[Open-education] [OER] Wellcome Library: 100, 000 high resolution images (CC BY) of manuscripts, paintings, etchings, early photography, and advertisements

Tue Jan 21 23:19:31 UTC 2014

Thanks Stephen.

We noticed the same thing at Creative Commons.

Wellcome calls the some of the works "out of copyright images" but asserts
copyright in the digital reproductions that it offers under the CC license.

CC is in active discussions re: if Wellcome should be able to apply an open
license to a reproduction of a work that is in the public domain. Some have
been trying to explain that it might be a consequence of UK copyright law,
which may give some sort of "sweat-of-the-brow" right to those making the
digital reproductions. But that's not entirely clear.

Of course, it's a positive move for big cultural institutions moving into
the world of "open," but if a work is in the Public Domain, the work needs
to be properly marked as such (e.g., http://creativecommons.org/choose/mark/
).

This is an active, ongoing conversation.

Warm regards,

Cable

On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 2:40 PM, Stephen Downes <stephen at downes.ca> wrote:

> Hiya all,
>
>
>
> It’s worth noting that a great many of the images in the database are also
> listed as ‘rights managed’, which I’m finding frequently means this:
>
>
>
> Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc-nd 2.0 UK: England
> & Wales, see http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/page/Prices.html
>
>
>
> The page listed says:
>
> “All low res images on this site are freely available for download for
> personal, academic teaching or study use, under one of two Creative Commons
> licences. For further details please see our Terms of Use<http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/page/Terms.html?>
> .
>
> “Hi-res historical images are also available to download from this site
> free of charge, for any usage, under a Creative Commons Attribution Only –
> CC-BY licence.
>
> “For new photography, larger electronic files or prints, please see the
> price list below. Prices exclude VAT and postage.”
>
> I’m not sure what the cut-off is between ‘historical’ and ‘contemporary’
> images, but the historical images appear very old (several are dated 1906)
> suggesting they may actually be in the public domain (making the CC-by
> license overkill, and arguably inapplicable).
>
>
>
> So I would say that this is **in fact** a distribution of a great many of
> CC by-NC-SA images, with an additional distribution of many public domain
> images.
>
>
>
> Not that I’m criticizing them; it’s probably how I’d do it. But I would
> refrain from saying this is a large release of CC-by images.
>
>
>
> -- Stephen
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:*  Cable Green
> *Sent:* January 21, 2014 3:15 PM
>
>
>
> In case you missed this good news.
>
> Cable
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: *Joris Pekel* <jpekel at gmail.com>
> Date: 21 January 2014 13:03
> Subject: [OpenGLAM] Wellcome
> To: "open-glam at lists.okfn.org" <open-glam at lists.okfn.org>
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
> For those of you not on Twitter, yesterday the Wellcome Library announced
> yesterday that they have made over 100,000 high resolution images of
> manuscripts, paintings, etchings, early photography, and advertisements
> available using a CC-BY license.
>
>
>
>
> http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2014/01/thousands-of-years-of-visual-culture-made-free-through-wellcome-images/
>
>
>
> The images are of really high quality and many great treasures in general
> to be found. See for some highlights the selection made by the Public
> Domain Review. The article says:
>
>
>
> "This move by the Wellcome is yet another recent example of a hugely
> respected institution releasing digitisations of its public domain content
> under an open license – with the last 6 months seeing The Getty and The
> British Library making similar moves. It’s a really promising sign of a
> more general shift toward opening up public domain content that we’ve seen
> taking place in the cultural sector over the last couple of years.
> Wonderful stuff!"
>
>
>
>
> http://publicdomainreview.org/2014/01/20/selection-from-wellcome-librarys-release-of-100k-openly-licensed-images/
>
>
>
> Enjoy!
>
>
>
> Joris
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> --
>
>
>
> Cable Green, PhD
> Director of Global Learning
> Creative Commons
> @cgreen <http://twitter.com/cgreen>
> http://creativecommons.org/education
> *reuse, revise, remix & redistribute*
>
> We've kicked off our Annual Campaign!
>
> donate.creativecommons.org
> teamopen.cc
>
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>
>

-- 

Cable Green, PhD
Director of Global Learning
Creative Commons
@cgreen <http://twitter.com/cgreen>
http://creativecommons.org/education
* reuse, revise, remix & redistribute*
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