Dear MCGers,
Please see below the email from Bernard Horrocks at the NPG and the associated Prepared Statement from the NPG Press Office.
All best,
Nick
Dear Members,
National Portrait Gallery (NPG) and Wikipedia
You may have seen articles in the press reporting that the NPG is 'suing' Wikipedia. As a number of you will already be aware, these reports of 'suing' are not quite accurate. Rather, the Gallery has issued a lawyer's letter, as it is very concerned about high resolution rather than low resolution images having been appropriated for the Wikipedia site without permission.
The Gallery charges fees to allow publication of high resolution images. The posting of these high resolution images in a Commons repository therefore directly threatens the Gallery's income. This income enables the Gallery to digitise further material for the public good. So actions like Wikipedia's could be regarded ultimately as self-defeating.
Wikipedia's rather nebulous structure (consisting largely of thousands of volunteers and only a handful of staff) makes it hard to find - and contact - responsible individuals with the necessary authority. The Gallery initially wrote to Wikipedia's legal team ('designated agent') but received no response. It then contacted Wikipedia administrators who referred the Gallery back to the legal team. Again, the Gallery received no response. The Gallery's only course of action, then, to safeguard its assets, was to try to resolve this with the individual, Derrick Coetzee. Mr Coetzee is not an employee of Wikipedia - he is a volunteer having the status of 'Wikipedia administrator' - although this status appears to have been revoked for the time being.
The Gallery's invitation to Wikipedia to resolve this issue remains open.
Please find attached the NPG Press Statement on this issue. If anyone would like any further detail please contact me direct.
All best wishes,
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Bernard Horrocks
Copyright Officer
National Portrait Gallery St Martin's Place London WC2H OHE
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY PRESS OFFICE
PREPARED STATEMENTS
July 2009
Position Statement: the National Portrait Gallery images and Wikipedia Internet Encyclopaedia
The National Portrait Gallery is very strongly committed to giving access to its Collection. In the past five years the Gallery has spent around £1 million digitising its Collection to make it widely available for study and enjoyment. We have so far made available on our website more than 60,000 digital images, which have attracted millions of users, and we believe this extensive programme is of great public benefit.
The Gallery supports Wikipedia in its aim of making knowledge widely available and we would be happy for the site to use our low-resolution images, sufficient for most forms of public access, subject to safeguards. However, in March 2009 over 3000 high-resolution files were appropriated from the National Portrait Gallery website and published on Wikipedia without permission.
The Gallery is very concerned that potential loss of licensing income from the high-resolution files threatens its ability to reinvest in its digitisation programme and so make further images available. It is one of the Gallery's primary purposes to make as much of the Collection available as possible for the public to view.
Digitisation involves huge costs including research, cataloguing, conservation and highly-skilled photography. Images then need to be made available on the Gallery website as part of a structured and authoritative database.
To date, Wikipedia has not responded to our requests to discuss the issue and so the National Portrait Gallery has been obliged to issue a lawyer's letter. The Gallery remains willing to enter into a dialogue with Wikipedia.
National Portrait Gallery, London
Nick Poole
Chief Executive
Collections Trust
The new BSI/Collections Trust Code of Practice for Cultural Collections Management and the accompanying Collections Management: A Practical Guide are now available via Collections Link - http://www.collectionslink.org.uk/news/004912.html
Registered offices: 22 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 1JP
Registered Charity no. 273984
Telephone (switchboard): 01223 316 028
www.collectionstrust.org.uk
www.collectionslink.org.uk
www.culturalpropertyadvice.gov.uk
www.discs-uk.info
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