UK's National Portrait Gallery Threatens To Sue Wikipedia User 526
jpatokal writes "The National Portrait Gallery of London is threatening litigation against a Wikipedia user over his uploading of pictures of some 3,000 paintings, all 19th century or earlier and firmly in the public domain. Their claim? The photos are a 'product of a painstaking exercise on the part of the photographer,' and that downloading them off the NPG site is an 'unlawful circumvention of technical measures.' And remember, the NPG's taxpayer-funded mission is to 'promote the appreciation and understanding of portraiture in all media [...] to as wide a range of visitors as possible!'"
So whose are the photographs? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The law is on London's side (Score:3, Insightful)
So I pay for some photographs be taken, someone else takes 3,300 of them (they're clearly indicated as not for taking) and uploads them all to Wikimedia under a Creative Commons license that they have no right to apply to someone else's work, and this is a case for jury nullification?
Well, that makes it straightforward. (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh. Well, the Foundation has apparently taken the stand that this is okay by them [wikimedia.org]. This was done by a straw poll [wikimedia.org] , no less. (Why not just put up a poll asking if users should be able to upload random pictures on the internet that don't have a clear copyright assignment on them? What a fucking joke.)
These sorts of claims probably aren't valid in the United States, which is why museums here don't usually prohibit photography--people can just scan their books or postcards. On the other hand, museums in the UK do prohibit photography, because this allows them to retain copyright over the images. The postcards and books that they sell are still owned by them, and prohibiting photography means that they're the only source for those images.
It's vital to their funding model, and they're just protecting their interests. Suddenly cutting off a major stream of revenue would be catastrophic. On the other hand, museums in the States manage to get by with different revenue models. It's not like it's impossible for them to continue existing, but I can understand why they'd fight to protect their model.
Re:So whose are the photographs? (Score:1, Insightful)
You and your parent are conveniently leaving out the bit about being "taxpayer-funded". Take the Hubble space telescope pictures: those were incomparably more painstaking to obtain, yet the pictures are in the public domain.
Re:The law is on London's side (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The law is on London's side (Score:5, Insightful)
Those photographs are part of the national heritage of England. They derive
this from the nature of they work they are photographs of. They aren't even
derivative works. They're just copies. THEY'RE COPIES. These asshats are
trying to claim ownership of COPIES of very public domain works.
This isn't even like a high school performance of Hamlet.
Mebbe if they did the Warhol thing with one of the old Kings they would
have a moral/aristic leg to stand on.
Re:The law is on London's side (Score:5, Insightful)
If they sue him in the US, it'll get tossed out on the basis that the US does not recognize these works as having copright (or any "slavish" reproductions thereof, according to Corel v. Bridgeman); if they sue him in the UK, he can ignore the lawsuit, have a default judgement entered against him, and good luck to them in pursuing it.
Re:These plaintiffs are being very reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
They're threatening an american user for doing what is perfectly legal in the US on servers based in the US. Their copyright claims have no merit whatsoever.
Re:NPG web site makes it clear (Score:5, Insightful)
It makes it clear how the National Portrait Gallery WANTS to make additional money from reproductions of classical artworks. It doesn't make it clear whether that is right. If the lawyer's interpretation of the law i right, the NPG does have the right under UK copyright law to do so. However it's morally wrong because:
1) The law is flawed: The act of photographing a painting with the best quality of reproduction of the original is a technical exercise, not a creative act. It's not essentially different from an experienced photocopier operator making a photocopy. It should not therefore add additional copyright privileges over and above the item that is being photographed.
2) The National Portrait Gallery is a public body who receive public funds on the basis that they display and educate a many people as possible about the artworks they have. The ability to disseminate high quality reproductions via the internet at no cost to them should be thought of as a godsend, not as a financial loss. They are supposed to be serving the public good, not acting like a corporation. Thus even if the law could prevent this happening, they shouldn't use it.
Re:These plaintiffs are being very reasonable (Score:2, Insightful)
Did they obtain the images from a British server?
Jurisdiction is a messy topic on the internet. If you want to play silly buggers with it then you can probably expect such websites to be restricted to UK IPs. Shame, but if good faith isn't shown they won't have much choice to protect their rights under local law.
Re:These plaintiffs are being very reasonable (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, but do you want to perpetuate the stereotype of the American ass -- the "I can cuz i'm an 'merican" -- even though the suing party is cooperative?
Re:He could have.... (Score:5, Insightful)
False. Wikipedia doesn't do "for Wikipedia" licensing, and can't - its mission is to make reusable content.
Also, you're saying the NPG has to lock up culture to promote it, and sue people who actually promote it. This doesn't actually make sense.
The NPG actually acknowledges in their letter that the poster's actions were entirely legal in America, and that they're making a threat just because they think they can.
The Wikimedia community and the WMF are absolutely on the side of these public domain images remaining in the public domain.
The NPG will be getting radioactive publicity from this. Imagine the NPG being known to American tourists as somewhere that sues Americans just because it thinks it can.
Heart of the global nature of the internet (Score:5, Insightful)
1. In the UK, it would be a crime.
2. In the USA it is not a crime.
3. The act was done in the USA.
QED no crime was committed. The problem is that by inference we need a single global law for all electronically copyable information. That includes all photos, art, music, movies, books, etc.
The thing that makes the problem difficult is A. There is no global organization with anything close to the authority or trust to create such a global law and B. There are SIGNIFICANT philosophical differences about the kinds of laws we need. Whether it is is Freedom of the Press issue, a slander issue, or even business model issues (I personally think a 10 year renewable with sequel, copyright system would work best) there is HUGE disagreement still on what is fair and workable.
Re:These plaintiffs are being very reasonable (Score:3, Insightful)
What possibly makes you think this lawsuit "won't go anywhere"? The violation is very clear, they're not asking for outrageous damages, and the law seems clearly in their favor. And the UK is very copyright friendly: people have been deliberately "shopping" to file their copyright lawsuits there for years now. They have a very reasonable chance of winning their lawsuit.
And it's hardly waste: the material existing at Wikimedia cuts directly into their own website traffic, and related revenues.
Re:Heart of the global nature of the internet (Score:5, Insightful)
QED no crime was committed.
But wait - I seem to remember hearing of some Australian chap who was extradited and tried (and found guilty) in the US, where his internet related activities were illegal, despite being an Australian citizen and having not committed a crime in Australia.
It's not as "QED" as you think it may be.
Re:These plaintiffs are being very reasonable (Score:1, Insightful)
It's not legal in the UK and the work has transferred from a server in the UK to the US for the purpose of distribution.
As a UK taxpayer I'm pretty pissed off about this especially as the NPG has a process in place by which people can copy the photo's - all you have to do is ask (but when have 'Mericans ever done that?).
Besides, why on Earth does WM need the high-res images?! The NPG have offered low-res images - they're being perfectly reasonable.
Re:"the NPG's taxpayer-funded mission" (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks for the links, I will take a look.
My real objection here isn't so much to the principle of their claiming copyright on their images - whilst I wish the law was more permissive I can sort-of see their point.
The problem, to my mind, is that they also have physical possession of the works and so can control other reproductions. I imagine they prohibit photography, along with a lot of galleries. Note that I haven't verified this, so it could be a baseless accusation.
But restricting competing reproductions whilst asserting copyright over their own definitely seems like a very old-fashioned view of art with it just being for collectors and custodians who might, optionally, let the public take a look. As far as I'm concerned, simply allowing the public to take their own photographs would substantially mitigate the situation.
Re:The law is on London's side (Score:3, Insightful)
NPG says the servers they were copied from are in the UK. And that's probably true. The wiki server they were uploaded to and the copier may well be in the US. It's a finer point of law where the copying is deemed to have taken place.
Re:These plaintiffs are being very reasonable (Score:3, Insightful)
Does it matter?
The server in the UK is owned by the copyright holder. The images stored on it are legitimate under UK copyright law because they're in the possession of the lawful owner.
An American connects to the UK server and downloads the images. He creates copies of them on his US computer. The copies would be illegal in the UK, but are public domain under US copyright law.
The American then uploads those images to a US server. The images are still public domain under US copyright law.
Now if the American bypassed some access control system - brute-forced a password maybe, or used an SQL injection, or exploited some fault in the web server code - then they might have a case. And perhaps the database right to the set of images as a whole might hold: copyright in the same sense as a phone book, a mere agglomeration of uncopyrightable facts can be copyrighted as a whole because of the effort of assembling it into a whole collection.
The fantasy of nullification (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know if this is viable in London as I don't live there. But if it's remotely an option, then there are times when jury nullification is called for.
The juror is a middle-aged small-C Conservative who takes his civic obligations seriously and has come to do a job.
He is in many ways the mirror image of the judge.
He is not your comrade-in-arms.
The geek never quite grasps what the black American through most of our history learned from birth:
Jury Nullification cuts both ways.
It can send an innocent man to the gallows. It can free the KKK to kill again.
Capturing the color, detail and texture of a great painting is a difficult problem in both aesthetics and technology.
It is not point-and-click photography.
If you want to use these images the ethical thing to do is to ask for permission and credit them properly.
It is not unethical to ask for payment in return.
No (Score:3, Insightful)
Making a high resolution reproduction of a work of art requires special equipment and skills, so I really think it's fair enough if that's copyright - somebody has invested money, skills and effort in making the reproduction be as good as possible.
It takes a lot of special equipment and skills to take apart a 1957 Chevy completely, and then put it back together. Somebody has invested money, skills, and effort into putting it back together as completely as possible. Is the resulting work copyrightable? Of course not. Copyright law rewards creative works, not "hard work" or investment of time and labor.
Re:The fantasy of nullification (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to use these images the ethical thing to do is to ask for permission and credit them properly.
It is not unethical to ask for payment in return.
The question to be answered in the courts is not, is it ethical?, but is it legal?.
Re:NPG web site makes it clear (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:These plaintiffs are being very reasonable (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The law is on London's side (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand I paid my taxes (and as I live in the UK it was my taxes) that then went to pay the national gallery to take these photos. I seem to have missed something about not paying for their creation :-)
On the other hand if I was not living in the UK, but somewhere, where sweat of brow does not allow you to copyright (say the USA) then the National Gallery are somewhat stuffed.
Re:Sue and be subject to radioactive publicity (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's worth mentioning that the US's DMCA doesn't discriminate as to the *purpose* of circumvention of copy protection, the *act* of circumvention is in itself an offence (the merits of this approach are clearly debatable, but that is the US law as it stands. It even applies to /. posters).
In the UK if the legislation is in respect of circumvention *only* for the purpose of copying copyrighted works then the UK law has been broken, because under UK law these reproductions *are* copyrighted. So whether one considers the act to have occurred in the US (where the person was physically) *or* in the UK (where the server is) the law has been transgressed.
What really stinks, and imo is more important, is that the NPG was already in talks with Wikimedia to come to a mutually acceptable solution but this twit has probably torpedoed it and killed any existing goodwill and stifled any immediate prospect of friendly cooperation. He struck huge blow(hard) for freedom.