{"id":551,"date":"2009-07-15T10:11:20","date_gmt":"2009-07-15T09:11:20","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2022-12-04T12:16:28","modified_gmt":"2022-12-04T12:16:28","slug":"the-whole-npg-wikimedia-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/2009\/07\/15\/the-whole-npg-wikimedia-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"The whole NPG \/ Wikimedia thing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There’s acres and acres<\/a> of stuff to read and write about the whole National Portrait Gallery legal action threat<\/a> against Wikimedia contributor Dcoetzee and his addition<\/a> to the Wikimedia collection. I’m not going to try and add to the noise too much but it would seem apposite to at least comment given my current thread of presentations and posts is all about freedom<\/a>, openness<\/a> and MRD<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As always (just like the argument currently brewing about Free<\/a>), there are two possible dangers in any debate like this. First, we go into too much detail and lose the view of the house because we’re examining the bricks too closely. Second, we polarise the debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m good at polarising, being a bear of simple brain – particularly when it comes to copyright. Simply, I don’t think it works in many cases, and I think this particular example holds – on many levels – great reasons as to why not. Cross-country, cross-domain, cross-sector, hidden images, non-hidden images, etc etc. This level of complexity doesn’t hold well with users, and they will abuse, either knowingly or unknowingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having said that, there are clearly two sides to this particular debate, and actually I think both sides are being pretty reasonable. NPG have offered medium sized pictures; Wikimedia has been on the case<\/a> for some years seeking access to these (arguably) public domain images. The discussion over the detail in this particular case will ramble on; the legal threat will be sorted out of court; everyone will ultimately go away at least semi-happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bigger picture is the more important question, and it is this: why are cultural institutions putting collection (images) online?<\/strong> I ask this as an open question, as un-loaded as it can be (given you probably know where I’m coming from on this).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The possible answers are these (none is mutually exclusive, by the way):<\/p>\n\n\n\n