I chose the admittedly argumentative word "hiding" because I have some sympathy with the view that an infringement took place in the United Kingdom.
The crucial point is not whether photos of paintings are subject to copyright, it is whether an infringing act took place in Britain.
That point seems to me to be at least debatable. The lawyer's letter asserts that the downloading of the images was from a UK server and therefore, legally speaking, took place in the UK. I am not a lawyer so I have no idea if that is a sensible interpretation of the law as it stands.(whether it ought to be the law I'd say is not relevant).
The downloading it seems was done by circumventing anti copying technology and ignoring terms of use the lawyers say were on every page of the website. Seems to me this person assumed that UK laws simply could not apply to him. I don't think it's that clear cut at all.
Also, this person went to a lot of trouble to do something that is not especially beneficial to that many people. How many wiki users can make use of hi res photos of paintings? It seems a fair conclusion that Dcoetzee was/is spoiling for a fight. (He/she was attempting to legislate UK law from a keyboard in the US?(joke))
The default is that after you're dead for a few centuries, you don't have a copyright anymore.
Under United Kingdom law a separate copyright exists for photos of paintings, it is distinct from any copyright that may or may not exist on the painting that has been photographed. The copyright holder has not been dead for centuries. It is the photographer, or whoever owns the copyright of the photo, it is not the painter.
They were downloaded legally from the UK servers, and posted legally to the US servers.
According to the lawyer's letter Dcoetzee circumvented an anti copying measure. That could mean the images were downloaded illegally.
Assuming they can sue someone in the UK for what someone in another country did in another country
The lawyer's letter asserts that an infringing act took place in the United Kingdom: the downloading from a UK server. I don't see any reason why a foreigner gets to break the law in the UK. (I am assuming that it can be established both that the law was broken and that the law breaking took place in the UK)
To tell you the truth I would probably vote for photgraphy being allowed in museums (subject to some way of making sure flashes are definitely not used, hand out black tape to each camera user?).
What I am less on the side of information freedom zealots for is the high res, hard to produce photos being automatically public domain.
In the terms of (possibly irrelevant) US law what experience does a v high res photo (skillfully taken) "slavishly reproduce"?.
Is it viewing the pic from 2m away? Or is it inspecting the photo with a magnifying glass?
Why should an experience that almost no one would be allowed to have be protected?
What most irks me about this is that again we have people from the US arguing that their rules apply, not someone else's. Dcoetzee circumvented an anti copying measure, and uploaded high res pictures (of a quality that very few people will ever need) from the United Kingdom's National Portrait Gallery and is hiding behind American laws.
The lawyer's letter asks Dcoetzee to undo what he already did- remove the infringing pictures from Wikipedia, and delete his copies.
The letter then points out that The National Portrait Gallery has offered to make available low resolution copies for Wikipedia, and that Wikipedia has ignored attempts to negotiate the issue.
What else is there left for them to do? Allow what they (rightly or wrongly) firmly believe to be infringement of their copyright?Because the infringer is American?
The letter is particularly odious in that it admits that his actions were completely within US law,
I fail to see the need for odium if the relevant jurisdiction is not the United States.
If there is any doubt at all over the relevant jurisdiction then there is clearly a legal matter to be settled.
Imagine the reaction to someone trying to apply UK law in the US, or in a situation where a layman might believe the US was the relevant jurisdiction.
Here are some thoughts re why they might not want high resolution copies in the public domain:
Existence of very high quality, free copies could end up reducing visitor numbers
It is obviously true that museums make some of their money (I have no idea how much)from selling books and the like. Sales could go down
Offtopic, but: If they let everyone go mad with their cameras, photographers would get in everyones way and not everyone could be trusted to make sure the flash was off.
than claims of copyright over works hundreds of years old.
The issue is the copyright on the particular photos not the paintings. Since this is a complex legal issue, details like this matter
Radioactive publicity? I am no PR person but here is my attempt at a response:
"An American citizen has taken works clearly under UK copyright and copied them. These works are protected and maintained by Her Majesty's National Portrait Gallery and paid for by British Government subsidy. The NPR believes that UK law should be enforced where it is relevant, regardless of whether citizens of other nations believe that rules should not apply to them."
natural grass..........that's pretty much all they had to eat before they were domesticated.
And now that animals are bred to provide very cheap meat (so cheap that even the poorest Westerners can afford red meat every day), how do we get that meat?
Not by feeding them on 100% natural grass.
"REQUIRED" by modern farm machinery
It certainly is required by any machinery currently available.
replaced with biodiesel or alcohol
Do you have any evidence that biodiesel or alcohol can be produced economically without fertilisers and the Haber process. Bearing in mind its huge use of energy and fossil fuels to get raw materials (hydrogen)?
I just realised that I do have the ability to vote stuff up or down.
I was foolishly waiting for a specific message saying "you can now vote up or down". Ho Hum.
No, I quite sincerely mean "disagree" and "doesn't help the discussion".
The poster in question is very, very free market, tiny government fundamentalist. I base this on quite a few of their posts. Not just the one where they actually say central government must not be allowed to fund fire trucks. It may be (I have no idea)"unconstitutional" to do so, but my implication is that such an interpretation is completely unreasonable.
Worth noting also that they boast of having 200 "freaks". I'm very far from the only one.
I probably count as very left wing to quite a few people, they are free to ignore any contributions I might have.
I'm sure I am disproportionately pro government and anti free markets for someone who reads Slashdot.
Re modding people down because you disagree, of course there will be grey area between "I very strongly disagree" and "I think you are looking for a fight." Because all contributors are human.
However I have never modded anyone up or down (never had any points- too much of a newbie, I think. Actually, I don't even know when you start getting points.) If I did have points I would always prefer to use them to mod up. Since the whole idea of down seems to be actually to prevent others, not me hearing someone else. Whereas up is trying to tell others that something is worth your time. Yes, I know they really have the same effect, but modding up would feel nicer.
If you were truly their foe, you would study them as Sun Tzu teaches instead of....
the reductio ad absurdum of this is that I must watch Fox News everyday to catch the latest from Hannity & O'Reilly. And you should read all my posts. I don't think that would be very productive. We both will have much better things to do with our time, no?
After 6 years in Japan yen, height in cm, shoe size in cm, weight in kg, apartments in tatami all seem "natural" to me.
Anyone who is relatively young will adapt very, very quickly.
I do agree there will be large costs in changing things like speed limits and road signs.
However, before dismissing road changes as impossible, we should consult with our Australian and Canadian friends who did exactly that.
plenty of people get vegetables in the kilo or half kilo.
In truth what you will "never hear these days" is someone asking for a particular quantity of vegetables. The proportion of people who go to markets nowadays is utterly tiny.
Imperial is rightly dying out. Because it is objectively worse than metric, by being a waste of brain resources.
Not entirely sure that all of continental Europe were dragging their feet Industrial Revolution wise.
I would say that imperial in the UK is moribund. It's certainly no longer taught in schools. There is still the issue of those with protectionist, anti-European leanings (Daily Mail readers) wanting to "save the inch". I, myself look forward to those people dying out, and stopping us condemning generation after generation to struggle with a truly stupid system.
How many inches or feet in a mile?
How many square feet in an acre?
What a moronic waste of time.
No offence taken at all.
I have to admit I made my points in smartarse, "gimme some insightful points" way.
Where I probably most disagree with you (but I admit I am no expert) is that I'd say it makes no/little difference if it is a foreign company. Nissan has obviously shown a history of investment in various parts of the US, has built factories and sells their cars throughout your country. This must be why they are getting part of the subsidy. If they are there, it must be because the US car buyer wants to buy them. Actually I believe that there are international trade and tariff reasons for building a factory in the country you want to sell to, rather than building them in your home country. At least, that's what people who worked for Toyota told me
You are dead right about public transport. But it has always been successfully portrayed as suspiciously collective, and anti American, hasn't it? If you want to see good public transport, go to Japan. Which manages to be a car loving country, and have fairly sensible transport policies too. They aren't totally immune, though: there is no express train service from Toyota City to Nagoya, allegedly because Toyota Motor doesn't want one.
> help the US reduce its dependence on dangerous, foreign, terror-funding oil
I was joking. Going for the extreme US right's inconsistency in (correctly, who knows?) fearing fundamentalist Islam while opposing measures that might reduce the billions sent to the Middle East.
Firstly, thankyou very much for your pointers. I think that the above user's tendency to make almost everything a US constitutional issue would justify people calling him flamebait. Or troll might be more accurate, in that they seem to be looking for a fight. Having seen them before, nearly everything is made to be about encroaching government and socialists.
The post was not merely "strict constructionist", it was very, very fundamentalist.
With an almost religious fervour, one could say.
(I bet the US Air Force isn't specifically allowed in your constitution, unlike the your Navy.)
S/he asserted that it would be "unconstitutional" for fire services to be funded by your central government, this is just mental.
Before you point out that s/he could be factually correct, bear in mind that when he/she says "unconstitutional" s/he almost certainly means something like "an intrinsic evil"
Re: moderation. I suggest there is a grey area among flamebait, troll and disagree anyway.
(re the last line:
I will choose to ignore him because I consider s/he doesn't help the discussion, not because I merely "disagree")
I was kinda joking. Mocking the extreme US right's inconsistency in (rightly?) fearing fundamentalist Islam while opposing measures that might reduce the billions sent to the Middle East.
Even if cars are "good enough for commuting" now; the US is notoriously anti small car.
The electric car will need to be cheaper, more convenient, and easier to maintain by a very, very large margin before Joe Sixpack will buy them in quantity.
Another reason why subsidising their development is good: it will speed the arrival of a feasible electric pickup truck. Probably a fair while off yet, but if that became realistic, it would be very useful to many US citizens.
The thing I find very telling about American thinking re cars and oil is this:
you would still rather send money to Saudi Arabia than use a faggy, Hollywood Liberal Elite electric car. Even the South Park guys hate people who drive electric cars.
There are a lot of minds to change. I think many of them are extremely irrational, it's going to be hard work.
Slashdot Mirror
The crucial point is not whether photos of paintings are subject to copyright, it is whether an infringing act took place in Britain.
That point seems to me to be at least debatable. The lawyer's letter asserts that the downloading of the images was from a UK server and therefore, legally speaking, took place in the UK. I am not a lawyer so I have no idea if that is a sensible interpretation of the law as it stands.(whether it ought to be the law I'd say is not relevant).
The downloading it seems was done by circumventing anti copying technology and ignoring terms of use the lawyers say were on every page of the website. Seems to me this person assumed that UK laws simply could not apply to him. I don't think it's that clear cut at all.
Also, this person went to a lot of trouble to do something that is not especially beneficial to that many people. How many wiki users can make use of hi res photos of paintings? It seems a fair conclusion that Dcoetzee was/is spoiling for a fight. (He/she was attempting to legislate UK law from a keyboard in the US?(joke))
Under United Kingdom law a separate copyright exists for photos of paintings, it is distinct from any copyright that may or may not exist on the painting that has been photographed. The copyright holder has not been dead for centuries. It is the photographer, or whoever owns the copyright of the photo, it is not the painter.
According to the lawyer's letter Dcoetzee circumvented an anti copying measure. That could mean the images were downloaded illegally.
The lawyer's letter asserts that an infringing act took place in the United Kingdom: the downloading from a UK server. I don't see any reason why a foreigner gets to break the law in the UK. (I am assuming that it can be established both that the law was broken and that the law breaking took place in the UK)
That they hold the copyright under UK law?
That they offered to make available low res copies for wikipedia?
That Dcoetzee circumvented an anti copying measure? I wonder, did he agree not to circumvent such a measure by agreeing to terms and conditions??
That wikipedia has ignored the offer of low res photos?
What I am less on the side of information freedom zealots for is the high res, hard to produce photos being automatically public domain.
In the terms of (possibly irrelevant) US law what experience does a v high res photo (skillfully taken) "slavishly reproduce"?.
Is it viewing the pic from 2m away? Or is it inspecting the photo with a magnifying glass?
Why should an experience that almost no one would be allowed to have be protected?
What most irks me about this is that again we have people from the US arguing that their rules apply, not someone else's. Dcoetzee circumvented an anti copying measure, and uploaded high res pictures (of a quality that very few people will ever need) from the United Kingdom's National Portrait Gallery and is hiding behind American laws.
The letter then points out that The National Portrait Gallery has offered to make available low resolution copies for Wikipedia, and that Wikipedia has ignored attempts to negotiate the issue.
What else is there left for them to do? Allow what they (rightly or wrongly) firmly believe to be infringement of their copyright?Because the infringer is American?
The above sentence does not mean investment income formed 48% of total income. It means it increased from an unknown value to another unknown value.
Since we are playing "my country's laws should apply outside my country", I just wondered.
Can I start a business in the United States selling alcohol to those aged from 18-20 and then flee to Britain when I'm arrested?
+1 informative! 2.3% sounds small. but £378,000 would pay for at least 20 janitor's salaries, or maybe 10 curators.
They're suing to bully.
False. You are assuming (with no evidence that I can see) that the relevant jurisdiction is the United States.
That is very far from clear.
I fail to see the need for odium if the relevant jurisdiction is not the United States.
If there is any doubt at all over the relevant jurisdiction then there is clearly a legal matter to be settled.
Imagine the reaction to someone trying to apply UK law in the US, or in a situation where a layman might believe the US was the relevant jurisdiction.
Here are some thoughts re why they might not want high resolution copies in the public domain:
Existence of very high quality, free copies could end up reducing visitor numbers
It is obviously true that museums make some of their money (I have no idea how much)from selling books and the like. Sales could go down
Offtopic, but: If they let everyone go mad with their cameras, photographers would get in everyones way and not everyone could be trusted to make sure the flash was off.
The issue is the copyright on the particular photos not the paintings. Since this is a complex legal issue, details like this matter
Radioactive publicity? I am no PR person but here is my attempt at a response:
"An American citizen has taken works clearly under UK copyright and copied them. These works are protected and maintained by Her Majesty's National Portrait Gallery and paid for by British Government subsidy. The NPR believes that UK law should be enforced where it is relevant, regardless of whether citizens of other nations believe that rules should not apply to them."
or at least some evidence that your guess is more educated than average?
It is due to very few people knowing how to cook healthy food for themselves.
Certainly in Britain home cooking is a hobby for the "effete middle classes", not the "authentic, salt-of-the-earth real people".
No one has a clue how to cook, and as far as I know no one learns cooking in school any more. I certainly didn't.
And now that animals are bred to provide very cheap meat (so cheap that even the poorest Westerners can afford red meat every day), how do we get that meat? Not by feeding them on 100% natural grass.
It certainly is required by any machinery currently available.
Do you have any evidence that biodiesel or alcohol can be produced economically without fertilisers and the Haber process. Bearing in mind its huge use of energy and fossil fuels to get raw materials (hydrogen)?
I just realised that I do have the ability to vote stuff up or down.
I was foolishly waiting for a specific message saying "you can now vote up or down". Ho Hum.
The poster in question is very, very free market, tiny government fundamentalist.
I base this on quite a few of their posts. Not just the one where they actually say central government must not be allowed to fund fire trucks. It may be (I have no idea)"unconstitutional" to do so, but my implication is that such an interpretation is completely unreasonable.
Worth noting also that they boast of having 200 "freaks". I'm very far from the only one.
I probably count as very left wing to quite a few people, they are free to ignore any contributions I might have.
I'm sure I am disproportionately pro government and anti free markets for someone who reads Slashdot.
Re modding people down because you disagree, of course there will be grey area between "I very strongly disagree" and "I think you are looking for a fight." Because all contributors are human.
However I have never modded anyone up or down (never had any points- too much of a newbie, I think. Actually, I don't even know when you start getting points.)
If I did have points I would always prefer to use them to mod up.
Since the whole idea of down seems to be actually to prevent others, not me hearing someone else. Whereas up is trying to tell others that something is worth your time.
Yes, I know they really have the same effect, but modding up would feel nicer.
the reductio ad absurdum of this is that I must watch Fox News everyday to catch the latest from Hannity & O'Reilly. And you should read all my posts. I don't think that would be very productive. We both will have much better things to do with our time, no?
Anyone who is relatively young will adapt very, very quickly.
I do agree there will be large costs in changing things like speed limits and road signs.
However, before dismissing road changes as impossible, we should consult with our Australian and Canadian friends who did exactly that.
plenty of people get vegetables in the kilo or half kilo.
In truth what you will "never hear these days" is someone asking for a particular quantity of vegetables. The proportion of people who go to markets nowadays is utterly tiny.
Imperial is rightly dying out. Because it is objectively worse than metric, by being a waste of brain resources.
Not entirely sure that all of continental Europe were dragging their feet Industrial Revolution wise.
I would say that imperial in the UK is moribund. It's certainly no longer taught in schools. There is still the issue of those with protectionist, anti-European leanings (Daily Mail readers) wanting to "save the inch".
I, myself look forward to those people dying out, and stopping us condemning generation after generation to struggle with a truly stupid system.
How many inches or feet in a mile?
How many square feet in an acre? What a moronic waste of time.
Where I probably most disagree with you (but I admit I am no expert) is that I'd say it makes no/little difference if it is a foreign company.
Nissan has obviously shown a history of investment in various parts of the US, has built factories and sells their cars throughout your country. This must be why they are getting part of the subsidy.
If they are there, it must be because the US car buyer wants to buy them.
Actually I believe that there are international trade and tariff reasons for building a factory in the country you want to sell to, rather than building them in your home country.
At least, that's what people who worked for Toyota told me
You are dead right about public transport. But it has always been successfully portrayed as suspiciously collective, and anti American, hasn't it?
If you want to see good public transport, go to Japan. Which manages to be a car loving country, and have fairly sensible transport policies too.
They aren't totally immune, though: there is no express train service from Toyota City to Nagoya, allegedly because Toyota Motor doesn't want one.
> help the US reduce its dependence on dangerous, foreign, terror-funding oil
I was joking. Going for the extreme US right's inconsistency in (correctly, who knows?) fearing fundamentalist Islam while opposing measures that might reduce the billions sent to the Middle East.
thankyou for the pointers! You should get +1 informative, but I have no points.
Firstly, thankyou very much for your pointers.
I think that the above user's tendency to make almost everything a US constitutional issue would justify people calling him flamebait.
Or troll might be more accurate, in that they seem to be looking for a fight.
Having seen them before, nearly everything is made to be about encroaching government and socialists. The post was not merely "strict constructionist", it was very, very fundamentalist.
With an almost religious fervour, one could say.
(I bet the US Air Force isn't specifically allowed in your constitution, unlike the your Navy.)
S/he asserted that it would be "unconstitutional" for fire services to be funded by your central government, this is just mental.
Before you point out that s/he could be factually correct, bear in mind that when he/she says "unconstitutional" s/he almost certainly means something like "an intrinsic evil"
Re: moderation. I suggest there is a grey area among flamebait, troll and disagree anyway.
(re the last line: I will choose to ignore him because I consider s/he doesn't help the discussion, not because I merely "disagree")
I was kinda joking. Mocking the extreme US right's inconsistency in (rightly?) fearing fundamentalist Islam while opposing measures that might reduce the billions sent to the Middle East.
The electric car will need to be cheaper, more convenient, and easier to maintain by a very, very large margin before Joe Sixpack will buy them in quantity.
Another reason why subsidising their development is good: it will speed the arrival of a feasible electric pickup truck. Probably a fair while off yet, but if that became realistic, it would be very useful to many US citizens.
The thing I find very telling about American thinking re cars and oil is this:
you would still rather send money to Saudi Arabia than use a faggy, Hollywood Liberal Elite electric car.
Even the South Park guys hate people who drive electric cars.
There are a lot of minds to change. I think many of them are extremely irrational, it's going to be hard work.