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Comment by ErrantX | Hacker News Reader

It confuses me somewhat how they can claim copyright over documents that are thousands of years old :S

http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/terms_pg

Copyright in the digital images of the manuscripts, created by the Israel Museum and displayed on this site, is held by the Israel Museum. Reproducing these digital images in any manner other than for research or private study requires prior permission or licensing.

The Wikipedia crowd are (rightly) griping about this; we've long held that faithful digital reproductions of 2D copyrighted work simply inherit the copyright of the original. It's sad to see such a nice thing marred by a silly approach to copyright.

As if they are scared people are going to, what, misuse the material and make a fortune out of it?

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> We've long held that faithful digital reproductions of 2D copyrighted work simply inherit the copyright of the original.

IANAL but I believe there was a U.S. court case upholding this view, in which a museum attempted to claim copyright on images of artwork made available on their website, and lost a resulting case.

Yep. Bridgeman v. Corel.

It is the copyright of the images themselves, not the documents. The irony of it is, since they own the original pieces, they can prevent you from taking photos.

It's how copyright works unfortunately :( The creator of the content/picture own that picture unless they state it otherwise. Considering the nature of the document, it should be considered of public domain due to the broad public interest the document has.

Not necessarily. In the US, for example, this is not true (and this is the only place I know of it being tested in court). It was ruled that faithful reproductions of 2D works lacked originality (even if they required work to produce) and so PD work does not become copyrightable :)

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_....

So in the US, certainly, I doubt this is copyrightable.

There was a case time ago, where apes, monkeys or gorillas (not sure) "stole" a camera a took pictures of themselves - now you have a copyright by a thousand monkeys...

Even more outrageous considering Israel stole the scrolls from Jordan after the 1967 war.

They claim that, but they are wrong:

"They were purchased by Prof. Mazar, Yigael Yadin ... and brought to Jerusalem, where they were on display at the Rockefeller Museum."

"Jordan alleges that the scrolls were stolen from the Rockefeller Museum..."

"The museum was run by an international board of trustees until 1966, when it was nationalized [read: Stolen] by King Hussein of Jordan."

And in any case they were owned by Prof. Mazar and Yigael Yadin, not Jordan.

Propaganda is everywhere with regards to any Israel/Palestine issue so you can't really believe anything because every issue has rabid loyalists on each side. But the fact is that before 1967 the museum was outside of Israel territory and after 1967 Israel claimed it for itself. There's no denying that.

And in 1948 it was British, and captured by Jordan. The Museum was started in 1938 by the British High Commissioner.

So Jordan captured it and it was in turn captured. Jordan has no claim whatsoever - either they recognize captures or they don't. You can't recognize your own captures but not those of others.

I suppose Britain might have a claim.

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