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The Metropolitan Museum of Art Makes 375,000 Images Available For Free (fortune.com)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced Tuesday that more than 375,000 of its "public-domain artworks" are now available for unrestricted use. "We have been working toward the goal of sharing our images with the public for a number of years," said Thomas P. Campbell, director and CEO of the Met, in a statement. "Our comprehensive and diverse museum collection spans 5,000 years of world culture and our core mission is to be open and accessible for all who wish to study and enjoy the works of art in our care." Fortune reports: The image collection covers photographs, paintings, and sculptures, among other works. Images now available for both scholarly and commercial purposes include Emanuel Leutze's famous painting Washington Crossing the Delaware; photographs by Walker Evans, Alfred Steiglitz, and Dorothea Lange; and even some Vincent van Gogh paintings. The Met has teamed up with Creative Commons, Wikimedia, Artstor, Digital Public Library of America, Art Resource, and Pinterest to host and maximize the reach of their enormous collection. There is also a public GitHub repository of the images.
Bittorrent has already made almost all music and video available for free, it keeps me busy 24/7.
...someone attempts to exert their copyright of "their pictures" of these "public domain artworks"?
The write-up had me nodding in approval until the last sentence. How about we all repeat 200 times — lest some of us forget: binaries should never be placed under a textual revision-control system.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced Tuesday that more than 375,000 of its "public-domain artworks" are now available for unrestricted use.
Isn't that what "public domain" means already?
Gee, that sounded so exciting. All this talk about images. If the editors had bothered to click the github link, they'd have seen this on the first page:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art provides select datasets of information on more than 420,000 artworks in its Collection for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use. ...
Images not included
Images are not included and are not part of the dataset. Companion artworks listed in the dataset covered by the policy are identified in the Collection section of the Museum’s website with the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) icon.
It's metadata. No pictures. Hence the wikipedia links in the lame and misleading article.
I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein
I can understand the confusion. What should be considered public domain aren't the artworks but their reproduction, that is, any photos or movies already made of the artworks. The museum pieces themselves aren't public domain, because real life objects aren't covered by copyright. Taking the painting itself from the museum would be stealing, both in a criminal and a figurative sense.
Deja vu: In the 80s we had a 70ish actor as POTUS, a woman PM in the UK, and a bald leader of that other nuke superpower
One annoying thing about pictures like this is high-quality copies are assumed to be copyrighted by companies.
Try sticking one on a flash drive and taking it to Kinkos to have it printed to a poster. They wont do it if you're not there representing a business.
They assume it's a copyrighted image and you don't own the rights.
How will artists like Da Vinci, Renoir, Monet, Picasso ever live if they're unable to collect royalties for the free public display of their works. Won't someone think of teh children?
Meh
Requiem for the American Dream
RIAA has some issues, no doubt, and some of the millions of songs that independent artists offer on Myspace are great. You said something very specific which doesn't make sense to me, though:
> Free publicity has value, if the RIAA, MPAA, etc, etc would all realize this
Exactly what do you imagine the value to be in publicity for a song they can't sell? The *purpose* of generating publicity around music is to sell the music. What benefit is there to a record company to produce music they can't sell?
Now I have things though I can incorporate into my works. I am against the concept of intellectual property in general but greater access to works that aren't under such restrictions is a start. Now we can also begin to determine what elements of current works are copyrightable and not already in the public domain. Similarity to a public domain item is defense against infringement due to similarity to a copyrighted object when the same similarity is at point.
The big problem I have is with the general failure to identify what constitutes "creative expression" and what constitutes elements of necessity.
Git Large File Storage (LFS)
When they acquire an image they want an original done by the original artist. But all they are offering me is a damn copy.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
> Exactly what do you imagine the value to be in publicity for a song they can't sell?
Make people come to the source, they represent the talent. It's sad that the way to find content is so distant from the actual creator of the 'product'. It's certainly not helping them when people use bittorrent, they could cut off that avenue by offering it themselves. As for the "can't sell' part. It's the old paradigm for instance of a drug dealer, they'll get you high for free a few times because they know in the long run it will pay off. I'm not saying give it all away for free but offerings to get people interested is just good business.
> The *purpose* of generating publicity around music is to sell the music.
Well, sort of. What is better, to make a little money or build a brand? In the long run building a brand will pay off much more. Publicity is a tool to build a brand. Think of how many musicians crossover into movies, usually they can't act but have been cast because they are a brand that adds box office draw to the movie. A brand like that can sell everything from perfume to nail polish, underpants, cups, shirts, etc...
> What benefit is there to a record company to produce music they can't sell?
See other answers. I'm not saying RIAA/etc should employ a free only model, i'm saying that they are currently losing out by adopting their money only/first strategy. That is why networks like bittorrent exist.
...doesn't include the images - just a CSV with the metadata.
Thus, not all that useful
That's the big problem everybody has.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What is better, to make a little money or build a brand?
There is room for only so many "brands," or celebrities with the power to increase sales of a product by endorsing it, in a particular market.
Think of how many musicians crossover into movies
Ought these movies also to be produced to "build a brand"? Or in what way is a "money only/first strategy" appropriate for them and not for recorded music?
Link to the collection: http://www.metmuseum.org/art/c...