4 ms·

Yep, I work in this area and museums/libraries often believe that they have the right to prevent you from using the creative works whose originals they physical

Yep, I work in this area and museums/libraries often believe that they have the right to prevent you from using the creative works whose originals they physically hold. This is usually not the case. And in the vast majority of countries, digitizations of at least 2D works aren't able to be copyrighted.

newaccount74 4y ago
Exactly. You can go into a museum, take a photo, and do with it whatever you want, legally, even though the museum usually claims that you need their permission to publish it. The problem is of course that you can't take photos of stuff that isn't exhibited, so you need to get their permission to check out the stuff in the basement.
kmeisthax 4y ago
Europe actually does have a few countries that claim that photographing or digitizing a public domain work recopyrights it. They also have neighboring rights and database rights regimes on top of that. If you wanna know more, you should look at the one time the National Portrait Gallery threatened to sue Wikimedia[0] for having an archive of uncopyrighted material. It went nowhere - primarily because the US has soundly and firmly rejected the nonsense that "sweat of the brow" creates copyright. Hell, even the EU doesn't think you can recopyright public domain works this way. But the UK-hosted NPG is still asserting primacy of UK law over the whole Internet to this day. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_Wikimedia_Foundation_copyright_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_...
- mod50ack 4y ago
  Many institutions in the UK and elsewhere claim this. But that doesn't make it true. The threshold of originality is historically signficiantly higher throughout most of continental Europe than in the UK. The 2001 Infopaq case also has relevance in the UK. The UK IPO indicated that based on this decision (binding in the UK) and other factors these images likely shouldn't have copyright even in the UK. The 2019 EU copyright directive also explicitly included the provision that 2D replicas are not eligible for any new copyright (Art. 14). This is not directly relevant in the UK (though previous CJEU decisions remain effective there), but it does apply throughout the EU. In short, the NPG doesn't decide what UK law says. Many people have claimed that scans and reproductions are worth copyright but in the vast majority of cases this is legally incorrect.

newaccount74 4y ago

Exactly. You can go into a museum, take a photo, and do with it whatever you want, legally, even though the museum usually claims that you need their permission to publish it. The problem is of course that you can't take photos of stuff that isn't exhibited, so you need to get their permission to check out the stuff in the basement.

kmeisthax 4y ago

Europe actually does have a few countries that claim that photographing or digitizing a public domain work recopyrights it. They also have neighboring rights and database rights regimes on top of that. If you wanna know more, you should look at the one time the National Portrait Gallery threatened to sue Wikimedia[0] for having an archive of uncopyrighted material. It went nowhere - primarily because the US has soundly and firmly rejected the nonsense that "sweat of the brow" creates copyright. Hell, even the EU doesn't think you can recopyright public domain works this way. But the UK-hosted NPG is still asserting primacy of UK law over the whole Internet to this day. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_Wikimedia_Foundation_copyright_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_...

mod50ack 4y ago
Many institutions in the UK and elsewhere claim this. But that doesn't make it true. The threshold of originality is historically signficiantly higher throughout most of continental Europe than in the UK. The 2001 Infopaq case also has relevance in the UK. The UK IPO indicated that based on this decision (binding in the UK) and other factors these images likely shouldn't have copyright even in the UK. The 2019 EU copyright directive also explicitly included the provision that 2D replicas are not eligible for any new copyright (Art. 14). This is not directly relevant in the UK (though previous CJEU decisions remain effective there), but it does apply throughout the EU. In short, the NPG doesn't decide what UK law says. Many people have claimed that scans and reproductions are worth copyright but in the vast majority of cases this is legally incorrect.