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The Met Makes 375k Images Available for Free

nytimes.com

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Re: The Met Makes 375k Images Available for Free

#11

Post by brudgers »

delish wrote: post #8

I'm curious about their reasoning for choosing Creative Commons Zero over the public domain. I'm fond of the public domain; I've released some of my software[0] into the public domain. Cynically, I think it's more fashionable and branded to license something CC0 than declare it public domain. Despite my cynicism, I like that they're doing this. The article says: > Enabled by the Museum's move to open access, we also…

I am not a lawyer.

It is possible that the Met has licensed some|many|all of the images from their authors. If so, then I would not be surprised if the terms of such licenses are grounded in copyright and while the licenses may grant very permissive usage and relicensing rights, the licensing rights are unlikely to have provisions allowing the Met to terminate the author's rights on behalf of the author as would be required to place a work in the public domain.

Creative Commons exists to avoid some complexities that come with placing work in the public domain when copyright would otherwise obtain.

But again IANAL.

Re: The Met Makes 375k Images Available for Free

#12

Post by brudgers »

X86BSD wrote: post #4

First I applaud the met for this. Well done! Sigh, now if only the museums would each stop reinventing the wheel regarding online virtual museum software, internal asset management, etc and work on an open source version of said apps. It's so tiresome that there isn't a decent OS app out there to handle curation, inter museum loans, virtual display of scanned assets to the public etc. everyone goes off and writes the…

There are several very rich and rather common semantic standards for cataloging art and visual artifacts:

CDWA: https://www.getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publi...

VRA: https://www.loc.gov/standards/vracore/

The Getty provides a partial crosswalk: https://www.getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publi...

Re: The Met Makes 375k Images Available for Free

#13

Post by jacobr1 »

delish wrote: post #8

I'm curious about their reasoning for choosing Creative Commons Zero over the public domain. I'm fond of the public domain; I've released some of my software[0] into the public domain. Cynically, I think it's more fashionable and branded to license something CC0 than declare it public domain. Despite my cynicism, I like that they're doing this. The article says: > Enabled by the Museum's move to open access, we also…

In some jurisdictions, you aren't actually allowed to release things to the "public domain". In many where you are allowed, there is specific language that must be used to make it binding. In some others, you can allow copying ... but you still are liable for uses of the work. So in that case you want to create something that waives the liability at matches the impact of US public domain declaration.

CC0 is just to tool to allow you to declare something in the public domain on world-wide basis that meets the standards of as many jurisdictions as possible and matches the expectations of most in the western world of what public domain entails.

If you just add a header to your software saying "I release this work to the public domain." You probably actually didn't.

Re: The Met Makes 375k Images Available for Free

#14

Post by greeneggs »

markdown wrote: post #10

> free to download in high resolution from the Met’s website, no permission required. Am I missing something, or is this not true. The pics I've seen are under 100KB.

The first I found is 3871x2635 pixels, 2.7MB [1]. I always find these archives very difficult to navigate, though.

[1] http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/55612

Re: The Met Makes 375k Images Available for Free

#15

Post by delish »

jacobr1 wrote: post #13
delish wrote: post #8

I'm curious about their reasoning for choosing Creative Commons Zero over the public domain. I'm fond of the public domain; I've released some of my software[0] into the public domain. Cynically, I think it's more fashionable and branded to license something CC0 than declare it public domain. Despite my cynicism, I like that they're doing this. The article says: > Enabled by the Museum's move to open access, we also…

In some jurisdictions, you aren't actually allowed to release things to the "public domain". In many where you are allowed, there is specific language that must be used to make it binding. In some others, you can allow copying ... but you still are liable for uses of the work. So in that case you want to create something that waives the liability at matches the impact of US public domain declaration. CC0 is just to t…

I've read that on CC's website. Can you point me to some examples where US'ians (of which I am one) declared something public domain, and some country acted against someone who used the US'ians work?

Re: The Met Makes 375k Images Available for Free

#16

Post by gonehome »

delish wrote: post #15
jacobr1 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some jurisdictions, you aren't actually allowed to release things to the "public domain". In many where you are allowed, there is specific language that must be used to make it binding. In some others, you can allow copying ... but you still are liable for uses of the work. So in that case you want to create something that waives the liability at matches the impact of US public domain declaration. CC0 is just to t…

I've read that on CC's website. Can you point me to some examples where US'ians (of which I am one) declared something public domain, and some country acted against someone who used the US'ians work?

I think it's more that it's poorly legally defined (I'm not a lawyer).

By default copyright grants you five rights which I think last until 75 years after you die (90 for contract work if I remember correctly) [1].

- The right to reproduce the copyrighted work

- The right to prepare derivative works based upon the work

- The right to distribute copies of the work to the public

- The right to perform the copyrighted work publicly

- The right to display the copyrighted work publicly

I think the creative commons license exists to give explicit perpetual and irrevocable access to these five rights - public domain is work where the copyright has expired or was done by a public organization like the government. It's my understanding loosely saying 'I release this as public domain' doesn't give as much of a guarantee since it's not possible to give up your copyright that way - you could later argue you thought public domain meant something different.

It didn't used to be this way in the US. Copyright was retroactively extended and made default (you used to have to register to get its protection). It was originally intended to 'promote the progress of science and useful arts' with limited time monopolies as the means to do so for the public benefit. It was meant as a incentive to create - the retroactive extension doesn't follow in this context since work that already exists didn't need incentive to be created. You could also argue that it's unlikely you'd need the rights after you're dead. Today it hurts the public more than it helps.

[1] http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/scope.html

Re: The Met Makes 375k Images Available for Free

#18

Post by Hello71 »

delish wrote: post #15
jacobr1 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some jurisdictions, you aren't actually allowed to release things to the "public domain". In many where you are allowed, there is specific language that must be used to make it binding. In some others, you can allow copying ... but you still are liable for uses of the work. So in that case you want to create something that waives the liability at matches the impact of US public domain declaration. CC0 is just to t…

I've read that on CC's website. Can you point me to some examples where US'ians (of which I am one) declared something public domain, and some country acted against someone who used the US'ians work?

even GPL has not really been tested in court (VMware case doesn't count yet), so the odds of CC0 being tested is low. however, there are (at least) two good reasons for using CC0 anyways:

1. there is arguably a chilling effect if you make up your own license. I don't know how much that applies in this case, but look at how json is being removed from Debian and has been banned from Fedora for the undefinable phrasing in its license. this leads me to

2. just because it has not been tested doesn't mean it isn't a good idea; I am not aware of anyone who has been killed by a PC falling on their head, but if I were to attempt mounting a PC on my ceiling, I would seek help rather than cobbling something I just made up. even better, if there are plans on the internet that tens of engineers have verified to be reasonable, I should use those instead of complaining that they are too "fashionable".

Re: The Met Makes 375k Images Available for Free

#19

Post by gregsadetsky »

urda wrote: post #17

Is there a torrent or dump of all the images? I wouldn't mind seeding / helping to keep an archive of all this. This is pretty great!

To scrape, start here

http://metmuseum.org/api/collection/collectionlisting?offset...

and increase 'offset' by 100. The JSON output contains image URLs. The total number of results is 441048, so finding another endpoint that doesn't enforce a limit of 100 on the 'perPage' argument would be great.

---

EDIT: thanks to spitfare, I updated the perPage argument to 100. The site doesn't allow larger values, but that's definitely a great start! (about 4k requests to get everything)

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