British Museum makes lost Hokusai drawings available online | Hacker News Reader

British Museum makes lost Hokusai drawings available online

smithsonianmag.com

72 pointspseudolus31 comments

Wow, really unfortunate these are locked under copyright of "The Trustees of the British Museum" ([1] for example).

[1] https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/image/1613716997

This doesn't seem like it should be true, even if they claim it.

" In 2019, the European Union adopted the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. Article 14 of the directive states that reproductions of works of visual art that are in the public domain cannot be subject to copyright or related rights, unless the reproduction is an original creative work "

and on the digitisation of those:

" UK Intellectual Property Office confirmed that digital reproductions of public domain images are not protected by copyright, arguing that "according to the Court of Justice of the European Union which has effect in UK law, copyright can only subsist in subject matter that is original in the sense that it is the author's own "intellectual creation". Given this criterion, it seems unlikely that what is merely a retouched, digitised image of an older work can be considered as "original"." "

Presumably works from the early 19th C are out of copyright?

That said, I am all for supporting the BM- it is an amazing institution..

This gets into murky territory and I'm not sure claiming their pictures are in the public domain would hold up in court. This is common practice for museums so I suspect there's precedent in their copyright claims.

I would imagine that they would argue that providing digital artifacts in the form of high resolution images or other media (3d scans, say) constitutes enough of an alteration from the original work so as to fall under copyright.

If anyone has any more information on precedent, court cases or the like, I would like to see it.

I'm unfamiliar with UK law, but it's unlikely that these faithful reproductions enjoy any protection in the US. Many American museums are simply engaged in wholesale copyfraud.

Bridgeman v. Corel, SDNY https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/...

Meshwerks v. Toyota, 10th circuit https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/casebrief/p/casebrief-m...

Very interesting!

The Bridgeman v. Corel looks to be a straight up case of taking pictures of public domain work and then trying to resell. It looks like the courts judged in favor of keeping it public domain, so that's great news.

In the case of Meshwerks v. Toyota, this is not so straight forward. From what I gather, Meshwerks was hired to 3d scan the body of a Toyota prototype car and then Meshwerks turned around and sued Toyota when Toyota used the 3d scan for something or other. The court ruled in favor of Toyota but the claim is that Meshwerks claim to copyright was invalid because the 3d scan was based on "... designs the automobile manufacturer produced, so they were not original works of art that could be copyrighted, and because there was no valid copyright, there could be no infringement."

So this is different from 3d scanning a piece of art, as the sculpture might fall under copyright, say. The Meshwerks v. Toyota was dismissed because, as I read it, engineering artifacts like the body of a Toyota are not considered art and therefor not copyrightable.

EDIT:

Looking at robin_reala's comment [1] linking to the UK's "sweat of the brow" doctrine [2], it looks like your take on copyfraud extends to museums in the UK as well. From the Wikipedia entry:

> In a copyright notice ... the UK Intellectual Property Office confirmed that digital reproductions of public domain images are not protected by copyright ...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24553116

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow#United_Kingd...

Isn't higher resolution less of an alteration?

Not really, the copyright on the photograph will always belong to the photographer. The image is available under creative commons for non-commercial use, which seems fair enough.

Sadly, the images for non-commercial use appear to be restricted to a medium resolution with high JPEG compression artifacts [1].

As an example I downloaded the image https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/image/1613717051 (~1 MB, 2500x1973).

Still good enough for many use cases, but it limits personal prints.

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

Not necessarily. There has to be a “a significant expenditure of labour”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow#United_Kingd...

In the Us at least that was decided based on the photographer having creative input on composition, etc. A pure scan of someone's artwork I don't think qualifies here.

Some other countries have more of a laboriousness based theory though.

To be clear, you're saying that a public institution [1] who's charter is to provide access to artifacts that would otherwise normally be in the public domain and who's funding comes from donations and tax dollars should be expected to then copyright it's material when providing it digitally to the public?

Further, you're saying that artifacts plundered from colonialist rule should then be restricted to the people they've plundered from under restrictive licensing terms?

[1] https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/governance

> should be expected to then copyright it's material when providing it digitally to the public?

I'm saying they have the copyright.

you're saying that artifacts plundered from colonialist rule

Here we go...

ps. both my shallow dismissal and your OT flamebait are discouraged here, so let's call it even and move on

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Link (collection search) to the drawings:

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/search?keyword=Banb...

For those who can't read Chinese ('Kanji'), some of the portraits cover Vietnam, Yunnan, China, India, Korea, Thailand, Mongolia and the Philippines as well as Japan. Possibly also some other areas in northeast Asia, I am unclear on the period terminology. As they are dated 1820s but seem to use Chinese terms from earlier periods, I guess this was an adaptation of an earlier set of Chinese descriptive texts or (heresy to suggest!) images that had been carried to Japan. But that's just supposition.

There is a huge overlap with Kanji, but I think chinese (characters) should be refered as 'Hanzi'or not? The page doesnt load too well on my mobile so not 100% sure what is on the page. Or you meant japanese kanji (adopted chinese characters)?

Considering Hokusai was Japanese, the descriptions are probably written in Kanji. The word “kanji” itself means Chinese character, so I wonder what exactly is your point?

Refereing to chinese character as Kanji is inaccurate. (Also the meaning of compound Hanzi and Kanji is often different, take "jiudian" as an example).

> Refereing to chinese character as Kanji is inaccurate.

"Kanji" is often translated into English as "Chinese character", so the two terms tend to be used interchangeably even when someone is referring to text written in Japanese.

Thanks. I didnt know that. So would people call chinese texts also as kanji?

In Japanese there is no distinction between kanji and hanzi, they are the same thing, and written equally - 漢字.

In English, it would be most appropriate to call Chinese language characters hanzi, and Japanese language characters kanji, but this is an English distinction, not one in the native tongues that use these characters.

As the author of these drawings is Japanese, the correct term would be “kanji”, but the word “kanji” literally means “Chinese character”.

Not intentionally I don't think, but people might do that if they're not sure which language the characters came from or if they just don't know the term "hanzi".

But in this specific case, it is a Chinese character (because that’s what kanji is, and that’s what the word kanji means), and the character is actually kanji, since it was written by a Japanese author.

I think I just found the linguistics equivalent to 'All asians look alike'

Why do you think so?

You referring to hanzi as kanji is more or less the same as someone referring to a chinese person as a japanese person.

I am a Japanese person. I don’t see your point.

Thank you for the link to the drawings themselves. The curator's comments are fascinating. The opening paragraph, for a taste:

> This group of 103 drawings represents a major new discovery relating to Hokusai’s life and works. An amazing range of subjects is represented – figure (religious, mythological, historical, literary), animal, bird and flower and other natural phenomena, and landscape.

> As the subtitle ‘India, China’ signals, the group is dominated by subjects that relate to China, Southeast Asia, India and lands further west.

> Some of the same subjects can be found within Hokusai’s known oeuvre, but many are completely new discoveries.

> Among the latter is a fascinating group of images which imagine the origins of human culture in ancient China – early forms of habitation, fire, agriculture, making rice wine and paper, among other scenes.

> All are treated with the customary fantasy, invention and brush skill found in Hokusai’s late works that could not be matched by any of his pupils – with the possible exception of his artist-daughter Eijo (art-name Ōi, about 1800-after 1857).

Would love to get my hands on traditional woodblock prints of the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji...

There's a gallery in New York that specialises in ukiyo-e. The most notable original Hokusai prints are not cheap, but some of the work is surprisingly affordable. (And some isn't.)

There's also vintage woodblock porn, for those who like that kind of thing.

Really cool, always enjoyed traditional Japanese art :)

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