NSA's Stellar Wind Program Was Almost Completely Useless, Hidden From FISA Court By NSA And FBI

The US Government Should Release These 7,584 Fruit Paintings

from the the-public-domain-matters dept

Mon, Apr 27th 2015 1:39pm — Parker Higgins

The federal government is sitting on 7,584 historical agricultural watercolor paintings that it should make freely available to the public today. Currently, people have access only to low-quality previews of the images; the United States Department of Agriculture, where the archive is held, should serve the public interest by making the entire collection of high quality scans free for all.

The USDA's National Agricultural Library hosts the Pomological Watercolor Collection, which contains images of different varieties of fruits and nuts, commissioned between 1886 and 1942.

They're remarkable as art, and also have serious scientific importance: they are some of the only documentation, for example, of thousands of apple types that no longer exist. The USDA has called the Pomological Watercolor Collection "Perhaps the most attractive as well as historically important of NAL's treasures," and it was cited just this week in a Washington State University article about apple preservation efforts.

The public should have access to these images, and that access should be automatic and unrestricted. Fortunately, that is technically possible: the USDA, through a grant from an environmental non-profit called The Ceres Trust, went though a multi-year digitization effort and now has high-quality scans of every image. However, members of the public can currently only view low-resolution versions online, can only request up to three high-quality scans free of charge, and must pay $10 per file beyond that.

And though the order page touts the fact that a portion of proceeds will go to conservation efforts, the numbers just don't add up. I suspected that conservation costs are orders of magnitude higher than reproduction revenues, so I asked. Through a FOIA request to the USDA, I obtained the digitization project report, as well as a breakdown of the last three and a half years of revenues that the collection has generated.

Digitizing the images cost $288,442. Since the collection went online in 2011, members of the public have ordered just 81 images, for a total of $565. That relatively tiny amount simply cannot justify the cost to the public of keeping these images behind a paywall.

There's no question that these paintings, if made more available, could be creating value for the public. High quality images could be used in printed teaching materials, which can spur conservation efforts and spark agricultural research interests in students. They could illustrate relevant articles on Wikipedia, providing historical context from over a hundred years of agriculture. The high quality scans could be examined closely by independent researchers to turn up new information.

The collection could even expand if it is accessible enough, as the National Agricultural Library described in its own report: one researcher, on hearing about the digitization project, contributed seven contemporaneous paintings of blueberries that had been stored in his lab.

Again, here's the USDA's own words on the importance of public access to the collection:

With today's growing interest in heirloom varieties and others that are no longer commonly grown, the collection is an invaluable storehouse of fruit knowledge and history.

That knowledge is better served if the public has access to the scans, and it's possible to do that today. If the cost of hosting and bandwidth is an issue, the Internet Archive and Wikimedia Commons would almost certainly be willing to host even the highest resolution scans.

Reposted from parker higgins dot net

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Filed Under: copyright, culture, department of agriculture, fruit, fruit paintings, history, paintings, public domain

17 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2015 @ 1:52pm

"Perhaps the most attractive as well as historically important of NAL's treasures,"

And like all treasure is only valuable if it is hoarded and gloated over by the dragon.... I mean owner.
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Blackfiredragon13 (profile), 27 Apr 2015 @ 1:52pm

Unless you can present it in a way that they earn money directly, they won't bite.
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Geoff Lehr, 27 Apr 2015 @ 1:58pm

RECAP for Paintings?
Couldn't we do something similar to RECAP, since everyone can request up to three scans for free?
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jupiterkansas (profile), 27 Apr 2015 @ 1:58pm

Re:
It's not like the government needs a return on investment - and they currently aren't earning much money directly so what's the point?
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2015 @ 2:10pm

How did they make $585 dollars at $10/picture?
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2015 @ 2:26pm

Re:

How did they make $585 dollars at $10/picture?

Since the article claimed only 81 pictures sold, I'd say the $585 is the difference between $810 and whatever portion of the proceeds that went towards conservation efforts.
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Beech, 27 Apr 2015 @ 2:35pm

Crowdsource
Why not just crowd source it. Have 2528 different people each request 3 different images.Drop them all in a torrent file and free pretty pretty pictures for all! Not like there's any imaginable way it's copyright infringement since the government doesn't get those.
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Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2015 @ 2:43pm

Re: Crowdsource
It is probably a safe bet that the Ceres Trust will scream bloody murder, and rape, and terrorism, and pirates, and think of the children, and think of the environment, and a few more things only their lawyers could dream up.
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Toestubber (profile), 27 Apr 2015 @ 2:43pm

Sunk costs
"The paintings were created by approximately twenty-one artists commissioned by USDA for this purpose."

The artists have already been paid. From the taxes of those who never lived to see the internet. There's no justification for keeping the art classified, and hasn't been for more than a century.
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Spaceman Spiff (profile), 27 Apr 2015 @ 3:41pm

They are ours!
We paid for them. We own them! Give 'em to us!
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2015 @ 3:47pm

Re: Re:
OP here: I didn't get into it in the article, but it looks like the price used to be $25, and that was dropped to $10. Every single "order" is documented in the FOIA docs I posted.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2015 @ 3:49pm

Re: Crowdsource
There's an effort underway! https://docs.google.com/a/parkerhiggins.net/spreadsheets/d/1B3n4r4P-mSuZVd7DwY1Ok3zbWKGcnn-gQXKmE0vj 6SI/edit#gid=0

It'd be nice to get this through cooperation, but in the meantime people are getting some beautiful pictures out of it already.
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afn29129 (profile), 27 Apr 2015 @ 6:29pm

One or 3 DVD(s) and a little postage
Under a sane system one, or 3 DVD's and a little postage would get a person a copy of the whole image collection.
Say... $10.00 or less.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2015 @ 9:52pm

There's no question that these paintings, if made more available, could be creating value for the public. High quality images could be used in printed teaching materials, which can spur conservation efforts and spark agricultural research interests in students. They could illustrate relevant articles on Wikipedia, providing historical context from over a hundred years of agriculture. The high quality scans could be examined closely by independent researchers to turn up new information.

If people can study these , they can shake a finger at mobsanto and the lobbying groups.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2015 @ 2:31am

Re: Re: Crowdsource
Sadly, the spreadsheet says that it may no longer be possible to order three for free. But even if there's a cost for the images, I'm in.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2015 @ 2:35am

Re: RECAP for Paintings?
Maybe I'm not being creative enough in my search, but I can't figure out what RECAP is. Could someone explain?
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2015 @ 4:44am

Re: Re: RECAP for Paintings?
PACER is the access system for court filings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACER_%28law%29
Each document or page costs some money to search/access even if the court documents should be free as they are public and already payed for.

RECAP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RECAP
Is a system trying to keep these documents free and accessible if they are already payed for/requested.
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