NYPL Digital Gallery Open to Public

mountiealpha writes "The New York Public Library has digitized over 275,000 images from their colletions, and made them freely available available online. The 'NYPL Digital Gallery provides access to over 275,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.'" Update: 03/04 17:30 GMT by Z : They're updating the site to handle high traffic volumes, but there is an informational page available with details on the site.

Comments

What License?

[DataPath]

Are they still under copyright? What license are these published under?

Interesting

[elid]

I wonder if Google image search has already indexed this (would help with the bandwidth problems).

Re:Copyright

[tmasssey]

No, it's likely that the copyright for the vast majority, if not all, of these items has expired. If you notice, most of them are pre-20th-century, and what *is* post-20th century (such as architectural diagrams) is covered by different types of copyright than that attached to artistic works.

Having said that, some of the work may still be covered by copyright; however, if the copyright holder has given permission for their works to be reproduced, this would not be a problem. That's a possibility as well.

Copyright-like claims on public domain?

[Kaa]

Hmm... NYPL wants to charge a fee for providing a high-rez image. That's fine -- someone has to pay the expenses and charging for delivering to me a public-domain image is OK.

However, quoting from http://www.nypl.org/permissions/newpermissions.htm l : "If ordering reproductions for personal, research or study purposes only (with no publication rights granted) the fee is $30.00 per image." (emphasis mine)

Umm... where did this right to grant or deny publication rights appear from? If I get a public-domain image, from NYPL or anyone else, I should have the right to publish it as I see fit -- it's in public domain, isn't it? Is NYPL trying to get itself copyright-like rights through contracts (presumably you agree to some contract when you order the image)?

Moreover, there is a use fee schedule (http://www.nypl.org/permissions/UseFeeSchedule8_1 .PDF) which explicitly sets prices depending on WHO redistributes the images and HOW MANY image copies will be redistributed. This is all normal and standard operating procedure in the copyright world, but again, aren't many of the images we are talking about in public domain?

Why I should pay a different sum of money to NYPL if I want to distribute 100 copies or 100,000 copies of a public-domain image?

Re:Copyright-like claims on public domain?

[j.bellone]

Bring in a laptop with a high resolution scanner and start scanning images into your computer. When they ask you what you're doing, you tell them that you are scanning public domain books into your computer because you don't feel like paying their $30 fee. I'm wondering what they could do to you then.

Re:It's down They should use coral

[wiskinator]

They (and really everyone who slashdots)should check out Coral, I think it is just too cool for words. It would really beat the low bandwidth blues. Either that or turn those poor NYU servers into Egg Fryers.