On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 9:53 PM, Durova <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Several months ago I wrote to this list after discovering that my > restoration of US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis was being used > uncredited by *Time* magazine. To date, no one has joined my letter > writing > campaign to contact the magazine. The magazine still isn't replying to > email. > > The Louis Brandeis restoration was 20 hours' labor. Extensive staining and > chemical damage required careful reconstruction including large portions of > his face. It is, likewise, shocking to encounter a senior editor--an > arbitrator no less--who calmly presumes such work entails no creative input > and no share of authorship. If *Time* were to plagiarize a text editor the > matter certainly would be taken seriously. The Brandeis restoration is > also > among the items exploted by this eBay vendor. > > I am not a copyright expert. I probably have the proverbial "dangerous amount of knowledge" of the topic. I am also not an editor for a major magazine. Nonetheless, I was a bit puzzled when, after reading the above, I visited the commons image of Louis Brandeis you refer to (I assume this one: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brandeisl.jpg). There's a tag there that clearly states that the image is in the public domain. Following the link "Reusing this image" took me to a page that reinforced in my mind that anyone could reuse the image without any legal obligations (at least in the US). I will readily admit that I could be wrong. If I am wrong, I'd love it if someone would explain it so I can understand. But my confusion arises from the apparent disconnect between Durova's obvious frustration and the information I read on the image's description page. I'm further confused when I see that the pertinent contents of the page were apparently added by Durova at the time of the upload. (As an aside, one of the tags there indicate that the image is available from the US Library of Congress. I assume this actually refers to the original, unrestored image, but it's not immediately clear.) I'd say that Time magazine and the eBay culprit(s) *should* have given Durova credit for the restoration. But the "should" I'm using has to do with common decency--something that is becoming rather uncommon. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
