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

Phil Barker phil.barker at hw.ac.uk
Wed Jan 22 09:13:49 UTC 2014


There is a Jisc Legal briefing that covers some of the copyright 
implications of UK law (which are not the same as those of US or 
Canadian law) here 
http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/ManageContent/ViewDetail/ID/2863/3D-Digitisation-and-Intellectual-Property-Rights-17-January-2013.aspx

Section 2.14 is pertinent
"Where you have digitised out-of-copyright works if you have exercised 
enough skill and judgement to be considered to have made an identifiable 
original contribution, then you may be able to claim a copyright in the 
digital image."

Phil

On 21/01/2014 23:19, Cable Green wrote:
> 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/ 
> <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 
> <mailto: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 <mailto:jpekel at gmail.com>>
>     Date: 21 January 2014 13:03
>     Subject: [OpenGLAM] Wellcome
>     To: "open-glam at lists.okfn.org <mailto:open-glam at lists.okfn.org>"
>     <open-glam at lists.okfn.org <mailto: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 <http://donate.creativecommons.org>
>     teamopen.cc <http://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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-- 
<http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/>



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