Best thing to do is, like Rob says, email the people to see what they say...
- Gary Kirk
On 12/7/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 07/12/06, Delphine Ménard
<notafishz(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hello there,
I came across this picture:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Magna_Carta.jpg
while wandering around Commons.
The accredited source is the UK National Archives and as far as I
understand this page:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/legal/copyright.htm
Reproductions of images on the website are not permitted without
acquitting a fee.
However, I am not familiar with public domain policy stuff in the UK,
it could be that there are twists I don't know about, so I am asking
for some enlightenment as to whether this image should stay or go.
Bear in mind that we're not talking a copy of the text here (it's
clearly too small to read), and we're not talking a copy of "an
artwork", a creative artistic piece - this is a picture of a physical
artifact, plain and simple, and I don't see any reason that the
photograph itself shouldn't retain copyright.
Generally speaking, in the UK, you generally get copyright over a
photograph if there are creative or skilled elements in the making of
it - most things above an automatic photobooth, in fact. It's entirely
debatable how far that applies to "archive" images which are sort-of
intended as slavish copies and do require a lot of skilled work to
create, but it's a digression from the point here.
This is an image that, to my mind, can be copyrighted same as any
other. We're just being mislead by the fact it's of a textual
artifact.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
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