On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 6:14 AM, Nikola Smolenski <[email protected]> wrote:
> [email protected] wrote: > > [email protected] wrote: > >> The image is in the public domain. That's the point. > >> Public means all public, not limited to the whims of what the boundary > of a certain > >> country might be today. > > > > Suppose someone goes into the Louvre not with a camera but with a laser > > scanner. they digitize the entire statue, convert the point cloud into > > surfaces, and then from the surfaces into CNC program files. Finally > > they slap a block of marble on a milling machine and mill out an exact > > copy of the original. Whilst they don't get to obtain any copyright on > > the copy YOU don't get to claim that the CNC files are yours of right. > > If the original statue is in public domain, then its digital 3D copy is > in public domain too. Some person may have physical ownership of the > copy and you can not legally compel the person to give a copy to you. > But were you somehow to obtain this digital copy, even by illegal means, > there is nothing the person could legally do to prevent you or anyone > else to copy it further. Physical ownership of an actual work > (electronic or physical) is completely independent to copyright > ownership of the work. > > This is the difference between *copyright* and *access-right. *The latter refers to *physical property*. Given that we in Wikimedia-land only deal with digital copies we are very adept with copyright (and copyright edge-cases). But since we do not own any physical objects and therefore have no "stuff" we do not have any experience in managing access-rights. This is almost the reverse (to a certain extent) of museums which have for generations had to deal with "access issues" (like whether you can enter the museum at a certain time and how much entrance fee to charge and whether you can touch the objects) but have only recently started to deal with issues of digital copyright - people with their own cameras in the museum and people copying images off their website. Yes, if you have PD material then that is free to be re-used, but equally, no one can force you to give it to them to use. A museum can give you their PD scan but they are not obliged to and they can charge you lots of money if they wish. If you had scans of old family photographs on your computer, the fact that the scans are PD does not mean that you have to give anyone copies of those photos. But if you publish those photographs then they are fair game. There's also another layer - contract. If I pay a museum for a high-resolution copy of their image of an object (whether PD or not) I will be asked to sign a license indicating the form, duration and purpose of my usage and stipulating that I am only allowed to use the image for that purpose. This is a private contract and it effectively creates copyright-like restrictions on PD works. [This was raised in the GLAM-WIKI recommendations<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM-WIKI_Recommendations#Requests_to_GLAM>: "Remove "clickwrap" and contracts which place copyright-like restrictions on public domain content."]. It is my understanding that if you break this contract and do something you weren't supposed to do with the work then you can be sued - not for breach of copyright but for breach of *contract*. This won't bring the control of the work but has effectively the same costly consequence for you. Of course, it doesn't cover third-parties such as visitors to a website. So, if I license the image for my site and then someone else comes along and copies it to Wikimedia Commons this is perfectly legal because I didn't break the contract (assuming I licensed the work to be put on my website without technical protection measures). If you want to read a fantastic discussion of the reasons (some) museums give for their "no photgraphy" policy - and why that should change - then read this blog post by Nina Simon: http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2009/08/museum-photo-policies-should-be-as-open.html -Liam [[witty lama]] > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
