German Museum Sues Wikimedia Foundation Over Photos Of Public Domain Works Of Art

from the once-public-domain,-always-public-domain dept

The mission of museums and art galleries is generally to spread knowledge and appreciation of beautiful and interesting objects. So it's rather sad when they start taking legal action against others that want to help them by disseminating images of public domain works of art to a wider audience. This obsession with claiming "ownership" of something as immaterial as the copyright in a photograph of a work of art made centuries ago led the UK National Portrait Gallery (NPG) to threaten Derrick Coetzee, a software developer, when he downloaded images from the NPG and added them to Wikimedia Commons, the media repository for Wikipedia, of which he was an administrator. That was back in 2009, and yet incredibly the same thing is still happening today, as this Wikimedia blog post explains:

On October 28, the Reiss Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany, served a lawsuit against the Wikimedia Foundation and later against Wikimedia Deutschland, the local German chapter of the global Wikimedia movement. The suit concerns copyright claims related to 17 images of the museum's public domain works of art, which have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland are reviewing the suit, and will coordinate a reply by the current deadline in December.

The problem, as usual, is that the museum is claiming that the photographs are new creations, and therefore covered by copyright:

The Reiss Engelhorn Museum asserts that copyright applies to these particular images because the museum hired the photographer who took some of them and it took him time, skill, and effort to take the photos. The Reiss Engelhorn Museum further asserts that because of their copyrights, the images of the artwork cannot be shared with the world through Wikimedia Commons.

As Wikimedia points out:

Even if German copyright law is found to provide some rights over these images, we believe that using those rights to prevent sharing of public domain works runs counter to the mission of the Reiss Engelhorn Museum and the City of Mannheim and impoverishes the cultural heritage of people worldwide.

The disagreement over the use of the NPG's images back in 2009 gradually fizzled out. The Museums Journal reported in 2012 that:

The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) has made changes to its image licensing to allow free downloads for non-commercial and academic uses.

The change means that more than 53,000 low-resolution images are now available free of charge to non-commercial users through a standard Creative Commons licence.

And more than 87,000 high-resolution images are available for free for academic use through the gallery’s own licence. Users will be invited to give a donation in return for the service.

Meanwhile, high-resolution NPG images are still available on Wikimedia Commons, although Wikipedia notes that these are prudently hosted in the US, where their legal position as works in the public domain seems clearer. It's really time for other countries to catch up with the US and recognize that photos of public domain works of art are still in the public domain, and that sharing them with the world is something to be praised as helpful, not pursued as harmful.

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Filed Under: copyright, germany, images, museum, public domain, scans, wikipedia
Companies: reiss engelhorn museum, wikimedia

Could Taking A Selfie In A Museum Violate Copyright Law?

from the of-course-it-could dept

Copyright infringement is everywhere. A few years back, John Tehranian wrote a paper (and then a book*) called "Infringement Nation" about just how much copyright infringement happens incidentally on a daily basis. The conclusion, from a back of the envelope estimate, is that an average person is likely liable for $4.544 billion in incidental infringement in a normal year. And that's not for sharing music and movies and what not, but just doing the normal everyday things you do.

With the news that the National Gallery in the UK has rescinded its long-standing "no photographs" rule, it appears that another opportunity for incidental and accidental infringement has been unleashed upon people in the UK. The National Gallery apparently realized that with everyone carrying a smartphone these days (and the fact that it offers free WiFi that it encourages patrons to use), it became kind of ridiculous to try to block photographs while encouraging people to use their phones to research the artwork they were looking at.

However, the original notice noted that "temporary" exhibits will still have restrictions on photography "for reasons of copyright." But, as IPKat notes above, it's not clear why that should only apply to the temporary exhibits, since many of the permanent exhibit works are still under copyright as well (though the museum itself might also hold the copyright on many of those works). Either way, IPKat wonders if merely including a piece of copyright-covered artwork in the background of a photo -- such as a selfie -- might lead to claims of infringement. While some countries have freedom of panorama laws** that say it's okay to represent artistic works on public display, that apparently does not apply to paintings (though it does apply to sculptures).

In the end, it appears that while it may be unlikely to get sued over taking a selfie in the National Gallery, if you're the extra cautious type, you might want to avoid it for fear of yet another ridiculous copyright claim. As IPKat notes, the caselaw is at least ambiguous enough that if someone wanted to go after you for your selfie with fine art, you might be in trouble. That this end result is ridiculous and kind of stupid isn't really discussed in the piece, but seems rather obvious. Yes, it may be unlikely that a lawsuit will come out of it, but we've seen sillier lawsuits in the past, and I doubt it would surprise many if this new policy also results in a lawsuit down the road. Because that's just the way copyright works.

* Speaking of Tehranian's book. According to Amazon you can currently get a Kindle ebook copy for... just $39.99! Yes, an ebook for $40. It almost makes me wonder if they're demonstrating the insanity of copyright laws, in a book about how silly copyright law is, by pricing it at an insane price.

** On that note, I have to admit my knowledge of such "freedom of panorama" laws was fairly limited, but it seems ridiculous that no one is considering passing such a law in the US. The number of stories of people getting sued for photographs of public displays is getting silly here.

Filed Under: copyright, museum, selfies

The Getty Gets It: 'Open Content, An Idea Whose Time Has Come'

from the art-of-sharing dept

Techdirt has published a number of posts that explore the issue of whether art organizations can stop people sharing images of works in their collections when the latter are indisputably in the public domain. Even if museums might be able to claim copyright in their "official" photographic images, the more important question is whether they ought to. The good news is that some institutions are beginning to realize that using copyright monopolies in this way contradicts their basic reason for existing -- to share the joy of art. Here, for example, is a wonderful statement of that principle from the Getty Museum entitled "Open Content, An Idea Whose Time Has Come":

Today the Getty becomes an even more engaged digital citizen, one that shares its collections, research, and knowledge more openly than ever before. We've launched the Open Content Program to share, freely and without restriction, as many of the Getty's digital resources as possible.

The initial focus of the Open Content Program is to make available all images of public domain artworks in the Getty's collections. Today we've taken a first step toward this goal by making roughly 4,600 high-resolution images of the Museum's collection free to use, modify, and publish for any purpose.

These are high-resolution, reproduction-quality images with embedded metadata, some over 100 megabytes in size. You can browse all available images here, or look for individual "download" links on the Getty Museum's collection pages. As part of the download, we'll ask for a very brief description of how you're planning to use the image. We hope to learn that the images will serve a broad range of needs and projects.

As that makes clear, the scheme is not strictly "freely and without restriction" since you are asked for a description of what you plan to do with the image; there's also a request that attribution be given. However, these are minor restrictions. And the Getty certainly gets why collections should be doing this:

Why open content? Why now? The Getty was founded on the conviction that understanding art makes the world a better place, and sharing our digital resources is the natural extension of that belief. This move is also an educational imperative. Artists, students, teachers, writers, and countless others rely on artwork images to learn, tell stories, exchange ideas, and feed their own creativity. In its discussion of open content, the most recent Horizon Report, Museum Edition stated that "it is now the mark -- and social responsibility -- of world-class institutions to develop and share free cultural and educational resources."

That is the key point: art galleries and museums have a moral duty to share the expressions of creativity entrusted to them, so that others can "feed their own creativity" and contribute back to the commons of art for others to draw on. The Getty is to be congratulated not only for making this move, but articulating so clearly the reasons for doing so. Let's hope other art organizations around the world now follow suit.

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Filed Under: copyright, museum, open content, public domain, sharing
Companies: the getty museum

US Olympic Committee Sues Organization Trying To Build Sports Museum

from the the-spirit-of-competition dept

The Olympics are notoriously protective of the Olympic name, even trying to block the trademark application for the Olympian, a newspaper in Olympia, Washington. Paul writes in to let us know that the US Olympic Committee has now decided it's worth suing what appears to be an almost defunct non-profit organization called The International Institute for Sport and Olympic History. Apparently the organization was set up to try to raise funds for a museum dedicated to sports, but from the article, it sounds like it has failed to get very far, and has been (perhaps) left to die already (at one point, it was reported that the Institute's bank account contained $52). But never one to let a dead organization die peacefully, the USOC has sued and is seeking "treble damages." What damages? This is basically a defunct organization that never did anything. The USOC says, at the very least, it deserves three times the profits the organization made off the Olympic name. Well, three times zero is zero... so seems like this one could be settled pretty quickly.

Filed Under: museum, olympics, trademark
Companies: usoc