[HN Gopher] Museums with CC0 Collections
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       Museums with CC0 Collections
        
       Author : robin_reala
       Score  : 75 points
       Date   : 2023-01-10 09:42 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (standardebooks.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (standardebooks.org)
        
       | loupol wrote:
       | Bookmarking that for later use. It can be hard to be certain an
       | image is truly public domain. Museum collections are nice because
       | you're generally certain of the origin of the image.
       | 
       | I also found the following section ("Clearance FAQ") quite
       | entertaining by the way.
        
       | sudobash1 wrote:
       | > I found a great painting, and it's really old, and the author
       | died a long time ago, but I can't find a reproduction in a book.
       | Can I use it?
       | 
       | > No. You must find a reproduction of your selected painting in a
       | book published before January 1, 1928.
       | 
       | Can anybody explain why the emphasis on needing to find an out of
       | copyright book with a reproduction of the painting? If there is a
       | painting from (eg) the 17th century which was never reproduced in
       | a book, what is the potential legal problem with treating it as
       | public domain? I would assume that any art from the 17th century
       | is now PD. Is the issue with the "date of first publication"?
       | Even if a centuries-old painting was never "published" is it
       | possible for it to be copyrighted?
       | 
       | As I understand. Given Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.[1],
       | and faithful reproduction of a 2d PD work is also PD.
       | 
       | 1:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel....
        
         | acabal wrote:
         | In the US, copyright status is determined by when something was
         | published, not how old it is. The two are not related. That's
         | how we get stupid things like the University of California and
         | the Mark Twain Foundation claiming a copyright on his
         | autobiography, written circa 1909, until 2047 - 137 years after
         | his death.[1]
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiography_of_Mark_Twain#Ma...
        
           | sudobash1 wrote:
           | So if I found an amateur painting that was centuries old in
           | an attic somewhere, and posted a scan of it on my blog, I
           | would then be the copyright holder of that painting? That
           | feels so wrong.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | boppo1 wrote:
             | No, you would be the copyright holder of your photograph.
        
               | sudobash1 wrote:
               | My understanding of copyright rulings in the US (eg see
               | Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. above) is that a
               | faithful photograph of a painting is not considered
               | "original". Therefore, if I do not have the copyright to
               | the painting, neither would I have copyright over the
               | photo.
        
         | boppo1 wrote:
         | It's not the painting at issue, it's the reproduction.
         | Photographs of paintings have copyrights that belong to the
         | photographer. If you have access the the old painting and take
         | a picture of it, you control the copyright of that
         | reproduction.
         | 
         | I think the confusion here stems from the fact that that
         | statement assumes you don't have access to the painting, which
         | is the most common case.
        
           | 5evOX5hTZ9mYa9E wrote:
           | Wikimedia Commons disagrees. I know they're not arbiter of
           | law, but you'd hope they have it right given the scale of how
           | wrong they'd be if they were wrong.
           | 
           | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reuse_of_PD-
           | Art_p...
        
           | sudobash1 wrote:
           | > Photographs of paintings have copyrights that belong to the
           | photographer.
           | 
           | This is highly dependent of the country that you are in. In
           | the case of the US, the courts have ruled that a faithful
           | reproduction (eg photograph) is not original enough to merit
           | a separate copyright (see my like to Bridgeman Art Library v.
           | Corel Corporation above).
           | 
           | Additionally, the post is not saying that you are required to
           | use the exact photo found in the out of copyright book, but
           | rather that you are required to find a photo (any photo) of
           | the same painting in an out of copyright book.
        
         | thisisparker wrote:
         | I'm speculating a bit here, but I suspect that answer reflects
         | a practically risk-averse read of the same case, for two
         | reasons. One is that, as a district court opinion, Bridgeman
         | isn't _necessarily_ binding federal precedent. (I don't want to
         | overstate that point, because Bridgeman is well established and
         | has been found persuasive by other courts. Still, given that
         | this site appears to distribute the resulting ebooks itself, I
         | assume their appetite for risk here is pretty small.)
         | 
         | Even following Bridgeman though, there is a teeny bit of
         | analysis that you have to do to determine that the reproduction
         | is a faithful photographic copy of the original. In most cases
         | that's straightforward, but again, if you really want to limit
         | risk and as in this case your application doesn't require a
         | particular image, it might be worth cutting out that analysis
         | altogether and going with media that is simply outside of the
         | range of copyright terms.
        
       | TimZehta wrote:
       | also see https://wordpress.org/openverse/
       | 
       | it allows you to filter to only public domain images
        
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       (page generated 2023-01-10 23:01 UTC)