The Museum has free entry?! That's excellent. Everyone in the entire world can just buy plane tickets to London and experience these masterpieces for themselves, free of charge! I hate to sound smarmy, but it's infuriating when they assert a copyright claim to these photographs, and then disallow any photography or video recording of their gallery (photography policy). If I wanted to get these images on Wikipedia, even though they're public domain works, it would be impossible, unless I smuggled in a camera and surreptitiously took photographs of each work of art.
If NPG's mission statement is more than lip service (link), and they actually do want to "promote through the medium of portraits the appreciation and understanding of the men and women who have made and are making British history and culture," this is a very curious way of demonstrating it. Flaunting your country's backwards copyright laws and keeping these portraits out of the hands of the millions who use Wikimedia sites to learn art history seems dirty and unreasonable.
Slashdot Mirror
The Museum has free entry?! That's excellent. Everyone in the entire world can just buy plane tickets to London and experience these masterpieces for themselves, free of charge! I hate to sound smarmy, but it's infuriating when they assert a copyright claim to these photographs, and then disallow any photography or video recording of their gallery (photography policy). If I wanted to get these images on Wikipedia, even though they're public domain works, it would be impossible, unless I smuggled in a camera and surreptitiously took photographs of each work of art.
If NPG's mission statement is more than lip service (link), and they actually do want to "promote through the medium of portraits the appreciation and understanding of the men and women who have made and are making British history and culture," this is a very curious way of demonstrating it. Flaunting your country's backwards copyright laws and keeping these portraits out of the hands of the millions who use Wikimedia sites to learn art history seems dirty and unreasonable.