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British Museum makes lost Hokusai drawings available online

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: British Museum makes lost Hokusai drawings available online

#21

Post by mellosouls »

abetusk wrote: post #12
Angostura wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 th…

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: British Museum makes lost Hokusai drawings available online

#22

Post by bobbyz »

thiagocesar wrote: post #15
andi999 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

Re: British Museum makes lost Hokusai drawings available online

#23

Post by fenomas »

andi999 wrote: post #19
thiagocesar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: British Museum makes lost Hokusai drawings available online

#24

Post by andi999 »

fenomas wrote: post #23
andi999 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Re: British Museum makes lost Hokusai drawings available online

#25

Post by abetusk »

bhickey wrote: post #20
abetusk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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...

Re: British Museum makes lost Hokusai drawings available online

#26

Post by Angostura »

abetusk wrote: post #12
Angostura wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 th…

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

I'm saying they have the copyright.

Re: British Museum makes lost Hokusai drawings available online

#27

Post by fenomas »

andi999 wrote: post #24
fenomas wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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".

Re: British Museum makes lost Hokusai drawings available online

#28

Post by thiagocesar »

andi999 wrote: post #19
thiagocesar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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.

Re: British Museum makes lost Hokusai drawings available online

#29

Post by thiagocesar »

bobbyz wrote: post #22
thiagocesar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

Why do you think so?

Re: British Museum makes lost Hokusai drawings available online

#30

Post by bobbyz »

thiagocesar wrote: post #29
bobbyz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.
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