British Museum makes 1.9M images available for free | Hacker News Reader

British Museum makes 1.9M images available for free

ianvisits.co.uk

624 pointsedward148 comments

This article is misleading in one important aspect - the license for the use of the collection of British Museum in commercial settings.

The article states that the collection of the British Museum can be downloaded for free under the Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This international license permits the use of the subject licensed materials for commercial purposes. But a deeper look into the British Museum license proves that CC BY 4.0 is not applicable here. The Museum defines its license in specific terms (https://www.britishmuseum.org/terms-use/copyright-and-permis...): the Museum's license specifically excludes commercial use in its license and even gives examples of sites and blogs that promote services, etc. So watch out! Don't rely on the Creative Commons license in this case. If you have a blog and you use one of their photos you may get in trouble. Go into the Museum's site and specifically read their license terms.

The article correctly states that the images are licenced under one of the Creative Commons 4.0 licences, and correctly states that only non-commercial use is allowed in the third paragraph, but the author of that article mistakenly links to the CC BY 4.0 licence instead of the correct one.

The British Museum webpage you link to specifies the licence as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Ian has since corrected the link by the way.

Yes but it should be added that "only non-commercial use" excludes almost all practical usages. Even wikipedia doesn't allow to use non-commercial, since it's a legal minefield.

I'm a big fan of CC in general. And I can sort of get behind No Derivatives even though it goes against the "remix" idea that was some of the impetus for CC in the first place. (I actually learned the other week that even the FSF uses ND for media.)

However, Non-Commercial is really bad. Yes, it encourages people to put their work into the commons with the knowledge that no one can legally profit off it. But it's essentially a feel-good license that lets people get warm and fuzzies for putting works into the commons even if, in practice, almost no one can use it.

It's telling that CC spent literally years trying to define what NC meant and as far as I know never got to any sort of official definition.

This isn't new, the 1.9M were already up. It was one of my favorites and its in a list I keep of "High Quality Collections of Digitized Art and Archival Finds" (here: https://simonsarris.com/art-collections)

What's truly new here is a detailed search function that works FAR better than the old one, which would sometimes have a warning/apology box that it didn't quite work!

That's a really helpful list, thanks. There's also the Art Institute of Chicago's collection, which I found from another HN submission [1] recently.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18428614

Love your site! The link to British Museum has a typo: hhttps

What's truly new here is that they are letting people downloand the stuff for free (some restrictions apply).

Wow your site is gorgeous!

Its a shame some of your stuff is linked off to Medium. But I've just discovered your home build posts, and that's something that fascinates and inspires me too, so I have a to go now and read through all that stuff.

Thx for real content!

Your comment in turn piqued my interest - very much enjoyed seeing Simeville and now having a great list of browsing material.

Virtuous circle!

This is actually an unfortunate, but common abuse of the Creative Commons licenses.

Most of these objects are old enough to be in the public domain. Unless the photograph itself can be considered a work of art (which you may argue for 3D objects, but for simple replications of a 2D picture - hardly reasonable) a digital replication of them is in the public domain as well. Applying a "noncommercial" clause to a public domain image is trying to restrict freedoms that copyright law grants.

The Creative Commons FAQ even mentions this case explicitly: https://creativecommons.org/faq/#may-i-apply-a-creative-comm...

Copyright law specifies that a photograph or a scanned copy becomes an original work of art if there's a discernible original creative element present.

Copyright law doesn't define that creative element though. It's entirely subjective. And for good reason because copyright laws are intended to be universally applicable. Another legal principle is the principle of equality when applying a legal framework. A lot of discussion ends up halting in struggles over equal treatment.

This can be avoided in the context of digitization of historical objects though.

When a photographer is contracted or employed, part of the procurement process or the employment contract could include a waiver of photographer copyright.

However, this is a policy choice, not a requirement.

On 26 March 2019, the European Parliament adopted the Copyright in the Digital Market directive. Among all the upheaval about internet freedom, it also contains legal changes that make it more clear for member states on how to deal with cultural heritage in the public domain:

https://pro.europeana.eu/post/copyright-reform-passed-by-eur...

Now, Article 14 sounds like it's banning the practice of acquiring revenue through copies of public domain works. However... it's - again - far more complicated:

http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2019/06/27/the-new-copy...

Ultimately, the hard part about copyright law is that it tries not to differentiate between specific formats and representations. And so, if copyright law bans the sale of reproductions of public domain works it would also, unintentionally, ban the sale of other reproductions: postcards, printed t-shirts, coffee mugs and so on: it would put a lot of souvenir shops out of business as well.

> Copyright law specifies that a photograph or a scanned copy becomes an original work of art if there's a discernible original creative element present.

This varies from country to country. Thank you for the discussion of Article 14 of the EU CDSM directive!

Random facts I found googling around:

Site redesign completed by Numiko (agency) for £146,593. Uses drupal, elasticsearch on the backend.

https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/digital-outcom...

https://twitter.com/numiko/status/1255102332704096264

Almost 200K USD. That seems like quite a steal, almost a reverse heist. Amazing that the museum was able to work that out. I wonder about the size of the team, how tight the spec was, etc. It's been fun to search around...a very impressive collection for sure.

Maybe there are some off the shelf elements to this. The search engine and back end integration is standard, so they only had to write the front end code.

Near the bottom of the UK bid site is public Q&A with some interesting technical tidbits, such as integrating with a Magento web shop, etc.

Yeah, that's pretty interesting for sure:

> A previous project to replatform and rebuild the site that was aborted in early 2017, has yielded a significant amount of development work on the design, creating multiple assets including content models and front-end design that we would like to repurpose.

> Earlier this year we conducted a new discovery phase to re-establish what we were setting out to achieve and this has culminated in a new vision and objectives for the website, high level requirements, user stories and technical options and recommendations.

Phew. Reading that and trying to imagine the circumstances, I feel for those previous-platform people too.

OMG I actually bid on ahem a remarkably similar project at my old job! It was the worst tender I've ever done. We were shortlisted, and they asked for massive amount of detail in the proposed architecture as part of the bid. Early on, they stated that they'd be open to looking at a solution that used headless Drupal, which is what several shortlisted agencies were proposing including us. I spent a month on the bid, which is a lot more than I usually would have because I love the place, and had a really good architecture in mind. I was really pleased with the architecture that I produced, which had quite complex requirements with all the integrations they needed. The main site would have a Gatsby front end, and we'd be saving them tens of thousands on their hosting bills. So, a week before we're due to go up to present to them, they contact all of the bidders saying that they've decided that they won't consider headless after all, and would we mind pitching vanilla Drupal instead. A month of work down the pan. My colleagues cobbled something together over the weekend. Our bid was about 50% above the winner, and it was generally a miserable experience.

So, happy ending though: a year later we sold a site with an architecture very similar to my original proposal, to a client that doesn't mess us around, with a realistic budget and the project went really well. A few months after that I left the company, and I now work at Gatsby, so I can build open source Gatsby stuff all day and don't need to deal with fickle public sector clients ever again.

> are being made available for anyone to use for free under a Creative Commons 4.0 license.

I wonder why are they not public domain? IIRC if the image itself is public domain, a non-artistic picture of it is public domain as well because the act of making the picture isn't an act of art any more but an act of craftmanship.

Museums really try to hold on to the 'copyright' on their reproduction, for example by claiming that the act of reproduction can be seen as creative, and not purely technical. See for example this response by the Van Gogh museum [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21671790

Some museums try to do that. It's not a very well-regarded practice.

It is strongly encouraged by the right wing governments cutting the museums' budgets.

I live in a left wing country and local museums will gladly make people pay a lot to get scans of drawings or photographs, 150 years old, of their ancestors. They have no right to gate keep peoples personal history.

Since my comment above is my most-downvoted ever, I'll expand.

Somehow the building, collection and staff must be paid for. The opposite of your "no right" position is that there's no requirement for them to keep your personal history; they could throw it out. (Neither situation is absolute: the museum probably does have a legal requirement to maintain its archives, and there's probably not a legal requirement for access to those archives to be completely free.)

I used to work for a museum, and for each collection they knew the cost to maintain it. Every item in collection X costs £1.50/year to "keep", for example. This varies a lot, a collection of rock samples might be cheap, a famous painting in a humidity-controlled room expensive.

If the government provides funding, that influences how much revenue the museum must collect -- it could be between £0 and £AlmostEverything. In Britain, general access (i.e. having a look) is often free in the government-funded museums, as is academic/research access, but they try and make some money on the gift shop and other access, like yours.

Since Britain elected right-wing governments, the funding was cut significantly, with instructions to the museums to fund themselves by charging for services that were previously free.

Example: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/mar/22/austerity-fo...

> I used to work for a museum, and for each collection they knew the cost to maintain it. Every item in collection X costs £1.50/year to "keep", for example. This varies a lot, a collection of rock samples might be cheap, a famous painting in a humidity-controlled room expensive.

Is this information available to the general public? Do museums ask for donations to help with the upkeep of their collections? With government funding being slashed to such an extent, I'm not sure what's stopping them from doing that.

They ask for donations from wealthy donors, the general public, and appropriate research institutions (government or private). They employ professional fundraisers and so on.

Wealthy donors like to have their name on the new/refurbished building or a single project ("digitize these portraits"), but donate a lot of money for that purpose.

Research institutions will fund things necessary for the project, but it's difficult to get funding to make general improvements or maintenance. That's not their purpose. "Digitize the 19th century British portraits" sounds like a project, "migrate that data we digitized to CDs in 2000 to a new database system" generally doesn't.

The general public donate small amounts -- e.g. an extra £1 on their exhibition ticket, or £10 in the collection box when they leave, or an annual membership for paid-for exhibitions. This money can be spent fairly freely, so it's more likely to be spent on everything else -- maintaining buildings, rooms, curating collections, digitizing things that don't fall into a nice digitization project, and so on. In Britain, for the museums that have been free for a long time (including the British Museum), it can be difficult to increase these donations ("I already paid in taxes").

I can't see a by-collection breakdown in the annual financial report of the British Museum, or my former employer. Perhaps it would need an FOI request.

If your museums and galleries are free to the public, like most are in the UK, it’s a reasonable part of the funding model

Don’t many museums run on donations and tax money?

Not all museums. Rijksmuseum[1], Finnish National Gallery via Europeana[2], Met Museum[3], National Museum Sweden[4], Minneapolis Institute of Art[5], The Walters Art Museum[6], Art Institute of Chicago[7], Cleveland Museum of Art[8], Paris Musées[9], The Smithsonian[10], and Birmingham Museums[11] all have CC0 art available.

[1] https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/search?q=&f=1&p=1&ps=12&type=p...

[2] https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/collections/art?f%5BDATA_...

[3] https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search#!/search?mat...

[4] https://www.nationalmuseum.se/en/samlingarna/fria-bilder

[5] https://collections.artsmia.org/

[6] https://art.thewalters.org/

[7] https://www.artic.edu/collection?q=test&is_public_domain=1&d...

[8] http://www.clevelandart.org/art/collection/search?only-open-...

[9] http://parismuseescollections.paris.fr/en/recherche/image-li...

[10] https://www.si.edu/search/collection-images?edan_q=landscape...

[11] http://dams.birminghammuseums.org.uk/asset-bank/action/viewD...

This really seems like a stretch. The creative part of a simple reproduction of a Van Gogh painting is the Van Gogh part, not the shutter speed of the camera used to take a picture of it, the choice of the ink and paper in the printer, etc..

And Van Gogh's copyright has expired.

Because they wanted to disallow commercial use.

AFAIU this license allows commercial use, but requires attribution.

Commercial use is explicitly disallowed.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/terms-use/copyright-and-permis...

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

And they want to disallow that because.... ?

They can make money from it, and with their funding being cut by the government, they must try and find other sources of income.

"A spokeswoman for the [British] museum confirms to artnet News that it is facing “considerable” financial pressure from the reduction in real terms of grant-in-aid from government, with its public funding cut by 30 percent since 2010."

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/british-museum-bp-climate-...

> They can make money from it

Can they really? And if so, it's only at the cost of restricting access to culture, relatively to what's possible. Is it really the right thing to do?

> a non-artistic picture of it

I believe that precedent says that these are artistic images, partly because you wouldn't be able to make such high quality images yourself just pointing your camera in the museum. They set up lighting and things and that counts as art.

> I wonder why are they not public domain?

Not all countries have the concept of public domain, meaning the authors don't have a legally defined way to give up all of their rights. CC0 is the usual license in these cases.

Don't know about UK though.

Yes, we have the concept of public domain here in the UK. Works typically enter the public domain 70 years after the death of the creator, however there are various exceptions.

I agree, and moreover, "non-commercial" usage excludes almost every practical use. I used to work in media and we found photographers have different understandings what this license means. Some were ok to use their photo for illustration purposes for example in our article, while others were offended that editorial is not non-commercial. We quickly made a rule to not touch anything non-commercial. So basically those photos cannot be normally re-published, since almost everyone has some commercial element included in their outlet, and then you are in the grey zone.

I don't know of any countries that don't have a concept of the public domain at all, but there are countries where authors can't put their works into it, which is a different question from whether it exists at all. I don't think Shakespeare's First Folio is in copyright in any country in the world, for example. Here in Argentina we did have a misguided attempt to impose a tax on the reproduction of public-domain works (the Canon Digital) which fortunately failed; it would have essentially outlawed Wikipedia.

Important note: CC BY-NC-SA is a non-free license since it discriminates against fields of endeavour.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/terms-use/copyright-and-permis...

...which makes it really a shame when people use it, since it fragments the commons -- you can't combine it with CC-BY-SA content.

For anyone considering, please just use by-sa. The share-alike requirement is probably enough to discourage the exploitative type of commercial use you probably want to avoid.

I think CC-BY-NC-SA is quite good: basically the NC means that if you want to make money from this content then you should share with the creators, or at least ask for extra permission, that's reasonable IMO. You can still share my content, just not make money by sharing it (unless you ask).

Is that really bad?

Yes. British people have already paid the lion's share of what is cost to produce these images, ie getting the artifacts cleaned and into a place where they can be easily photographed. We should be able to use it to generate revenue, since this is further taxed anyway. Seems like a wasted opportunity.

Ironically many works of the British Library are out of copyright abroad, but remain in copyright within the UK.

That's a good question.

Another good question is "Should the nation of Greece and the Greek people be allowed to profit off of pictures that the British Museum has taken of objects that are only in the British Museum because they were pillaged by British soldiers?"

It seems really bad that a nation can invade many other nations and pillage their cultural pieces to squirrel them away in a museum and then dictate to the citizens of those nations what they can or can't do with pictures of the artifacts.

The notion that the British Museum can tell Egyptian citizen what they can or can't do with photographs of the Rosetta Stone is pretty odious.

I agree with the sentiment, but at a more abstract level it is almost as shaky that an Egyptian citizen today is entitled to art from the pharaonic times more than a British citizen today.

Nothing shaky about it since the Egyptian citizens would be the ones who would have those artworks today had the brits not come round to express their ancient tradition of thieving

It's the classic problem. I think when I am much older I will commit a lot of crime to benefit my great grandchildren. Time will ease their culpability and they can use arguments like the above.

Right of conquest is often how kings get a kingdom or expand it.

And was criminalised after world war 2, so its proceeds from a historical crime.

By that standard so is the whole of America. There's a line to draw somewhere.

How convenient for America

To be a snarky: that was a cartel that benefited from the deed in the past outlawing its competition.

This conclusion assumes many things that are not a given, such as the assumptions that it would have been not have been lost, damaged, or stolen by a third party during all of that time.

Indeed, 'ownership' of ancient things is never so simple.

The stone was carved ~196 BC (Hellenistic period)

Circa 1470 AD the stone was taken (probably from the town of Sais) by slaves of Egyptian/Syrian Sultan Quaitbay for use as raw building material for a military Fort (Fort Jullien aka Fort of Qaitbey)

The French discovered it during Napoleon's Egypt/Syria campeign in 1799 AD

The British defeated the French and took the stone to London under the Capitulation of Alexandria in 1801 AD

> The Rosetta Stone is a fragment of a larger stele. No additional fragments were found in later searches of the Rosetta site. Owing to its damaged state, none of the three texts is absolutely complete. The top register, composed of Egyptian hieroglyphs, suffered the most damage. Only the last 14 lines of the hieroglyphic text can be seen; all of them are broken on the right side, and 12 of them on the left. wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone

So because it is possible someone else may have come along and stolen it, that is a justification for the Brits to steal (and keep) it?

The point is that Britain has those artifacts now and Greece/Egypt/other countries want them back now.

>So because it is possible someone else may have come along and stolen it, that is a justification for the Brits to steal (and keep) it?

Please do not pollute the conversation with strawmen. There are more options here than the two extremes. Take a look at the comment to which I was responding:

>...the Egyptian citizens would be the ones who would have those artworks today had the brits not come round to express their ancient tradition of thieving

And take another look at my actual comment:

>This conclusion assumes many things that are not a given, such as the assumptions that it would have been not have been lost, damaged, or stolen by a third party during all of that time.

The comment to which I was responding presented an absurd and presumptive claim. Absurd claims should be called out for what they are, regardless of which 'side' you perceive to be strengthened or weakened by doing so.

It was only stolen 100-200 years ago. It had survived for 2000-4000 years... I'm not sure your argument holds weight.

If you read the link to the article about the Elgin marbles I posted in response to the original Brit-bashing comment that launched this thread, you'll see it does; at least in the sense that speaking authoritatively of rights and wrongs - as though the case is proven - is unwise.

I appreciate the form of your comment: A factual claim followed by a statement of uncertainty.

My argument is that the comment to which I was responding was a non sequitur premised on a number of unstated assumptions. I threw in a few examples to invite the reader to think laterally, to investigate. You question my argument, so I wonder: Have you done so? Have you put the thought in to examine the claim made, and to see what other assumptions are being hidden?

Regarding the facts you emphasize, I don't agree that "only" is a good modifier to place before "100-200 years" in this context. The 2000-4000 years you mention is entirely irrelevant, given survivorship bias.

It's not 'just' ancient artefacts.

There are also indigenous australian remains and artefacts stolen and refused to be returned.

Stolen up into the mid 20th century.

For readers after a more nuanced view with context:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2017/03-...

The problem with any Non Commercial licenses is where you draw the line. Say you want to mirror these images, can you show ads on the site to cover hosting costs ? What about asking for donations ? What if you want to print them and distribute to schools - can you get reimbursed for the paper ink and distribution costs ?

It gets murky pretty fast, often preventing people from even using such media as they fear possible issues down the line due to uncertainty. At the same time, any bootleggers won't care.

Due to this NC clauses are generally not recommended and are for example not part of any OCI accepted open source licenses.

"What if you want to print them and distribute to schools - can you get reimbursed for the paper ink and distribution costs"

That does not fit my mental definition of "commercial", which I would define as for profit. I'm sure there are corner cases but I don't think that is one of them.

Running ads whilst mirroring them - that might be hard to justify unless the revenue was only enough to support the website. Then you should wonder why mirror them at all? Now what about using them in a novel way which is ad supported? Probably OK, provided its at cost and you attribute the source.

Commercial usage includes any exchange of money, even if you're taking a huge financial loss by using the images, so this license prohibits all of that.

Really depends. Don't know about other countries, but French private pilotes (PPL) aren't allowed to fly commercially. Yet, they can and often do split the cost of the flight (fuel) with their passengers, and that is considered to be within the law.

Even though there is an exchange of money ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

'For profit' status isn't about actually making a profit, but about specific commercial arrangements. A money losing company doesn't suddenly become a 'non-profit'.

But no clue whether the license care about this?

That's the main issue as I see it - it makes many uses quite murky so people will just avoid those all together rather than risk someone deciding later on it was a comercial endeavour and thus breach of the license.

I'm not a lawyer, but that doesn't seem correct. What about non-profit or general interest associations? They achieve goals with transactions of money and goods, but not for profit. Are non-profit associations considered "commercial" ?

Commercial use in the context of copyright is not about money at all, but if the images are used to advertise a product or service. A newspaper could use a non commercial licensed photo to provide context to an article, even though the newspaper is made my a for profit company, they sell newspapers, and they charge for advertising. A newspaper could not use the same photo to advertise a product, even if the newspaper company is a non profit and gives the paper away for free.

Hopefully British museum just says yes to everyone but Getty.

Charging money for something is not a factor in whether something is a commercial use. It is only commercial use if the images are used for advertising purposes. None of your examples are murky, and none of them are commercial use.

Charging money has been a factor in commercial use in caselaw I've read, but it's not the only factor and isn't solely persuasive. Offering something for free can be commercial as it effects the market, reducing demand for commercial offerings.

Showing ads alongside content is absolutely commercial use for copyright purposes.

It sounds like you are talking about copyright in the context of fair use. Fair use matters for using work without permission from the rights holder. Editorial vs commercial for the purposes of a license has some difference in the legal standard. The nature of the work, affect on the market of the original etc is not a factor for editorial vs commercial.

Showing ads alongside content is not commercial use. You can use an NC licensed image on a blog with ads, or in a newspaper or magazine with ads as long as the image itself is not being used to advertise something.

> Is that really bad?

Yes, it's quite mean-spirited. Basically others are free to use the thing that the licenser made unless they're savvy enough to think of a way to make money from it, in which case the licenser gets pissy and says "nope". For no reason other than "I didn't think of that".

> in which case the licenser gets pissy and says "nope". For no reason other than "I didn't think of that".

This is certainly not the intent that I had when choosing that license for the photos I published.

I saw what Virgin Mobile Australia did[1][2] by pulling CC-BY attributed photos from Flickr and that cemented my position on not wanting my photos to be used in advertising.

[1] https://flickr.com/photos/sesh00/515961023/ [2] https://www.smh.com.au/technology/virgin-sued-for-using-teen...

>For no reason other than "I didn't think of that".

Of course there are other possible reasons. Many people have a range of relevant ideological positions on the profit motive, and when and where it should be applied.

Here's a blog post from a friend of mine that explains my viewpoint pretty well. Skip to "Issues with Creative Commons licensing" (or read the whole thing, it's not that long): https://blog.wolftune.com/2011/07/brain-parts-song-video.htm...

edit: I'll add on (my opinion, not from the post) that commercial use that actually respects the share-alike requirement is actually a good thing.

Say I take a photo and share it cc-by-sa, then a company adapts edits it to use on their website and releases the edited version cc-by-sa (as they are required to). Now anybody else can use their edited version, too. In effect, we've taken commercial dollars and put them towards adding to the commons. I think that's a great outcome, in a world where currently most FLO[1] works are extremely underfunded.

The type of commercial use that I'm opposed to is where a company takes something I (or others) make, embeds it into their proprietary product, and contributes nothing back to the FLO ecosystem (money or time). That's exploitative. But the share-alike requirement already prevents this, without creating incompatibility among otherwise FLO licenses.

[1]: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/free-libre-open#flo

just use cc0, for god’s sake.

Except those that are reproductions of 2d public domain works... which means they aren't subject to copyright in the United States.

When you access a copy in the UK for the purposes of duplication, isn't that infringement in the UK?

I'm accessing the images under the terms of the license offered. It isn't my problem that they don't enjoy copyright protection in my country of residence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_...

British Museum ... in the United States

> British Museum ... in the United States

Hey, think about export and re-import:

I use an image which is PD in the US to make a new work, whch gets reimported into the UK... where the image I used is not PD. What happens? It has to have come up.

The copyright holder can sue you in the UK, if they feel like it.

Yes I guess this is a controversial opinion: I do not consider anything that has the NC truly free. Pretty much all "free" datasets are NC-licensed, but they still throw around the word free. GPL is in a similar vein.

In the AV industry, there are a bunch of big datasets, all NC. At least now we have the Udacity sets and Audi recently released a really big dataset which was a proper CC BY-SA, Finally! This is something I with good conscious would be able to label free IMHO.

The GPL explicitly does not prevent commercial purposes or outright sale of covered works.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

> GPL is in a similar vein

The GPL is not-not-commercial, or in plainer terms, it's commercial.

I think that's a fair argument to make for GPL when you're talking about software, e.g. GIMP, which you could use to produce commercial art assets that you then sell. But for data, whether these images or audio clips or weather measurements or whatever, the requirement that derivative products also be licensed under GPL makes their use effectively non-commercial.

You can still sell them. I don't get how it makes them 'non-commercial'?

In many cases this had the effect that you can sell them only once since the buyer then has everything he needs to sell it, and will presumably do so for less.

While they could sell them for less they generally cannot sell as your product (name, logo, etc) is your copyright or trademark that you do not license when you license the code GPL.

CC-SA and GPL exist precisely to prohibit this kind of thing, except for your name, logo, etc., which someone can remove in order to resell your derivative work.

I've always thought that a bit unlikely - if someone is going through the trouble to resell they take on business costs, probably some support or maintenance costs, and a desire to profit (otherwise they'd just post the GPL'ed portion publicly). There's also no guarantee the reseller has access to any updated upstream code (especially in the situation that undercutting results in the originator stopping production). Legal? Definitely. Profitable? Maybe, sometimes.

As I understand GPL it has a provision to provide source code such that it may be modified by a recipient of source or compiled code. I can't find anything similar in CC-BY-SA [1] other than a grant that the recipient of compiled code may reverse engineer that code if they desire so long as anything that person adapts is also shared under a compatible license.

[1]: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode

Answers.com used to make enough ad revenue from their copies of Wikipedia pages that they sponsored Wikimania with it. And of course Cygnus, Soft Landing Software, Slackware, Red Hat, CheapBytes, and so on, have made a great deal of money on GPL software, most of which they didn't write themselves.

It's true that CC-BY-SA doesn't include the source-code-provision provision of the GPL, because it isn't intended for software, and it isn't clear what the source code for, say, a photograph would be. A PSD, maybe; but what about the RAW from your camera? What if you don't shoot raw? Are you obligated to include documentation of the photographer's lighting setup in order to redistribute? Their thinking about the framing? Shots from the other angles they tried that didn't work out? Such considerations would probably have resulted in SA works being impossible to legally redistribute in practice, so the license doesn't impose them.

I wasn't aware of Answers.com; that's a great counter-example! I knew of a few of the others before this comment and I've viewed them as providing some amount of service or support for the price paid so yes they are selling GPL they didn't write, but they're selling something else (their time) along with it.

There's certainly an argument that selling support for software you didn't write (or didn't write in large part) is 'bad'. I also believe that if you are selling the (free/gratis, GPL) software without support you're not going to be in business long.

And all good points on the differences between CC & GPL, my only point was that selling compiled CC-BY-SA binaries provided security-through-obscurity level protection from someone reselling your product (when paired with trademark protection).

Thank you for all the things to think about!

Any works you produce using the GPL'd asset must also be GPL'd. So I can put a price-tag on my movie, comic book, AI model, or tutorial, but anyone else can also copy and redistribute my work with no legal recourse from me. It's hard to see the feasibility of commercial use.

The source for the engines of the first three quake and doom games were open sourced. I purchased those games after that happened. Worth mentioning that the engines were open sourced, not the assets. The assets are obviously a big part of the experience. But if not for the open source versions of their engines (prboom, ioquake3, etc) I'd not be playing these games today.

There's plenty of GPL software being sold. Mostly things that are niche enough that nobody cares to repost the source code.

And of course with AI models you could post a AGPL version publicly and sell more permissive licenses.

CC BY-SA is copyleft like GPL and it can be used in commercial products.

I feel like you are choosing your own definition of commercial that's not generally used when talking about licensing. Generally, a non-commercial license is one which forbids you from using the creation as part of a money-making venture. The GPL does not do that.

From one of the image descriptions:

To license images for charged-for journals and publications, and other commercial uses, please contact British Museum Images.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/terms-use/copyright-and-permis... links to permissions@bmimages.com and sales@bmimages.com

Interesting as one area they class as `allowed` would be "One-off classroom use"

Which seems odd, as that would mean you can only use a single image once in a classroom to educate students and never ever use that image again for as long as you teach to any other class of students.

That can't be right, is there a one-off definition in education that I'm unaware of?

I'd interpret it as being free to use for individual teachers, but if the school integrates it into their standard curriculum, then they've gotta pay.

I'm sure you're right. Which is kinda the crux, limiting an understanding of history thru taxation, whilst something small, it would soon with other information taxation costs end up creating a educational divide even wider than we have today.

I also feel that if they allowed and encouraged educational establishments to use them for free. They would create more potential customers who in their lifetime, would go a see them at the museum. So for a Museum, it would tick the PR, tourism, and visitors count boxes nicely. With that, I'm going to email them, though will craft the idea out more, any input welcome.

I'll release them on The Pirate Bay as CC-BY-SA. Don't worry.

If someone has a blog on tourism in Britain and has Adsense on the blog, does this mean he can't use these images even on pages that don't have Adsense?

Unfortunately, CC-NC does allow that kind of thing, even though to my eyes it's clearly commercial.

FWIW most of these images are plain 2D reproductions of already-public-domain images on which the museum can’t claim any copyright.

Under British law they can claim copyright of the photograph.

Or so they claim. The legal arguments that museums rely on to assert this are ... really bad. I mean really bad. But taking on the combined might of the UK museum sector is not a good idea. So we have to pretend that a couple of irrelevant old judgements mean that "sweat of the brow copyright" isn't the nonsense it so plainly is.

It'd be pretty tricky to photograph your own images that good! I'm not an expert but I believe that makes them 'artistic' in the eyes of the law, and so not copyrightable through precedent.

Effort is not commonly enough to validly claim copyright. A creative spark is required. So it depends on how rule oriented the photographers worked. E.g. Straight scan of painting hard to defend. Photo of 3d sculpture with interesting background is easier.

Usual exceptions are jurisdictions like the Netherlands and Belgium. Also not a lawyer.

> A creative spark is required.

Right, and I'm pretty sure setting up a photography and lighting rig on a painting is enough in the UK to be a creative spark, under case law.

I don’t know for the UK, but under the US and French law this has nothing to do with creativity, and 2D reproduction don’t grant you any new right.

> I don’t know for the UK, but under the US and French law...

Yes the idea that 2D reproductions don't grant new rights is indeed a Europeism, presumably from the French tradition and adopted into the US.

The UK was sort of starting to adopt it as well before we left the EU. But the traditional view in the UK is that a photograph is a new copyrightable work.

https://www.blakemorgan.co.uk/photographing-the-public-domai...

US copyright law derives from UK jurisprudence, not French, but US precedent has added a much greater requirement for originality, arguably starting with Feist.

Link to collection: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection

Still applying copyright to digitized versions of public domain works. That's NOT OK.

I've read so many of these announcements over the years. I always end up being disappointed.

Lithmus test:

1. Is there a .torrent?

2. If not, is there a batch download mechanism?

3. Why not?

IMHO: I think museum curators do it this way because they feel doing it more liberally would strip them of their power.

(Also: why would anyone downvote this? I'm puzzled.)

For me the most disappointing thing is the licence: they all use the NC clause which makes the licence non-free, and thus these images can’t be uploaded on Wikimedia Commons.

Having a .torrent or a batch download mechanism is just a technical issue, which can be solved.

Probably most of them can as long as US copyright law doesn't start permitting sweat-of-the-brow copyright.

What does US Copyright law have to do with it?

These images are not subject to copyright in the US.

that is where wikimedia is hosted

There is nothing stopping you making a torrent.

I’m not sure why you expect museum staff to spend their time catering to your niche needs.

Yeah, why would anyone want to download everything instead of manually going through through their 100% super specialized fantastic viewers, one at a time?

Whenever an institution announces "X million something available for free".. what they're really typically saying is.. "Please give us more attention. We're not going to just give away the data willynilly. We just want the goodwill and the PR. You may view a subset of the data through our [typically fantastically crappy] viewer."

I'd be highly surprised if they weren't using IIIF.

https://iiif.io/

edit: They are in the participating institutions

https://iiif.io/community/

If you are arguing that they aren't really giving it away completely for free, I would agree. On the other hand, many people accept the word "free" to include "no charge, but strings attached", depending on context. Some would consider "you are free to view them on our website, without paying a monetary fee" to be sufficiently 'free' for this usage.

In your original comment you ask why you are downvoted. I don't have an answer, but please understand that simply asking this question, in this way, is discouraged by the guidelines and is likely to bring more downvotes.

Serious question for HNers -- is this the biggest shithole on the Internet? Dang has gone to great lengths to ensure that only far-right anti-science, anti-intellectual noise sustains.

If you want to deny AGW, the impact of COVID-19, hail the president, etc -- this is the place for you.

I'll email Paul Graham about this. Does he realize how his baby has become such a shithole?

If there is any evidence for your accusation, you should be able to link it. Do you have any?

I’m personally happy with the licence, which makes it easier for people to use without being pursued by Getty or similar as happens with public domain images.

People here are complaining about it not being public domain, but as soon as image set is made public domain, HN posters complain about how Getty will abuse it. Can’t win!

That doesn't make any sense.

You can win, just don't claim things aren't in the public domain when they are.

This includes you, Getty.

Hello rightswashing.

Sticking an NC license on faithful reproductions of 2D images is a bit low.

I wonder when Getty Images will come claim them and then sue to Museum for $1M

Thank you for posting this. I had missed this -- I am excited to improve Desktop Pictures collection with Egyptian, Roman and other beautiful artefacts

Sample API query URL (undocumented)

  https://www.britishmuseum.org/api/_search?keyword[]=greek

And in case anyone's interested, the relative locations the API gives are relative to https://media.britishmuseum.org/media

Thanks, marked off my todo list.

As an aside, the excellent

History of the World in 100 Objects

is currently available for download.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nrtd2/episodes/downloads

For context, this series of radio programmes is presented by a former director of the British Museum and features 100 objects from the collection of the museum (full list here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/about/british-museum...). The objects range from the prehistoric (2 million years ago) to the modern (10 years ago).

Thanks, I was going to add this context, but my anti-procrastination app-blocker kicked me off before I could do so. :)

I'd like to see an AI have a look at these and spit out what the average image looks like in this collection.

> average

My money's on brown splodge. And I don't think you can call that AI.

One goal of AI/ML for this kind of task is to discover a latent space of the source images, such that the “average” in that space is always a “valid” image (not splodge).

Animal Crossing QR code generator or it didn’t happen (joke)

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