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To be clear, the images are already in the public domain; that is, they are not restricted by copyright. The British Library has, however, made accessible thes
by acabal 11y ago
To be clear, the images are already in the public domain; that is, they are not restricted by copyright. The British Library has, however, made accessible these public domain images via a web interface.
Their status as images belonging to the public is not related to their being made accessible by the British Library.
- legulere 11y agoNote that at least in some countries just scanning may be considered enough work that the scanned version is again under copyright. See the questionable German Projekt Gutenberg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projekt_Gutenberg-DE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projekt_Gutenberg-DE
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoThe wikipedia article is a bit thin on details - for example are they claiming their compilation is a new copyright (it most likely is) or are they claiming their individual scans of historic works each are copyright to them? Is there a proper English language discussion of any court case in which this has been tested for this particular claim? For reference this http://www.jcms-journal.com/articles/10.5334/jcms.1021217/ http://www.jcms-journal.com/articles/10.5334/jcms.1021217/ is quite a good review of the NPG vs Coetzee non-case [English law] and the Bridgeman vs Corel case [USA law].
- ig1 11y agoYou're confusing US and UK Law. US case law tends to favour the view that scanned documents become public domain, there is no such case law in the UK. In particular the BL position is that due to the proprietary scanning technology they use they inherit copyright on the new works. You could potentially challenge that position in court, but at the moment there's no evidence for how a court will treat it.