5 ms·

Vatican, Oxford put ancient manuscripts online

30 points by hawkharris 13y ago

xerophtye 13y ago
I am not a christian, but IMO this is a pretty cool effort. More such ancient manuscripts should be made available online. These are important artifacts and should be made available to the general public, without requiring them to travel to a specific Museum. Personally, I am interested in Da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus. Is that available yet?
- xerophtye 13y ago
  Well instead of flagging my comment, I think it would be more constructive if you present your opinion and engage in discussion.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    Try to ignore single downvotes (these are not flags). The buttons are small and people often hit the wrong one. Especially on mobile.
    - soneca 13y ago
      exactly. I have accidentally downvoted more than one pg comments, for example.
- bwooce 13y ago
  Is this not what you want? http://www.leonardodigitale.com/index.php?lang=ENG http://www.leonardodigitale.com/index.php?lang=ENG
sentenza 13y ago
Non-commercial license. What a shame. In parts of the European Union, the CC-NC provision essentially amounts to a complete uselessness of the document, because of the weird definitions of the word "commercial". For instance, here in Germany, if you have a blog, no advertisements, make no money out of it, but you have thousands of followers, you are acting in "commercial scope" (ie. you are too successful to be non-commercial), thus inviting all the nastyness of being sued for commercial copyright infringement. The only thing I can do with a CC-NC document without legal risk is to look at it. The sad thing is, that now nobody will bother to scan these documents and put them online under a different license, since "they are already out there for free!!". It is quite likely that nobody involved with the project knew this, which goes to show how dangerous the NC-provision is.
- qwerta 13y ago
  What if your blog is hosted in America or other state? Also if license is in English, the English definition of 'commercial' should apply. It should be translated 'for profit' to German.
- femto 13y ago
  Perhaps the claimed copyright is groundless, on the basis the the scanned documents are well into the public domain [1]? Presumably the libraries are striving for faithful reproduction, which would imply no creative step, and a number of jurisdictions don't recognise "sweat of the brow" as being reason enough for copyright[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
  - rmc 13y ago
    a number of jurisdictions don't recognise "sweat of the brow" A number of juristicions do though. Including (maybe) the UK.
mkesper 13y ago
Wow, now we know how how those withered, barely readable tomes in your RPG should look like: http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/icv/page.php?book=ms._barocci_235&page=9 http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/icv/page.php?book=ms._barocci_2...

30 points by hawkharris 13y ago

I am not a christian, but IMO this is a pretty cool effort. More such ancient manuscripts should be made available online. These are important artifacts and should be made available to the general public, without requiring them to travel to a specific Museum. Personally, I am interested in Da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus. Is that available yet?

xerophtye 13y ago
Well instead of flagging my comment, I think it would be more constructive if you present your opinion and engage in discussion.
- DanBC 13y ago
  Try to ignore single downvotes (these are not flags). The buttons are small and people often hit the wrong one. Especially on mobile.
  - soneca 13y ago
    exactly. I have accidentally downvoted more than one pg comments, for example.
bwooce 13y ago
Is this not what you want? http://www.leonardodigitale.com/index.php?lang=ENG http://www.leonardodigitale.com/index.php?lang=ENG

sentenza 13y ago

Non-commercial license. What a shame. In parts of the European Union, the CC-NC provision essentially amounts to a complete uselessness of the document, because of the weird definitions of the word "commercial". For instance, here in Germany, if you have a blog, no advertisements, make no money out of it, but you have thousands of followers, you are acting in "commercial scope" (ie. you are too successful to be non-commercial), thus inviting all the nastyness of being sued for commercial copyright infringement. The only thing I can do with a CC-NC document without legal risk is to look at it. The sad thing is, that now nobody will bother to scan these documents and put them online under a different license, since "they are already out there for free!!". It is quite likely that nobody involved with the project knew this, which goes to show how dangerous the NC-provision is.

qwerta 13y ago
What if your blog is hosted in America or other state? Also if license is in English, the English definition of 'commercial' should apply. It should be translated 'for profit' to German.
femto 13y ago
Perhaps the claimed copyright is groundless, on the basis the the scanned documents are well into the public domain [1]? Presumably the libraries are striving for faithful reproduction, which would imply no creative step, and a number of jurisdictions don't recognise "sweat of the brow" as being reason enough for copyright[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
- rmc 13y ago
  a number of jurisdictions don't recognise "sweat of the brow" A number of juristicions do though. Including (maybe) the UK.

mkesper 13y ago

Wow, now we know how how those withered, barely readable tomes in your RPG should look like: http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/icv/page.php?book=ms._barocci_235&page=9 http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/icv/page.php?book=ms._barocci_2...