Public Domain Image Archive | Hacker News Reader

Public Domain Image Archive

pdimagearchive.org

261 pointsdavidbarker32 comments

There are lots of sites that provide images that somebody has claimed are public domain. But for significant use, you what you really need is provenance documentation.

These folks seem to be more up-front about the issue than many sites I’ve seen:

https://pdimagearchive.org/reusing-images/

> On each image page we communicate to the best of our knowledge the rights status of both the underlying work and the digital copy of this work. We provide this information based on a basic knowledge of copyright law and what is communicated by the source institution — it is strictly meant as a guideline and it should not be taken as legal advice. We admit no responsibility for any untoward consequences that may arise through reuse of material featured on our site. If you are requiring certainty as to usage allowed for an image, then you are encouraged to check with the source institution and make your own investigations.

Standard Ebooks has a database of public domain oil paintings for use as book covers. SE is strict about copyright clearance and requires either scans of a copyright‐expired publication containing the painting, or an explicit statement from a reputable museum that the work is CC0. Here’s an entry I contributed:

https://standardebooks.org/artworks/arthur-i-keller/calvin-c...

To be specific, this is US public domain only (which is globally non-standard).

Nothing is globally standard.

On the other hand they do allow search by century and very little from the 19th (and none earlier) century is still in copyright anywhere.

There is a possible problem with countries where a photographer can have copyright over their photograph of an earlier work. Again, there is not global standard.

>There is a possible problem with countries where a photographer can have copyright over their photograph of an earlier work.

To be specific, Germany is one of the few countries where this applies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality

It's an absolutely stupid idea IMO.

This is just the kind of thing I love about the open internet: the insane amount of art available in archives, (e.g. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/, https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en, the Met, etc).

Adding this to the list for one of my side projects[0].

[0] https://flaneur.ink

For your sife project, it would be nice to see a preview of what you're sending

Edit: I saw the small link to examples :)

Does anyone know how easily you can do "copyright clearance" for these supposedly public domain images?

For example, the page for the first image I clicked on said:

    Date
    1833

    Underlying Rights
    Public Domain Worldwide

    Digital Rights
    No Additional Rights

    * Source states “no known restrictions”
    * We offer this info as guidance only

with a link to: https://pdimagearchive.org/reusing-images/

If, for example, you design the cover of a self-published book around such an image, is Amazon KDP going to reject it, because they don't accept that screenshot as sufficient proof of rights?

Just contact the original author. You may need to pay extra for the Medium.

I know this is a joke, but just as a note, in some european countries, the person who digitized the artwork may have a copyright. It varries a bit by country.

Exactly. The site mentions that and some other problems, and just disclaimers their liability. One problem I didn't see mentioned directly is that some venues have additional bureaucratic rules.

For example, I saw a writer-artist complain that they couldn't show the big ebook store proof that they'd licensed the art for their cover, since they painted it themself, and there was no documentation licensing it to them.

So one could use practical advice from someone who's figured out the rules, and has the battle scars, like: "With public domain art, just make sure you do X and avoid Y; otherwise, there's a 50% chance that a random copyright check the first week will result in your book temporarily being shadowbanned, and you won't get the crucial early sales while the algorithm is trialing exposure of your book in searches and categories, and then the algorithm will pretty much never show your book to anyone ever again."

Fwiw, i think wikimedia commons has some really good help pages on what is and is not public domain:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Public_domain

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panora...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reuse_of_PD-Art_p...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:De_minimis

Of course sometimes its just a risk trade off, and depends more on how the publisher feels then what the actual rules are.

What I'm wondering is -- although an item would be found to be legally considered public domain in all applicable jurisdictions when examined by law clerk -- what are the practical rules for passing copyright clearance checks/challenges by Amazon, Kobo, etc. for public domain art.

You don't want a book's carefully choreographed launch sabotaged by various companies' Kafkaesque bureaucratic processes, while you're trying to finesse the algorithm and the publicity you've scheduled.

(I should've said upfront that I know a bit about public domain and copyright law as a layperson. And I also know that I can't necessarily point a CSR to law surveys if something gets flagged. I need to know the "do X and avoid Y" that is proven to actually work smoothly with all these companies' ideas of "copyright clearance", so that I hopefully never have to talk to a CSR.)

Search for public records about the image. If you can confirm the author is dead for at least 70 years (in case the author originally held the copyright) and the work is at least 120 years old or was published more than 95 years ago (in case this was work for hire) you are good

For younger works other conditions might make a work public domain, like the work being created by a US federal government employee as part of their duties

Go to the source, it's linked above that metadata. That will be a better resource for its copyright status.

I do not know how this site managed to break mousewheel scrolling so badly, but I am quite impressed.

I haven’t tried it on desktop but on mobile, the “infinite” view is quite nice.

On desktop Firefox, if you scroll while the mouse is on the top half of the first row of images, it goes very wonky.

Same here, the scroll behavior in Infinite View is really ...

Don't websites like these popup every year, almost same images, different design? You never actually know if you can really use those images for free actually..

“An old Welsh woman made out of a banana with a nut for her head. The cat is made from two nuts and some matches.”: https://pdimagearchive.org/images/f658baa9-14be-4002-8b13-78...

Superb site. Just annoying in the Infinite View it keeps opening random pages when I just want to drag and scroll.

Unfortunately, the infinite scroll page doesn't work very well... but this one scrolls normal and doesn't open random pages, and it seems to be the same stream of picutures: https://pdimagearchive.org/galleries/all/random/desc

I had no trouble with it once I realized it wanted me to drag the border area.

I don't know if I'll ever use this but that "Infinite View" is a lot of fun, I just lost 20 minutes before snapping myself out of a trance. Some really cool pictures in there.

This is great, came across an image of a Labyrinth, which led me to a 1920s book about Labyrinths. I'm currently making a game level with hedge mazes. Thanks.

Looks like PDR finally implemented the "buy a giclée print of anything" feature! Previously you could only buy prints of select works.

feels so refreshing to see a website without the obvious-ai elements.

The infinite view is cool, a bit addictive :)

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