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!'"
Copyright mess (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The law is on London's side (Score:2, Interesting)
Well that may be true under the law, but who cares? The laws is being written to serve corporate power elites, there's no reason to respect it anymore, just do what's right, not what's legal.
I use an IR camera as well as VIS (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a modified IR camera I use that I built to photograph artwork- it's amazing what you can sometimes see 'underneath' the paints the artist chose.
In one gallery in Germany I saw a work of art in IR that had been severely damaged and retouched- it was clearly evident in the IR photograph but not in the VIS photograph. I showed them to the curator (I spoke no German and he spoke no English) and tried to ask what had happened to it in its history (as there was no statement of that on the work).
I swear the man was going to shit a brick. He had a look of pure panic on his face when he saw the IR photograph- I think he immediately ran up there to check on it. I don't think he understood what he was seeing (not surprising) so my wife and I left ASAP.
Now to me, IR would bring value- so would UV photographs of the artwork. I know there are places that can do this much more professionally ... but hey, a hobby is a hobby.
The museum is out of line. In a 'real world' they'd lose. They'll probably respond by banning photography and forcing anyone that does want to do shots to sign a waiver.
"the NPG's taxpayer-funded mission" (Score:5, Interesting)
The NPG's UK taxpayer-funded mission.
So they're working under UK law. It kinda sucks that our copyright laws and, in some ways, less friendly than the US. Even stuff the government itself produces is not public domain over here. But that's the law here, that's how it works.
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. The situation is different in the US but the NPG ain't in the US. If the UK taxpayer funded it and UK law says that it's copyrightable, you can understand the NPG feeling the need to protect the UK taxpayer's investment by maintaining control of the images.
Given they control their own reproductions of the pictures, would it be acceptable for them to deny visitors the right to take their own photographs? I think not. But that's a separate debate because this guy didn't go there and invest the time to make photographs that he would then have had copyright on under UK law, he downloaded them from the National Gallery's website. I agree with the many posters before me that whilst it somewhat sucks that these creative works aren't available digitally in the public domain, the NPG are really being pretty reasonable about this - they've offered to work out terms for lower resolution imagery to be made available to Wikipedia, which is a lot more constructive than you'd expect from a corporate entity. It really looks like they're trying to defend their legal position sensibly whilst still facilitating the transfer of information - good for them.
But, please, Wikipedia users and everyone else - feel free to increase pressure on our government and institutions (and those in other countries) to have a strong public domain and sensible, fair copyright laws. We still have further to go, it's just a question of how we choose to represent ourselves.
Re:Sue and be subject to radioactive publicity (Score:2, Interesting)
I fail to see the need for odium if the relevant jurisdiction is not the United States.
If there is any doubt at all over the relevant jurisdiction then there is clearly a legal matter to be settled.
Imagine the reaction to someone trying to apply UK law in the US, or in a situation where a layman might believe the US was the relevant jurisdiction.
Here are some thoughts re why they might not want high resolution copies in the public domain:
Existence of very high quality, free copies could end up reducing visitor numbers
It is obviously true that museums make some of their money (I have no idea how much)from selling books and the like. Sales could go down
Offtopic, but: If they let everyone go mad with their cameras, photographers would get in everyones way and not everyone could be trusted to make sure the flash was off.
The issue is the copyright on the particular photos not the paintings. Since this is a complex legal issue, details like this matter
Radioactive publicity? I am no PR person but here is my attempt at a response:
"An American citizen has taken works clearly under UK copyright and copied them. These works are protected and maintained by Her Majesty's National Portrait Gallery and paid for by British Government subsidy. The NPR believes that UK law should be enforced where it is relevant, regardless of whether citizens of other nations believe that rules should not apply to them."
Re:These plaintiffs are being very reasonable (Score:3, Interesting)
That is an _excellent_ question, and the sort that any judge should take into serious account. Making those collections of high quality images via other means lowers the value of prints from them, and of the images at the organization's website, and of art books that might be sold with those high quality images.
Also high quality images are difficult to make, and can actively damage the art: high intensity light and exposure to room air and dirt and moisture can be very hard on subtle pigments, which are reasons that good art galleries are lit so carefully, so such images are not easy to reproduce from the art itself. Capturing texture, details, and color for both esthetic effect and for scholarly study of the art is a painstaking photograph process with huge investments in quality equipment and in training for a skilled photographer.
I have no idea how _much_ money they're losing because the images are on Wikimedia, but I think it's reasonable to assume there's a noticeable loss.
Re:I use an IR camera as well as VIS (Score:3, Interesting)
Now I'm curious... got any examples online that I could look at, of IR vs VIS?
Re:I got one of these letters in 2004. (Score:3, Interesting)
IANAL - but I have heard of similiar cases. It's quite possible for a judgement to be entered against Dcoetzee, Wales, etc... and for them to be liable if they ever enter the UK, or to be denied entry to the UK.
Re:The law is on London's side (Score:5, Interesting)
'...someone in a different post argues that National Gallery does not allow the public to take pictures. Is that true? Not even without flash?'
Yes. Cory Doctorow has some fun with their policy here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/nov/13/pop.art.copyright [guardian.co.uk]
'The excellent programme for Pop Art Portraits, the current exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery, has a lot to say about the pictures hanging on the walls and the diverse source material the artists used to produce their provocative works. Apparently they cut up magazines, copied comic books, drew trademarked cartoon characters like Minnie Mouse, reproduced covers from Time magazine, made ironic use of a cartoon Charles Atlas, painted over iconic photos of James Dean and Elvis Presley...Despite this, the programme does not say a word about copyright...There is, however, another message about copyright in the National Portrait Gallery: it is implicit in the "No Photography" signs prominently displayed throughout its rooms, including one by the entrance to the Pop Art Portraits exhibition. These signs are not intended to protect the works from the depredations of camera flashes (otherwise they would read "No Flash Photography"). No, the ban on pictures is meant to safeguard the copyright of the works hung on the walls - a fact that every member of staff I asked instantly confirmed. Indeed, it seems every square centimetre of the National Portrait Gallery is under some form of copyright. I wasn't even allowed to photograph the "No Photographs" sign. A member of staff explained that the typography and layout of the signs was itself copyrighted...Perhaps, just perhaps, this is actually a Dadaist show masquerading as a pop art show. Perhaps the point is to titillate us with the delicious irony of celebrating copyright infringement while simultaneously taking the view that even the "No Photography" sign is a form of property not to be reproduced without the permission that can never be had.'
Re:Wait a sec- he took the photos or someone else? (Score:3, Interesting)
The images are unambiguously in the public domain? How so? The museum seems to think otherwise- and I (as a photographer and somewhat knowledgeable in copyright law for photography) tend to agree.
The moment a photographer presses the shutter button to capture an image the photographer owns the right to the image. The photographer- not the corporation who hired them. In some countries a blind photographer can tells someone else to press the shutter button and the blind photographer owns the copyright.
Now the photographer can assign rights, as per a contract, to the entity that has hired them to do the photography work- and that assignment can be irrevocable, single use, multi use, first press, etc. But no matter what when that button went down a copywritten work was created.
So what we have here is a very confusing summary of a legal letter claiming that the museum owns the copyrights and had the original, full size images taken by the photographer, available online but not directly linked. Their excuse is abhorrent, IMHO, to claim that knowing how to use a URL and download something is illegal. I don't think they have a leg there- but not knowing the particulars about the contract signed, who funded it (I'm assuming it was public dollars, but that's an assumption), the business relationship between the photographer and the museum... I think it's a very big stretch to claim their assertions are without merit.
A photographer lighting artwork may (and this comes from experience) spend hours trying to get all the nuances of the painting recorded properly. What would you say if the photographer had to take 9 consecutive images at different exposures and merge them all into a HDR-type image, then spend hours rendering it down to sRGB to view correctly on the screen. Brush strokes can reflect light- perhaps he had to cross-polarize shots carefully.
What I'm saying is that a photo of a painting is still considered a copyrightable item- you may wish it to be derivative to the 'public domain' but if that were the case any photograph in front of a public domain piece of work would automatically be public domain- and it is clearly not.
We don't know all the story, but it is very evident to me that he crossed the line. Intentions are good- I admire it- but definitely did something that was not in the spirit of wiki and may be against the law.
And no, whomever marked my other comments troll- this is not a troll. Just because I'm taking a stand against what you think "Free is right all the time" doesn't make me a troll. I'm providing thoughtfully logically laid out information for additional discussion.
NPG vandalism (Score:1, Interesting)
The WikiScanner [caltech.edu] reveals the NPG have been busy vandalising Wikipedia themselves!
There's juvenile vandalism from them here [wikipedia.org] and here [wikipedia.org].
They have also posted notices on pages that use low resolution images of their owned paintings, obscuring the encyclopedic content. This type of vandalism was done to at least articles related to images of the resolution 494x600 [wikipedia.org], 494x600 [wikipedia.org], 500x726 [wikipedia.org], 494x600 [wikipedia.org], ? [wikipedia.org], 322x250 [wikipedia.org], 137x200 [wikipedia.org], ? [wikipedia.org], 203x255 [wikipedia.org] and 408x562 [wikipedia.org].
So much for the low resolution image agreement!