Andy makes some important points.

We know that even if editors in the UK respect what the British Museum is
doing and don't upload those images to Commons or Wikipedia; where they are
public domain images under US law, it is just a matter of time before
someone in the movement, anywhere in the world, uploads any of those
British Museum images that are of old two D objects to Commons as Public
Domain images that can be used without attribution to the photographer or
the institution.

Of course large parts of the British Museum collection would involve images
of three d objects. In those case we can't use the BM images, but outside
of lockdown people can either go there and take photos, or if  you can't
get yourself to the British Museum with a camera,  make a request via the
London Meetup, and if the object is on display we can get results such as
at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_altarpiece_(WB.232)


The chapter remains in the awkward position of liaising with institutions
that regard it as acceptable to claim  a non commercial copyright on out of
copyright material, and of in effect advocating for a position at variance
with that of the wider movement.

One option that the chapter could consider would be to shift policy and
instead start to diplomatically lobby UK Museum's to, as Andy put it, stop
" trying to appropriate rights that belong to us all." Perhaps those on
this list who are still members of the chapter might consider raising this
for a debate at the next AGM?

Regards

Jonathan



On Wed, 29 Apr 2020 at 21:06, Andy Mabbett <a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk>
wrote:

> On Wed, 29 Apr 2020 at 11:43, Owen Blacker <o...@blacker.me.uk> wrote:
> >
> > That it's a non-commercial licence is really disappointing, but that's
> still a little better than nothing…
>
> With the emphasis on the "little". There are two things wrong with
> this, which we as a movement (and individually) need to challenge; at
> very reasonable opportunity.
>
> Firstly, there's the way they're spending public money making non-free
> original content. we need to persuade GLAMs - and lobby funders - that
> such material should be freely reusable.
>
> But far more troubling is the attempt to claim copyright in works
> whose copyright - if the work didn't pre-date copyright completely -
> expired decades or centuries ago. The latter means, in effect that
> they are trying to appropriate rights that belong to us all.
>
> --
> Andy Mabbett
> @pigsonthewing
> http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
>
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