Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 | 11 Comments
Wikipedia Steals from UK National Portrait Gallery
Here’s a compelling case of self-interest presented as public interest reported by the BBC. The National Portrait Gallery in the UK makes £339,000 a year from the rights to high resolution images from their collection being reproduced in other media. The gallery claims it has invested £1m in the digitizing effort.
A volunteer for Wikipedia used software to extract high-resolution images from the NPG’s site that are not meant to be downloadable. When confronted, Wikipedia clothes itself in the public interest.
The NPG is threatening legal action after 3,300 images from its website were uploaded to Wikipedia. The high-resolution images were uploaded by Wikipedia volunteer Derrick Coetzee.
Now Erik Moeller, the deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation which runs the online encyclopaedia, has laid out the organisation’s stance in a blog post.
He said most observers would think the two sides should be “allies not adversaries” and that museums and other cultural institutions should not pursue extra revenue at the expense of limiting public access to their material.
“It is hard to see a plausible argument that excluding public domain content from a free, non-profit encyclopaedia serves any public interest whatsoever,” he wrote.
He points out that two German photographic archives donated 350,000 copyrighted images for use on Wikipedia, and other institutions in the United States and the UK have seen benefits in making material available for use. [...]
The National Portrait Gallery now says it only sent a legal letter to Derrick Coetzee after the Wikimedia Foundation failed to respond to requests to discuss the issue. But it says contact has now been made and remains hopeful that a dialogue will be possible.
A spokeswoman also said that the two German archives mentioned in Erik Moeller’s blog had in fact supplied medium resolution images to Wikipedia, and insisted that the National Portrait Gallery had been willing to offer similar material to Wikipedia.
Wikipedia Painting Row Escalates (BBC News)
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Wow, what an amazingly biased commentary. Wikipedia didn't steal anything. A Wikipedia user uploaded public domain images to Wikipedia so that they could be rightfully shared with the rest of the world. But since the NPG (and apparently Art Market Monitor) only sees dollar signs they would prefer to persue spurious legal threats rather than working with Wikipedia (like so many other museums have) to reach a solution that is both good for the museum and good for the public (the actual owners of the paintings).
First of all, commentary is supposed to be biased. Otherwise, it wouldn't be worth making as commentary.
Second, your sanctimony on the issue seems to stem from your role at Wikipedia. That bias is fine too. But your statements as to what's good for the museum and good for the public are presumptuous.
Finally, if the legal threats are spurious–I think you mean specious–you've got nothing to worry about. The threats are harmless and without force. On the other hand, if you've been involved with theft and the threats are real. You might want to think seriously about complying with their requests.
That the National Portrait Gallery seeks to retain control of public domain art for its own financial ends disgusts me. They claim to be performing a public service. If they continue with legal action it shows that they have absolutely no interest in bringing these PUBLIC DOMAIN works to as wide an audience as possible.
The public pays for the institution to exist. The works belong to the British public. As a British person I am proud for these works to be seen by the rest of the world.
Seeing a painting on a screen will never be a complete substitute for seeing a painting in all its natural splendour: galleries must focus on this unique selling point to bring in the punters. Saying to British consumers of art that they must not photograph PAINTINGS THEY BOUGHT AND PAID FOR has lead to this sad state of affairs.
The scans/photographs of the art that the National Gallery claims they funded were ultimately paid for by the man and woman on the street, many of whom will be too poor and/or too distant from the gallery ever to get a chance to see. It's the gallery's hubris that is sickening. This was an act of liberation, not of theft.
It certainly is "a compelling case of self-interest presented as public interest", but not quite in the way you describe it. The NPG estimates it had licensing income of £339,000 last year from its image library. What it doesn't shout about so much is that it cost about £240,000 (2007–08 figures) to run that library…
The self-interest is in the hands of those people whose salaries depend on licensing this fake copyright, on restricting public access to material held for the public benefit. We shouldn't forget that it's also a healthy little earner for the lawyers how draft the licences and the threatening letters such as the one received by Derrick Coetzee. "Million-pound fraud at the National Portrait Gallery" might have been a better title to your piece.
I'm afraid you're both misreading the events. The volunteer used a program to unscramble copyrighted material. That's an act of theft: taking something without permission. The paintings may be owned by the government–or the NPG may have a charter that makes it private or gives it some other status–but the high-resolution images are not public property. And when wikipedia makes them available they're also making them available to other private individuals to exploit those images for private gain, not the public interest.
All of the issues you raise could be legitimately settled through negotiations or even court cases. But simply taking the images because one feels they're entitled to them–your act of "liberation"–is theft.
Whether the high-resolution images are or are not public property is actually untested in law. We don yet know whether a digital copy of a public domain work has a copyright of its own.
Yes, it's absolutely true that, if no copyright exists on those digital images, it is indeed possible for people to make money from them. That is true of all public domain works. Publishers still make printings of books that are out of copyright hoping that sufficient people will buy them to make it profitable: the publisher pays for the printing, binding, someone to write an intro etc. But they do not pay for the text matter itself and if someone makes that out of copyright text matter available on the internet (as the Gutenberg project does) the publisher has no right of redress. They *would* have rights for their original intro, any original footnotes and so on.
The latest news appears to be that NPG are going to negotiate with The Wikimedia Foundation to reach a compromise and my hope is that lower resolution images are made available by NPG whilst NPG retains the higher quality images. That way NPG can retain a revenue stream from publishers of books that need to reproduce, in high quality, a painting whilst Wikipedia has something sufficient to extend the knowledge of its visitors.
The theft accusation could easily extend to NPG: they took public funds under good faith that they would make their archive available to the public.
Their mission statement says: "Founded in 1856, the aim of the National Portrait Gallery, London is 'to promote through the medium of portraits the appreciation and understanding of the men and women who have made and are making British history and culture, and … to promote the appreciation and understanding of portraiture IN ALL MEDIA'." (my emphasis).
Well, a new media has grown up in the last 20 years or so. We're talking on it now.
If they don't meet the commitments they make their board should be replaced by one that will make good on their promises.
Where do you get this:
The theft accusation could easily extend to NPG: they took public funds under good faith that they would make their archive available to the public.
Are you sure about this?
Whether the high-resolution images are or are not public property is actually untested in law. We don yet know whether a digital copy of a public domain work has a copyright of its own.
I think the law in the US is pretty clear that the Hi-res image is a work in its own right and the person who made it has rights that can be protected. But I could be mistaken.
"I think the law in the US is pretty clear that the Hi-res image is a work in its own right and the person who made it has rights that can be protected. But I could be mistaken."
You are indeed mistaken.
In the US the law was tested in the case of Corel vs Bridgmans and it was established that such reproductions do not carry their own copyright. In the UK however the law is untested although the judge in the Corel case gave an opinion that UK law would give the same result as US law. Since then institutions like the NPG have been frantically commissioning legal opinions to the contrary.
Frantically commissioning legal opinions is giving too much credit to these people. Rather, they have been shouting very loudly "these images are copyright in the UK and the Bridgeman judge is an idiot!" They haven't actually looked at UK law in any serious way at all, that much is apparent from the solicitor's letter they sent to Derrick Coetzee. UK law is untested on this particular question, but all the indications are that the NPG's copyright case would fail, as would its other three claims.
This article describes how American museums tried to persuade Bridgeman Art Library from going ahead with its US suit, because they were afraid that their copyright fraud would be exposed in court for exactly what it is: blatant fraud. The British art library didn't pay any attention, and lost the case. There's not much chance of pinning criminal charges on anyone at the NPG, as they will surely claim to have been professionally advised in their position: that doesn't make waht they are doing any more moral or sensible.
2009 has ended without the National Portrait Gallery having filed a lawsuit. It looks like they caved in as soon as the other party got serious legal support.