UK's National Portrait Gallery Threatens To Sue Wikipedia User

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday July 11, 2009 @02:21AM from the pictures-of-pictures dept.

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!'"

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Issue is quality, not content, of the photos by Anonymous Coward · 2009-07-11 03:59 · Score: -1, Redundant

I'm not copyright expert, but it seems to me the issue isn't of the representations of the original works themselves (which are not copyrightable), but the quality of the photographs and the time put into making them (ie, high-res, yada yada). Photographs by a professional photographer that the gallery has hired just for this purpose are certain to be better than photographs some chump took on a handheld; the gallery might be able (although, again, I'm no expert) to claim copyright over that.
-Rjanag (Anonymous Coward)