5 ms·

It looks like a lot of this stuff is already in the public domain and so they are just letting people use the scans/photos of these works that they took and are

It looks like a lot of this stuff is already in the public domain and so they are just letting people use the scans/photos of these works that they took and are hosting. It's a shame that we don't already have this being done by public libraries.

dhosek 3y ago
Some do. A lot depends on the library’s resources, but the Library of Congress has a lot of free imagery available, and I think a number of other large public libraries with art collections also do the same.
- autoexec 3y ago
  Hopefully they're taking advantage of this release and adding these images and scans into their own collections.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    I'd be shocked if the IA wasn't all over this already.
    - GuB-42 3y ago
      Many AIs didn't care about whether images were free to use before training. Including many from Getty, with the watermark, and it resulted in a lawsuit that is still ongoing. And 88k images is tiny when we consider that LAION has billions of entries.
      - Vinnl 3y ago
        IA = the Internet Archive, https://archive.org https://archive.org.
        chefandy 3y ago
        Yeah, sorry. Theory of mind failure on my part. Not everybody has my list of acronyms in their head, apparently.
imgabe 3y ago
Even if the artwork is in the public domain, the photo of the artwork that someone takes still has a copyright and you need permission to use it.
- VanTheBrand 3y ago
  That’s jurisdiction dependent. For example it’s not longer the case in the UK. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/12/29/court-of-appeal-ruling-will-prevent-uk-museums-from-charging-reproduction-feesat-last https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/12/29/court-of-appeal-r...
- ronsor 3y ago
  This is not true in the US.
  - nemo 3y ago
    Under U.S. copyright law, the person who creates a work is the copyright owner. So if a photographer takes a picture of an artwork, they own the rights to their image. Read more here: https://www.copyright.gov/engage/visual-artists/ https://www.copyright.gov/engage/visual-artists/
    - autoexec 3y ago
      A photo of a public domain work doesn't generally count as "creating a work". Especially not when there's nothing artistic added or any additional context to it. If I just take a photo of an artwork that's already in the public domain it is essentially little more than a reproduction.
    - sgentle 3y ago
      You might find it helpful to refer to the Copyright Office's Compendium, which covers copyright law specifics in more detail. It's big, but quite approachable. Chapter 300 covers copyrightability in general: https://copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-authorship.pdf https://copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-auth... > 313.4(A): A work that is a mere copy of another work of authorship is not copyrightable. The Office cannot register a work that has been merely copied from another work of authorship without any additional original authorship. [...] Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd. v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191, 195 (S.D.N.Y. 1999) ("exact photographic copies of public domain works of art would not be copyrightable under United States law because they are not original"). Chapter 900 covers visual art specifically and goes into more detail on the copyrightability of photographs: https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap900/ch900-visual-art.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap900/ch900-visual-art.pdf > 909.3(A): [...] A photograph that is merely a "slavish copy" of a painting, drawing, or other public domain or copyrighted work is not eligible for registration. The registration specialist will refuse a claim if it is clear that the photographer merely used the camera to copy the source work without adding any creative expression to the photo. Similarly, merely scanning and digitizing existing works does not contain a sufficient amount of creativity to warrant copyright protection.
notatoad 3y ago
>just letting people use don't dismiss the value in simply making them accessible. they're providing a platform to access these works, which is great.
- chefandy 3y ago
  I'm surprised to find myself defending Getty Images at all, but here I am. Before I dealt with huge collections as a developer, I didn't consider how much intellectual work went into managing collections as entities-- Things like ontology, or even maintaining consistent terminology usage in that much metadata is not trivial, and older materials cause the most problems. Even if these were exclusively public domain images, it would still be a praiseworthy effort. I'm sure some Getty archivist or the like fought hard for this.
  - jvergeldedios 3y ago
    This isn't a Getty Images initiative, but rather being run by the Getty Museum which is under the Getty Trust. My partner actually works on some of these systems at the Getty and you're right, it's daunting. The sad part is that the Getty gets to do these kinds of things only because it's one of the best endowed institutions on the planet with funding to pay researchers/archivists/developers to do this work. There is so much more that is locked away at large, medium, and small institutions that would be available for the public, but just isn't because of lack of funding.
    - chefandy 3y ago
      > This isn't a Getty Images initiative, but rather being run by the Getty Museum ADHD fail on my part! I even skimmed the article and totally didn't even parse that basic bit of context. Considering that Getty Images (originally photodisc) didn't appear until the early 90s, I'd love to see this turn into a Worldwide Wildlife Federation/Wordwide Wrestling Federation thing. It being a museum makes it a lot more compelling though. Great job Getty! >The sad part is that the Getty gets to do these kinds of things only because it's one of the best endowed institutions on the planet with funding to pay researchers/archivists/developers to do this work And even within those institutions there's still more work than could feasibly be done. I worked in one of the best-funded, if not the best-funded non-governmental library systems on the planet and they've got an order of magnitude more things that need to be digitized than what they've already done, and they do a LOT already.
mikae1 3y ago
> It's a shame that we don't already have this being done by public libraries. What makes you say that? It's already done by so many institutions within the GLAM sector. They usually don't have the same marketing budget as Getty though. Here's[1] a glimpse into the digital heritage of the EU. That's a good starting point for some exploration. [1] https://www.europeana.eu/en https://www.europeana.eu/en
- xniclb 3y ago
  > Unfortunately, the item media as provided to Europeana can not be displayed at the moment. Please try to download the media or view the item on the providing institution's website. Download link is a dead dropbox account. And this is the first thing I tried.
  - notachatbot123 3y ago
    Bad luck to get something like that in 50,000,000+ chances. Which item was it?
    - courseofaction 3y ago
      the number chances is not the problem, it's their outcome ;)
    - slowmotiony 3y ago
      I tried 5 random things and every single one was a dead link. Taxpayer money well spent here
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - rvnx 3y ago
        Spending 6 millions EUR per year to get an index of blurry pictures in ElasticSearch (that they just crawled from somewhere). Well, it's only here for 15 years... so make the calculation.
latexr 3y ago
> It's a shame that we don't already have this being done by public libraries. Except we do. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/ https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary
- CuriousCosmic 3y ago
  Adding on to this: The National Diet Library of Japan has a lot of very well digitised resources. They can be a bit annoying to get to but they are there. NDL Digital Collections: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/ https://dl.ndl.go.jp/ NDL Image Bank: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/en/imagebank https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/en/imagebank If you view items in the image bank, they show you a preview. You'll then have to click the link that takes you to the digital collections page for that item (which shows the full uncropped image). From there you will want to scroll down to the download panel and make sure you select "high resolution". Those images are generally at least around 2k x 2k or better depending on when they were captured. You should also be able to get the unconverted image from their api (as many of them are in varying, less common formats like JP2/JPEG2000) but I haven't been able to figure out how. If you sent someone at the library an email you could probably figure it out though.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

dhosek 3y ago

Some do. A lot depends on the library’s resources, but the Library of Congress has a lot of free imagery available, and I think a number of other large public libraries with art collections also do the same.

autoexec 3y ago
Hopefully they're taking advantage of this release and adding these images and scans into their own collections.
- chefandy 3y ago
  I'd be shocked if the IA wasn't all over this already.
  - GuB-42 3y ago
    Many AIs didn't care about whether images were free to use before training. Including many from Getty, with the watermark, and it resulted in a lawsuit that is still ongoing. And 88k images is tiny when we consider that LAION has billions of entries.
    - Vinnl 3y ago
      IA = the Internet Archive, https://archive.org https://archive.org.
      - chefandy 3y ago
        Yeah, sorry. Theory of mind failure on my part. Not everybody has my list of acronyms in their head, apparently.

imgabe 3y ago

Even if the artwork is in the public domain, the photo of the artwork that someone takes still has a copyright and you need permission to use it.

VanTheBrand 3y ago
That’s jurisdiction dependent. For example it’s not longer the case in the UK. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/12/29/court-of-appeal-ruling-will-prevent-uk-museums-from-charging-reproduction-feesat-last https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/12/29/court-of-appeal-r...
ronsor 3y ago
This is not true in the US.
- nemo 3y ago
  Under U.S. copyright law, the person who creates a work is the copyright owner. So if a photographer takes a picture of an artwork, they own the rights to their image. Read more here: https://www.copyright.gov/engage/visual-artists/ https://www.copyright.gov/engage/visual-artists/
  - autoexec 3y ago
    A photo of a public domain work doesn't generally count as "creating a work". Especially not when there's nothing artistic added or any additional context to it. If I just take a photo of an artwork that's already in the public domain it is essentially little more than a reproduction.
  - sgentle 3y ago
    You might find it helpful to refer to the Copyright Office's Compendium, which covers copyright law specifics in more detail. It's big, but quite approachable. Chapter 300 covers copyrightability in general: https://copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-authorship.pdf https://copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-auth... > 313.4(A): A work that is a mere copy of another work of authorship is not copyrightable. The Office cannot register a work that has been merely copied from another work of authorship without any additional original authorship. [...] Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd. v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191, 195 (S.D.N.Y. 1999) ("exact photographic copies of public domain works of art would not be copyrightable under United States law because they are not original"). Chapter 900 covers visual art specifically and goes into more detail on the copyrightability of photographs: https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap900/ch900-visual-art.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap900/ch900-visual-art.pdf > 909.3(A): [...] A photograph that is merely a "slavish copy" of a painting, drawing, or other public domain or copyrighted work is not eligible for registration. The registration specialist will refuse a claim if it is clear that the photographer merely used the camera to copy the source work without adding any creative expression to the photo. Similarly, merely scanning and digitizing existing works does not contain a sufficient amount of creativity to warrant copyright protection.

notatoad 3y ago

>just letting people use don't dismiss the value in simply making them accessible. they're providing a platform to access these works, which is great.

chefandy 3y ago
I'm surprised to find myself defending Getty Images at all, but here I am. Before I dealt with huge collections as a developer, I didn't consider how much intellectual work went into managing collections as entities-- Things like ontology, or even maintaining consistent terminology usage in that much metadata is not trivial, and older materials cause the most problems. Even if these were exclusively public domain images, it would still be a praiseworthy effort. I'm sure some Getty archivist or the like fought hard for this.
- jvergeldedios 3y ago
  This isn't a Getty Images initiative, but rather being run by the Getty Museum which is under the Getty Trust. My partner actually works on some of these systems at the Getty and you're right, it's daunting. The sad part is that the Getty gets to do these kinds of things only because it's one of the best endowed institutions on the planet with funding to pay researchers/archivists/developers to do this work. There is so much more that is locked away at large, medium, and small institutions that would be available for the public, but just isn't because of lack of funding.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    > This isn't a Getty Images initiative, but rather being run by the Getty Museum ADHD fail on my part! I even skimmed the article and totally didn't even parse that basic bit of context. Considering that Getty Images (originally photodisc) didn't appear until the early 90s, I'd love to see this turn into a Worldwide Wildlife Federation/Wordwide Wrestling Federation thing. It being a museum makes it a lot more compelling though. Great job Getty! >The sad part is that the Getty gets to do these kinds of things only because it's one of the best endowed institutions on the planet with funding to pay researchers/archivists/developers to do this work And even within those institutions there's still more work than could feasibly be done. I worked in one of the best-funded, if not the best-funded non-governmental library systems on the planet and they've got an order of magnitude more things that need to be digitized than what they've already done, and they do a LOT already.

mikae1 3y ago

> It's a shame that we don't already have this being done by public libraries. What makes you say that? It's already done by so many institutions within the GLAM sector. They usually don't have the same marketing budget as Getty though. Here's[1] a glimpse into the digital heritage of the EU. That's a good starting point for some exploration. [1] https://www.europeana.eu/en https://www.europeana.eu/en

xniclb 3y ago
> Unfortunately, the item media as provided to Europeana can not be displayed at the moment. Please try to download the media or view the item on the providing institution's website. Download link is a dead dropbox account. And this is the first thing I tried.
- notachatbot123 3y ago
  Bad luck to get something like that in 50,000,000+ chances. Which item was it?
  - courseofaction 3y ago
    the number chances is not the problem, it's their outcome ;)
  - slowmotiony 3y ago
    I tried 5 random things and every single one was a dead link. Taxpayer money well spent here
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - rvnx 3y ago
      Spending 6 millions EUR per year to get an index of blurry pictures in ElasticSearch (that they just crawled from somewhere). Well, it's only here for 15 years... so make the calculation.

latexr 3y ago

> It's a shame that we don't already have this being done by public libraries. Except we do. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/ https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary

CuriousCosmic 3y ago
Adding on to this: The National Diet Library of Japan has a lot of very well digitised resources. They can be a bit annoying to get to but they are there. NDL Digital Collections: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/ https://dl.ndl.go.jp/ NDL Image Bank: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/en/imagebank https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/en/imagebank If you view items in the image bank, they show you a preview. You'll then have to click the link that takes you to the digital collections page for that item (which shows the full uncropped image). From there you will want to scroll down to the download panel and make sure you select "high resolution". Those images are generally at least around 2k x 2k or better depending on when they were captured. You should also be able to get the unconverted image from their api (as many of them are in varying, less common formats like JP2/JPEG2000) but I haven't been able to figure out how. If you sent someone at the library an email you could probably figure it out though.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]