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They were also already available on the website in high resolution, many of them since 2011. The difference this time is the CC0 licensing, I'm pretty sure. A

They were also already available on the website in high resolution, many of them since 2011. The difference this time is the CC0 licensing, I'm pretty sure. A lot of people are confused about the licensing of museum images and why it's news that a major museum is releasing them CC0 when they're already public domain. I see some good thoughts here--e.g., absolutely there is a difference between 2D and 3D images (an image of a 3D work might have sufficient additional creativity involved to support a separate copyright), and yes, the Bridgeman decision is a thing. But Museums have a lot more to worry about than that. E.g., there are a lot of orphan works. More importantly, there are important people they want to be careful not to offend, whether living artists, their estates, their representatives, or potential donors. In my experience, all of those groups except artists tend to be more conservative about sharing than the staff at most museums. This is not to say that any of that trumps the law. But Bridgeman was one weird case in one weird situation and it hasn't been tested in a museum setting. What we're talking about is not whether you can legally use the image as you like, but whether the museum will willingly show you the image. By 2011, the tide had turned and it was not going to be long before most/all major collections saw sharing as more valuable than hoarding. But in 2009 that wasn't the case.

pjlegato 10y ago
The CC0 licensing assertion is simple ass-covering by the museum's lawyers. Images that are exact replicas of works of artists who have been dead for 70 years or more are in fact public domain under US copyright law no matter what license they assert, per Bridgeman. Originality is a critical element of being able to assert copyright in a derivative work. To the extent that these are exact reproductions, they have no element of originality and the museum's assertions of license are invalid. The story here is that you get an "official" public domain image from the museum itself, which will presumably be of technically high quality - appropriate lighting, correct focus, high res, camera plane exactly parallel to the work, camera on a tripod, etc. as opposed to the widely varying quality of the images you find on the web now - while some are technically fine, others are shot by a museum visitor with shaky hands, scanned from a photo book, etc. You can now also find these images from a reputable, central source rather than scattered across a slew of ad farms.
- matt_morgan 10y ago
  Paul, you're actually going a little too far. No court case has ever shown that a "museum's assertions of license are invalid," and these are case-by-case issues. So Bridgeman may or may not apply in any given case. It could be cited as precedent for sure. But e.g. I'm pretty sure it specifically limited itself to 2D representations of 2D works. When, in the past, good-hearted souls have scraped museum websites to construct larger images (e.g., from the old-fashioned zooming tools that only showed part of the image at a time), the museums in question stopped short of pursuing it in court for fear of just what you say. So it has not been tested (even though most thoughtful people agree with you about what would likely happen). The Met has had (most of; maybe almost all) these images online since 2011. The licensing was unclear then--there was a hard to read, existing T&C that was more or less NC-BY-SA. Or maybe it was "no derivatives," I'm not sure. But getting the images out (hard but straightforward) without dealing with changing the license (hard and complicated) served basically 100% of the people without putting the Met at any risk. This is now the third time in six years the Met has gotten a lot of news out of the "release" of these images. One could argue that this is not a big step, but if, in going CC0 it means they can release more images, that's a good thing. I haven't seen any report that the number of images has changed, actually. However, it does sound like they're not claiming copyright on 2D representations of 3D works in the public domain, which they certainly could do.

pjlegato 10y ago

The CC0 licensing assertion is simple ass-covering by the museum's lawyers. Images that are exact replicas of works of artists who have been dead for 70 years or more are in fact public domain under US copyright law no matter what license they assert, per Bridgeman. Originality is a critical element of being able to assert copyright in a derivative work. To the extent that these are exact reproductions, they have no element of originality and the museum's assertions of license are invalid. The story here is that you get an "official" public domain image from the museum itself, which will presumably be of technically high quality - appropriate lighting, correct focus, high res, camera plane exactly parallel to the work, camera on a tripod, etc. as opposed to the widely varying quality of the images you find on the web now - while some are technically fine, others are shot by a museum visitor with shaky hands, scanned from a photo book, etc. You can now also find these images from a reputable, central source rather than scattered across a slew of ad farms.

matt_morgan 10y ago
Paul, you're actually going a little too far. No court case has ever shown that a "museum's assertions of license are invalid," and these are case-by-case issues. So Bridgeman may or may not apply in any given case. It could be cited as precedent for sure. But e.g. I'm pretty sure it specifically limited itself to 2D representations of 2D works. When, in the past, good-hearted souls have scraped museum websites to construct larger images (e.g., from the old-fashioned zooming tools that only showed part of the image at a time), the museums in question stopped short of pursuing it in court for fear of just what you say. So it has not been tested (even though most thoughtful people agree with you about what would likely happen). The Met has had (most of; maybe almost all) these images online since 2011. The licensing was unclear then--there was a hard to read, existing T&C that was more or less NC-BY-SA. Or maybe it was "no derivatives," I'm not sure. But getting the images out (hard but straightforward) without dealing with changing the license (hard and complicated) served basically 100% of the people without putting the Met at any risk. This is now the third time in six years the Met has gotten a lot of news out of the "release" of these images. One could argue that this is not a big step, but if, in going CC0 it means they can release more images, that's a good thing. I haven't seen any report that the number of images has changed, actually. However, it does sound like they're not claiming copyright on 2D representations of 3D works in the public domain, which they certainly could do.