My library is investigating posting some images onto Flickr. All the images will be out of copyright, but Flickr only provides the options of a creative commons licence, or all rights reserved. Neither of which reflects the nature of the content. I see that Turnbull has used the all rights reserved licence with text around the image stating that it can be used under certain conditions. Other libraries have gone down the CC route. Can we claim all rights reserved when in fact the photo is out of copyright? Can we assign a CC licence when out of copyright? [Originally asked by Sam on March 24, 2008, on www.digitalnz.org]
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While there are circumstances where new copyright can be claimed in old images that have been digitised (through adding to the original through digital restoration, embedding metadata or other means), a practice growing in acceptance among heritage institutions is to clearly indicate when an image is known to be out of copyright. DigitalNZ is supporting this practice through developing a photograph copyright flowchart.
The U.S. Library of Congress has led the way in partnering with Flickr to post high quality images on their website with the statement “no known copyright restrictions”. This is the Flickr Commons initiative which cultural institutions can apply to join. The National Library of New Zealand was the first New Zealand organisation to join the Flickr Commons, and you can read about the Library’s experience on their blog.
For images that are not part of the Flickr Commons, the National Library uses the recently revised rights statement appearing on the Manuscripts and Pictorial site, permitting uses under certain conditions. DigitalNZ would encourage anyone wanting to put out of copyright images on Flickr or other photosharing sites to use the description field to place a terms of use statement, and preferably, have a permanent link back to that statement and image on your main website. Terms of use in this case should state that the image has no known copyright and have some kind of disclaimer to protect your institution. The Flickr Commons rights statement is a good starting point for this.
In the meantime, the Creative Commons is working on new tools for anyone wanting to either waive their copyright or wanting to certify that content is in the public domain. The ‘CC0’ waiver has just been released, with an updated public domain certification out in beta around mid-2009 – see our post about these. Hopefully once they become established Flickr will also offer them as an option for users.
Hi Sam – You might also be interested in this local version of a ‘no known copyright restrictions’ statement, which we use for content in the DigitalNZ Kete:
http://kete.digitalnz.org/help/topics/show/17-no-known-copyright-restrictions-statement
We showed it to a couple of other organisations and incorporated their feedback – so it hasn’t come entirely out of thin air!
You are more than welcome to use this as a starting point for drafting your own version – or to discuss / comment on it (either here or on the Kete).
One of the main differences from some of the interpretations of the ‘no known copyright restrictions’ ‘license’ you see on Flickr is that we haven’t said this applies to content that is in copyright and ‘given’ to the public domain.
Rather, it applies only to content that, following reasonable enquiry, is almost certainly no longer covered by copyright restrictions.
You can use our photographs copyright flowchart (http://digitalnz.org/contributor/news/article-nz-copyright-status-flowchart-photographs-tell-us-what-you-think/) to work out what might qualify.