Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

cc-licenses - Re: [Fwd: Re: Licensing of old out-of-copyright facsimiles?]

cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Peter Brink <peter.brink AT brinkdata.se>
  • To: erik.sandberg.9195 AT student.uu.se, Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc:
  • Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: Licensing of old out-of-copyright facsimiles?]
  • Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 13:58:01 +0100

Erik Sandberg skrev:

Perhaps I should clarify: I can not borrow these facsimiles; they are stored in a very safe storage somewhere. I am allowed to study the facsimiles if I sit in a special room, and I don't bring a camera. I am also allowed to order copies of the facsimiles, e.g. by scanning or photocopying or ordinary photographing. The library claims copyright on these scans, since they consider it photographing, and photography is (weakly) copyrightable in Sweden.


More specifically there are two kinds of photographs under Swedish copyright law, "photopictures" and "photographic works". A "photopicture", is a photo where the photographer has had no control over the lightning, the arrangement of the motif or any other aspect of the picture, a papparazi photo or a photo of scenery view of a landmark are two examples of such photos. Photopictures are protected against direct copying up to 50 years after they were published. Photopictures have no protection or at the most a very thin protection against transformations.

When a photographer creates the picture by setting the lightning, arranging the motif, instructing the motif, etc. he creates a "Photographic work". The creator of such photos enjoys the same rights as all other originators of literary or artistic works.

Personally I find the argument that a scanned image is a photopicture and a photocopied image is not, a bit strange, the technique used should not be the relevant differentiator - that should be the purpose of the copying. In your case you want to publish the scanned image and not just archive it or study it. So in your case when it's the library that does the work of copying the texts, it's reasonable that the library has a photopicture copyright. The problem is of course that you are not allowed to take your own pictures, but then the library does own the physical texts and it's therefore perfectly in order that they can govern and restrict the access to these physical texts.

/Peter Brink





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page