Copyright infringement

[J Craig-McFeely]

It has come to our notice that an individual has published images of a number of manuscripts photographed by DIAMM and several of our partner libraries on IMSLP. I appreciate that this person probably felt they were providing a service to his fellow researchers and musicians, but in fact he may have single-handedly damaged or even destroyed the future of manuscript image delivery online.

Not only is this a breach of the copyright licence signed when creating an account with DIAMM, it is also a very serious breach of trust that will affect every member of the academic community. Web publication is governed by the same publication copyright as print publication: the only thing that you may reproduce from a web page without infringing copyright is the URL of the page.

Many people appreciate the extraordinary access that DIAMM provides to a wealth of music manuscripts that for most people would be impossibly costly to visit or to buy images for themselves. DIAMM is free, and many libraries also provide their images free. This is an extraordinary service, and one that perhaps we take for granted without realising how much it would matter to us if suddenly it was no longer available. We tend to think of access to manuscript images as our right, yet it is given to us as a courtesy by the owners of the documents.

It has taken decades to build relationships with libraries and archives and to persuade them to digitize their materials, usually at enormous cost. The cost to DIAMM alone to digitize the manuscripts we have photographed is well over a million GBP, yet we make them available to users without charge, a service that costs us a significant amount of money every year, all provided by government or private grants, or with money raised through publications. DIAMM in particular has only been able to survive and grow because of the trust that depositors place in us by allowing us to deliver images of their manuscripts. Our long record of respect for, and protection of, copyright is our great strenght, yet that is now in jeopardy. The upload of copies of our images - and those of other libraries - without permission has brought into doubt the future of DIAMM, since depositors will remove their images if we cannot ensure that users respect the rights of the document owners. In many cases it has taken years (in one case over 7 years) of careful negotiation to persuade libraries to allow us to digitize their documents and put them online. Outside DIAMM many libraries did not put their own images online, and some still do not, because they were/are concerned about rights infringement of this sort - it seems with good justification. Only recently are libraries beginning to put their manuscripts online, and this may stop if users abuse that trust.

Already two libraries have asked us to withdraw their images from online use; carefully negotiated licences with some libraries are likely to be withdrawn, and the images that are lost will not appear anywhere else on the web since the owners believe that the user community cannot be trusted not to redistribute them without permission. We are in the process of negotiating the rights to put over 25,000 new images online, and these negotiations have now stopped until this matter can be resolved: the manuscripts may not be digitized at all, and if they are they may never appear online anywhere. The actions of one individual may therefore mean that many manuscripts that would have otherwise been made available to our community will never appear in a public space.

It is deeply upsetting that the thoughtless behaviour of a single individual should have such far-reaching and damaging consequences for the global research community.

I hope you will join me in censuring the behaviour of this individual and persuading him that, far from helping researchers, he is going to hinder future manuscript access for every potential user - amateur, professional, academic - worldwide.

[Olivier Berten]

I guess it's a "dialogue de sourds" as we say in french but let's try to summarize.

1. Any work that would qualify for copyright but is old enough (how old depends on the national law) is part of the Public Domain. The two main criteria for qualifying for copyright are originality and publicity. Making something public means that it's been seen by somebody else than the author, it doesn't mean it's freely available to anybody. Therefore any manuscript that's been out of the author's workshop qualifies for copyright. Whether it's been hidden in a closet forever since doesn't matter. And all renaissance manuscript are thus part of the public domain since they have been publicised centuries ago, which is old enough for any national law.
2. A faithful reproduction of any work doesn't qualify for copyright since it lacks originality. A photocopy (reproduction by photographic mean) of a book doesn't qualify for copyright. It keeps the same copyright as the original. If the original is in the public domain, so is the copy. All the digital reproductions of renaissance manuscripts you can find are in the public domain (this is not true for digitized microfilms), even if their provider claims otherwise.
3. Fernando Duarte de Oliveira did indeed repost DIAMM's pictures in direct contravention of the user agreement.
4. His action does indeed threaten to jeopardise DIAMM's ability to provide public access to its images but it's for wrong reasons.

[Jacques Meegens]

Pour information :

LA COMMISSION EUROPEENNE

vu le traité sur le fonctionnement de l'Union européenne, et notamment son article 292,

considérant ce qui suit:

(1) La stratégie numérique pour l'Europe vise à exploiter les avantages des technologies de l'information au profit de la croissance économique, de la création d'emplois et de la qualité de vie des européens, dans le cadre de la stratégie Europe 2020. La numérisation et la conservation du patrimoine culturel, lequel comprend les documents imprimés (livres, revues, journaux), les photographies, les pièces de musée, les documents d'archive, le matériel phonographique et audiovisuel, les monuments et les sites archéologiques (ci-après dénommé "matériel culturel"), constituent l'un des grands domaines couverts par la stratégie numérique.

[...]

RECOMMANDE AUX ETATS MEMBRES

[...]

Numérisation et accessibilité en ligne du matériel relevant du domaine public

5. de faciliter l'accès au matériel culturel numérisé qui est dans le domaine public et son utilisation:

a) en veillant à ce que le matériel relevant du domaine public reste dans le domaine public après numérisation,

b) en promouvant, dans la plus large mesure possible, l'accès au matériel numérisé du domaine public ainsi que sa réutilisation à des fins tant commerciales que non commerciales,

c) en prenant des mesures pour limiter le recours à des filigranes ou d'autres mesures de protection visuelle envahissants qui rendent le matériel numérisé du domaine public moins facile à utiliser;

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2011:283...

Si cette recommandation ne concerne pas le patrimoine culturel des bibliothèques publiques, il va falloir qu'on m'explique à quoi elle s'applique.

[Jacques Meegens]

@ Luca Ricossa : tout à fait, mais cette question de droit d'auteur pour les images ne s'applique pas aux fonds numérisés des bibliothèques publiques, dès lors que les fonds sont dans le domaine public et qu'il n'est pas fait commerce des images numérisées.
J'ai déjà cité les textes européens, qui s'y rapportent. Voici une source française, à titre d'exemple : "Les opérations de numérisation de documents ne confèrent à la bibliothèque aucun droit de propriété littéraire et artistique sur les oeuvres ainsi reproduites." (http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/mrt/numerisation/fr/dll/juridi.h...)

[Jason Stoessel]

As Julia has stated, US precedents are not relevant and the EC recommendations are non binding, so the whole discussion about public domain has served as a double distraction from the true issue at hand. (The other is that the definition of public domain in copyright law is negative, and needs to be weighed up against positive conventional definitions of public domain.) An individual has copied DIAMM images, which until proved otherwise are copyrighted (and not in the public domain) and reposted them in direct contravention of the user agreement which is binding under common law. Furthermore, the actions of this individual threaten to jeopardise DIAMM's ability to provide public access to its images in what is frankly a superior format. Arguments about privilege, etc., are entirely moot given that until now anyone has been able to access DIAMM's images.

[Olivier Berten]

C'est plus compliqué (ou plus simple) que ça: une reproduction photographique d'une œuvre bi-dimensionnelle (peinture, gravure, page d'un livre, etc.) ne constitue pas une œuvre protégée par le droit d'auteur. Contrairement à la photographie d'un élément ou d'une scène tri-dimensionnelle, ou d' événement, qui elle peut-être protégée. Le critère essentiel pour définir si une œuvre peut être protégée ou non est son originalité. Cela dit, il n'y a pas de définition légale de l'originalité et en cas de litige, c'est au juge de décider si l’œuvre est originale. Mais je doute qu'un juge un jour décide qu'une photo-copie d'une œuvre constitue une oeuvre à part entière...

[Olivier Berten]

J Craig-McFeely a dit :

The documents are in private ownership. You need to understand the definition of 'public domain', which refers to items clearly visible in a public space.

I'm afraid you're quite wrong there... that's why I'm asking for legal sources.

[Jacques Meegens]

Pour la centième fois, vous confondez propriété matérielle et droit d'auteur.

Je ne peux pas lire les sources à votre place. Je les ai suffisamment mentionnées, ne venez pas vous plaindre en prenant la totalité de la communauté musicologique à partie si vous refusez d'en prendre connaissance. Vous n'avez aucun argument légal. Prenez vos responsabilités.

Cette discussion tourne en rond, et vous n'avez aucun argument.

[J Craig-McFeely]

The documents are in private ownership. You need to understand the definition of 'public domain', which refers to items clearly visible in a public space.

Olivier Berten a dit :

J Craig-McFeely a dit :

Regarding Corel vs Bridgman, which is the legal ruling cited by Olivier Berten from Wikipedia:

a) this only applies in the USA;

I aware of that but in absence of any other court ruling on this topic, it can give an idea of the way a court could rule.

b) the documents reproduced were NOT, and remain NOT in the public domain;

As I just asked Jason Stoessel, could you provide any legal source explaining how 15th century manuscript could possibly be not in the public domain?

c) the images are not slavish or exact reproductions of the original (they include colour patches, parts of the surrounding environment, and occasionally other things used to lay the pages flat);

I doubt any court would consider these as creative or original work... and even in that case one would then just crop the images in order to have only non copyrighted material...

[J Craig-McFeely]

But how? IMSLP won't even respond to my messages informing them of this infringement and asking them to remove the images, and have now banned me for harassment for posting to Feduol's page informing him that the images infringe copyright and politely asking him to remove them. This is hardly harassment, but IMSLP have clearly come down on the side of supporting copyright infringement.

[Olivier Berten]

J Craig-McFeely a dit :

Regarding Corel vs Bridgman, which is the legal ruling cited by Olivier Berten from Wikipedia:

a) this only applies in the USA;

I aware of that but in absence of any other court ruling on this topic, it can give an idea of the way a court could rule.

b) the documents reproduced were NOT, and remain NOT in the public domain;

As I just asked Jason Stoessel, could you provide any legal source explaining how 15th century manuscript could possibly be not in the public domain?

c) the images are not slavish or exact reproductions of the original (they include colour patches, parts of the surrounding environment, and occasionally other things used to lay the pages flat);

I doubt any court would consider these as creative or original work... and even in that case one would then just crop the images in order to have only non copyrighted material...