Comment by incompatible

10 years ago

It would be even cooler if they weren't claiming copyright on their reproduction of public domain images. "The use of these contents for commercial purposes is subject to payment and covered by a license."

15 comments

incompatible

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illumen  10 years ago

Considering the subject matter, the commercialization of these images in the public domain by the upper class is... quite funny.

  • seszett  10 years ago

    Even though I really don't agree with what the BnF is doing, I don't think you can call the National library some kind of "representative of the upper class".

    It's the nation commercializing national property, which is far from ideal, but still hugely better than the pre-revolutionary situation.

    • illumen  10 years ago

      You could definitely call Standford part of the upper class.

      The BnF comes from the Royal library, and the new building was announced by the President of France. It's one of the upper class organisations that has moved through various types of governments from Royalty to Napolean to modern Presidents. Now it is supervised by the Ministry of Culture and Communication. 3000 people daily go through the reading rooms, which is a very small percentage of the French public -- less than 1%, less than 0.1%.

      4 replies →

bane  10 years ago

So for fun, let's say they're assertion is legally valid, that the scans (not the original images) are copyrightable. What stops me from then taking screen caps of all their images, or copying the framebuffer from my graphics card or something (effectively "scans") and copyrighting those?

guessbest  10 years ago

I don't understand how images outside of copyright can have a license enforced.

  • cooper12  10 years ago

    Some countries like the UK have a "Sweat of the Brow" [0] doctrine which lets them claim copyright by virtue of the effort put in to compile the work. However it isn't recognized in the U.S because they doesn't see this as requiring creativity so it doesn't count as a derivative work. This has the benefit that companies can't circumvent the public domain without altering the work, but it also disincentives them from digitizing older works. I don't know if french law acknowledges the doctrine or not. Regardless it is pretty unbecoming of a project started by government archivists and headed by a national library, though I do understand that they might want to recoup some of their costs.

    [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow

  • adrianN  10 years ago

    I don't think this would work in Germany (IANAL), because it only counts as a reproduction of the work and does not meet the Schöpfungshöhe.

  • padraic7a  10 years ago

    The original image might be out of copyright, but someone's photograph of it is not. So, if you can take your own image you can do what you want with it, but you don't have any right to someone else's photograph of it.