Getting away from the specifics of *this* particular case and onto the broader issue of ‘who funds digitisation’ . . .

From the BBC article

“The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies has backed the National Portrait Gallery’s stance.

“If owners of out of copyright material are not going to have the derivative works they have created protected, which will result in anyone being able to use then for free, they will cease to invest in the digitisation of works, and everyone will be the poorer,” it wrote in an email to its members.”

Surely the investment in digitisation by publicly funded institutions is not optional. Whether derivative works are or are not protected is irrelevant unless we are talking about private companies – and even then there are plenty of companies whose business models revolve around the republishing of out of Copyright material.

We have a big problem if this sort of thinking spreads to public institutions.