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UK's National Portrait Gallery Threatens To Sue Wikipedia User
jpatokal writes "The National Portrait Gallery of London is threatening litigation against a Wikipedia user over his uploading of pictures of some 3,000 paintings, all 19th century or earlier and firmly in the public domain. Their claim? The photos are a 'product of a painstaking exercise on the part of the photographer,' and that downloading them off the NPG site is an 'unlawful circumvention of technical measures.' And remember, the NPG's taxpayer-funded mission is to 'promote the appreciation and understanding of portraiture in all media [...] to as wide a range of visitors as possible!'"
Bridgeman v Corel establishes firmly in US law that...
Geography establishes firmly in atlases that the entire world isn't in the US.
They're an English organization with English photographs of English owned paintings. Nationality of the person violating English laws is unclear (though likely also English if he cares that much about a specifically English issue).
Please, please show the world that Americans aren't quite so embarrassingly pig ignorant as they were in the 60s/70s when most couldn't find the country they were fighting in on a map. England's clearly a city in U-rope, near Belgiumsville. Google Maps will help you find it. They have different laws over there, still answering to the Pope who's their king. US case law really doesn't apply.