to the snaps taken by a visitor (presuming visitor photography was allowed).
To the best of my limited knowledge you cannot copyright a fax or photocopy unless it is or has been part of an artistic/creative process, ie, you've made a work of art involving photocopies or electronic facsimilies. The contents of the fax or photocopy may well be subject to copyright, of course. The defining point is in to what degree creative/skilled/artistic input goes into the making of the object. Enough to make it a creative work in its own right?
Relative to the point shaddows makes, one argument asks whether, if you were able to scan a painting and thus had a comparable quality to a photograph, this could still be protected under UK copyright law.
Likely the answer is no, which then begets the question - where is the dividing line between a technical process of reproduction (the scanner) and the creative process via technical means (the photographer and photograph)?
Here again we have the difference. The US does not see a photograph of a painting, even when professionally done, as being worthy of copyright protection. The UK does.
Syzygy
I don't think so. Art begins with intent: if the creator makes something with the intent for it to be art, it becomes art. But if a creator makes something that is meant to be only an exact technical reproduction of somebody else's work, then there's no way it could be reasonably considered artistic.
Sure, some creativity may have gone into the choices the photographer made, but it's hard to say that this is really art or a creative work, and therefore worthy of copyright in and of itself.
(Or at least it would be if it was in the US. That's the reason why any photos taken by US government officials as part of their job are devoid of copyright. Perhaps somebody in the UK can clarify what copyright laws say over there with regard to government-created works or sponsored works for hire.)
I like nickreynold's moral view. Too much today revolves around what one can get away with under the law.
[edited by: oddsod at 4:41 pm (utc) on July 23, 2009]
As I understand it the wikipedia guy deliberately hacked the system to use high res images, when low res images were more freely available. I also lose sympathy with him as he obviously took them without asking, when the NPG's website has a lot of clear info about copyright and licencing
In seeking to stop Wikipedia from reproducing these images, the NPG is only shedding light upon its own protectionist practices which are designed to deprive the public of its own property, the creative work. By stopping anyone getting sufficient access to the physical media, the NPG stops the public being able to exercise its legal rights as the holder of the copyright to freely reproduce, distribute and create derivative works. The NPG, in this action and other pre-existing policies related to access and photography, is subverting and attempting to bypass the entire principle of the public domain and expiry of copyright.
The big question therefore is whether it is acceptable that the NPG is allowed to usurp the legal rights and privileges accorded by law to the public through the establishment of the public domain?
entire principle of the public domain
The UK has a 40% inheritance tax over a certain threshold, families give art to galleries because otherwise the art would go to the taxman.
So you are saying they give away 100% to avoid giving 40%. Also the largest single donor in recent years to this particular institution was Christoper Ondatjee who gave them a huge amount of cash in return for having the new wing named after him.
vince, your first para is spot on: they simply do not want to accept that these works are in the public domain.
why can't wikipedia just smaller images of a lower quality
Of course the actual works of art themselves belong to the gallery. The gallery presumably therefore has the choice (within the parameters of its trust deed ) how to display or even whether to display the originals.
I guess that this is a little different to some other copyright areas (films, music, books) in that the item in question is a tangible asset that has to be looked after and in a sense if never displayed would not be "in the public domain" .
Think too about the possible effects if this hack is allowed. The NPG invested a good amount of money in that Zoomify feature. If it's OK for Wikipedia or an individual to use that as the source for their own content, then wouldn't the NPG, or other museums, think twice before doing such work in the future?
Wikipedia is justified to use the photos since they have no merit on their own other than duplicating a previously-created work.
Wrong. The photographs have considerable merit of their own, and considerable effort and skill was involved in producing them.
In this case, Wikipedia are thieves, pure and simple. They have stolen someone else's work without permission and without compensation.
If the paintings in question are in the public domain, Wikipedia volunteers would have the right to make their own arrangements to take their own photographs for their own purposes.
They do NOT have the right to steal the work of other photographers and graphics artists simply because that's more convenient than taking their own photos.
