"has anyone done any research into the true size of the commercial
market for copyrighted historical images?"

I think this is about the third or fourth time in this thread that
this question has been asked so one can only assume we don't know. FOI
requests of the type that Dan has conveyed here perhaps need to be
made to other institutions. Is this kind of comprehensive survey and
analysis something that the other MCG has undertaken?

I would also suggest that, as others too have pointed out elsewhere,
that this is more than just a copyright breach issue, it's about
acting honourably. If you leave your keys in your car and someone else
see this and uses it claiming some kind of greater good, would you be
ok about it? The matter remains that it is NPG who has to care for
these objects, display them and exhibit and oversee research on them.
Why shouldn't they then have some kind of prerogative to present them
online in a manner that BOTH befits their role as a public institution
and as owner? We all know and shouldn't pretend otherwise that the
'public' funding of these organisations is getting smaller and smaller
- one can only hope that this doesn't diminish their desire to still
act as a public institution.

A comparison would be the issue of Ordnance Survey and the ridiculous
stranglehold they have on 'publicly-funded' mapping and the enormous
costs of obtaining this data from them. In such cases OS certainly is
not demonstrating any honourable behaviour towards their remit as the
country's official cartographers...

While the income from commercial exploitation (this is perhaps a bad
term to use) of high res images is clearly unknown country-wide it is
the issue that WM can re-license the images which they didn't create
that is surely of the essence here?

What I am trying, admittedly painstakingly to say, is that this
controversy is throwing up ethical issues and conflicts more than ones
of legalities of potential loss of revenue, which I agree, has not
been proven one way on another to date.

Can we start talking then, about the competing rights of both parties?

Tehmina



2009/7/16 Nick Poole <[log in to unmask]>:
> Hi again,
>
> Interesting thread - it's also important not to miss the political capital which these museums gain by being able to demonstrate enterprise against public investment.
>
> There are very few (possibly no) purely publicly-funded domains left, so even if the museum can't pay its whole salary bill through trading, the value of the activity in its own right is nonetheless significant.
>
> Nick
> Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andy Powell <[log in to unmask]>
>
> Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:45:36
> To: [log in to unmask]<[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: NPG / Wikimedia
>
>
> But that £400,000 (actually £378,000) represents about 12% of their overall income (ignoring investments) - again, assuming that I'm reading things correctly?
>
> I would suggest that this is a significant chunk of money if we assume that the real issue here is about sustainability rather than copyright per se.
>
> Andy
>
> ________________________________
>
> Andy Powell
> Research Programme Director
> Eduserv
>
> [log in to unmask]
> 01225 474319 / 07989 476710
> www.eduserv.org.uk
> efoundations.typepad.com
> twitter.com/andypowe11
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dan Zambonini
> Sent: 16 July 2009 09:45
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: NPG / Wikimedia
>
>> Letting everyone have access to the digital images & do with them as they wish
>> could only possibly happen if the institutions that look after the collections
>> were given enough public money not to need the licensing fees that they would
>> lose; and the copyright owners were also compensated.
>>
>> Does anyone have any bright ideas about how to make up the funding gap in the
>> meantime?
>
> According to the NPG Annual Report for 2007/2008 (assuming I'm reading it
> correctly), they made £130,000 'profit' (from £400,000 revenue) from the
> Picture Library. According to an FOI request on picture licensing, this year
> was also their best ever year for licensing to third party websites (making
> almost £19,000 in revenue, almost twice what they achieved in 2008/2009).
>
> I'm not at all condoning the actions of the Wikipedia user, but it does seem
> like we're possibly assuming that picture licensing plays a bigger role in
> the gallery revenue than it actually does.
>
> Dan
>
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-- 
Tehmina Goskar, MA AMA
[log in to unmask]

Historical and Museum Research
Web Communication and Learning Development

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