All Your Stonehenge Photos Are Belong To England

An anonymous reader writes "English Heritage, the organization that runs and manages various historical sites in the UK, such as Stonehenge, has apparently sent letters to various photo sharing and stock photo sites claiming that any photo of Stonehenge that is being sold violates its rights, and only English Heritage can get commercial benefit from such photos. In fact, they're asking for all money made from such photos, stating: 'all commercial interest to sell images must be directed to English Heritage.' As one recipient noted, this seems odd, given that English Heritage has only managed Stonehenge 'for 27 of the monument's 4,500 year old history.'"

Comments

Re:Simple:

[Fluffeh]

Actually, while reading the comments on the article, I found this rather amazing link to a "street view" care of Google that lets you walk right through there from the comfort of your own PC terminal.

Sydney Opera House Too

[Nom du Keyboard]

The Syndey Opera House Trust tries to pull the same crap, even though they are directly contradicted by Australian law on photography in public places. Seems to me that England also has a law that you can shoot any photograph you want in public, although the police there often do their best to ignore it when they are misbehaving otherwise. I would think that the Stonehenge people don't really have a case and are trying to get away with threats and bluster.

You, too! could build your very own Stonehenge!!

[zooblethorpe]

The "mystery" of how "they" made it isn't really a mystery for anyone who dabbles in such archaeology, or even that surprising - unusual at best.

Indeed. The tech is *so* simple that Wally Wallingford of Flint, Michigan is building his own Stonehenge (more of a Concretehenge, really) almost single-handedly, just using wood forms, levers, and clever balancing to move these huge multi-ton blocks about.

A lot of things that people these days describe as "OMG how did they possibly do that it must be ALIENS!" are really only mysterious because people are shockingly ignorant of the basics of how the world works. Probably comes of sitting on their bums so much.

Cheers,