[OpenGLAM] Open Licensing at the National Library of Scotland

Mon Nov 3 13:17:06 UTC 2014

Dear Ewan:

This sounds great, but I am just a little curious.  Does:

"1,000 digital images have been released into the Public Domain"

mean that 1,000 images entitled to copyright protection under Scots law 
have been released into the Public Domain?

Or does this mean The National Library of Scotland is just now 
withdrawing its own claims of Intellectual Property ownership of Public 
Domain works among its holdings?  If the latter, it is not the same 
thing as Nina Paley's dedication of her own original work, "Sita Sings 
the Blues," [http://sitasingstheblues.com/] (and indeed all of her own 
original work) into the Public Domain.

I don't think you can release works into the Public Domain that are 
already in the Public Domain.

And while I understand it is a good idea to praise GLAMS for doing "the 
right thing,"  if the works are already in the Public Domain, using this 
wording implies that NOT recognizing the legitimacy of the Public Domain 
is a reasonable alternative.   It is not.

Under law, owning a work does not confer copyright ownership.  If 
someone else owns the copyright, claiming copyright, even on a physical 
work that you own without also owning the copyright is legally defined 
as copyright infringement.    Although modern copyright law does not 
appear to make even the slightest effort to actually protect the Public 
Domain, I think it is important to insist that such protection should be 
inferred, even if not explicitly stated.

The Intellectual Property of works in the Public Domain are owned by the 
Public.  (Before the institution of copyright law, all Intellectual 
property was owned by the public... that is what the Public Domain used 
to be.  So If the Public owns the copyright, claiming copyright, even on 
a Public Domain physical work that you own should be legally defined as 
copyfraud.  If what they are doing is recognizing the legitimacy of the 
public domain, if what they are doing is choosing to NOT commit copyfraud.

I think the word "copyfraud" was deliberately coined to be contentious, 
as a means to raise awareness of a common practice that is eroding the 
Public Domain.  And I realize it is not productive to accuse GLAMs of 
copyfraud if there is a possibility that their policy can be changed, 
and especially if they are in the process of changing their thinking, if 
for no other reason than that both people and institutions get defensive 
when treated in an adversarial manner.

So if the works in question are in fact already in the Public Domain, it 
would be far better to present this as a case where The National Library 
is making its Public Domain holdings available to the public.  This is, 
after all, praiseworthy, because they are well within their rights to 
keep such works locked away in a vault.

Of course, if the works in question are not in the Public Domain, the 
original wording is fine.

Regards

Laurel

On 11/02/2014 09:22 AM, Ewan Klein wrote:
> Hi everyone
>
> The National Library of Scotland is working on procedures and guidance to support a new and developing Metadata and Digital Content Licensing policy. As part of this work the Library has released collection metadata associated with the First World War Official Photographs under a CC0 license to The European Library (TEL) for inclusion in both its portal and in Europeana. The Library will continue to release further CC0 licensed metadata to TEL and Europeana over the coming months.
>
> The policy development is also being informed by a limited release of digital content to the WikiCommons project.  More than 1,000 digital images have been released into the Public Domain, including photographs of the construction of the Forth Bridge and The Tay Bridge Disaster enquiry; images from the historic book Scotia Depicta; nineteenth century posters and photographs from Edinburgh theatres; and images from Walter Blaikie’s collection of Jacobite broadsides.
>
> See more at: http://scot.okfn.org/2014/10/27/open-licensing-at-the-national-library-of-scotland
>
> Regards,
>
> Ewan
>
> -------------
> Ewan Klein
> Open Knowledge Ambassador for Scotland
> Skype:  ewan.h.klein |  @ewanhklein
> http://scot.okfn.org/  |  @okfnscot
>
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-- 
Laurel L. Russwurm, Author <http://laurel.russwurm.org/blogs/> § 
about.me <http://about.me/laurelrusswurm> § Libreleft Books 
<http://libreleft.com>
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