New Developments In NPG/Wikipedia Lawsuit Threat

Raul654 writes "Last week, it was reported that the UK's National Portrait Gallery had threatened a lawsuit against an American Wikipedian for uploading pictures from the NPG's website to Wikipedia. The uploaded pictures are clearly in the public domain in the United States. (In the US, copies of public domain works are also in the public domain. UK law on the matter is unclear.) Since then, there have been several developments: EFF staff attorney Fred von Lohmann has taken on the case pro-bono; Eric Moeller, Wikimedia Foundation Deputy Director, has responded to the NPG's allegations in a post on the WMF blog; and the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies has weighed in on the dispute in favor of the NPG."

Comments

Re:This isn't a Robin Hood story

[Random_Goblin]

When reading an article about the Mona Lisa on Wikipedia, I expect to see a photo of the article in question for purpose of discussion, not "to see this painting, please visit the Louvre in France"

yeah if only the NPG was prepared to give them some lower resolution images suitable for the web or something... the bastards

basically wikimedia has taken someone elses hard work because they think they can get away with it

and the end result of this sort of behaviour is that less works will be digitalised, because there will be no one to pay for it

if wikimedia needs this information so badly, it should put its hand in its pocket to support the people that made it available in the first place, through A LOT of hard work

Re:Pictures versus digital photos...

[Hognoxious]

I fully agree that the paintings are in the public domain, but it does NOT mean that the digital photos are.

TFA suggests that the legal status in the UK is unclear. TFA is wrong, and you are right.