[Opengenalliance] old bailey proceedings

[Guy Etchells]

On 13/05/2011 16:54, Javier Ruiz wrote:
> Thanks for the replies. The reason why I asked the original question is
> because it seemed that photographs are clear but scans not. It only gets
> greyer and farcical, at least in UK.
>
> Would it be worth challenging the copyright of scans of historical
> public domain documents and clarify it once for all?
>
> Could the public domain aspect be considered in parallel with the
> question of whether a scan is an artful photograph or a humble photocopy?
>
> Legal arguments aside. If ancient documents are digitised and then
> locked back in their respective archives and the results of the exercise
> are copyrighted, this is a loss for the public domain. Maybe we need to
> distinguish between copies where the original remains and when the
> analog copy is destroyed. I spoke to someone recently about the TNA
> trying to burn IWW medal records after making microfiches, this would
> mean the only records available would have been the new format. This
> surely is some copyright reset.
>
> Then the next thing to clarify is whether the transcription of the text
> in scans will owe some cumulative copyright to the images.
>
> I.e. can I just transcribe any originally public domain text from scans
> if I can physically see them online or otherwise or can I be prevented
> from doing so?
>
> Must I pay author rights to the owner of a scan if I transcribe and sell
> a book with public domain information from scans?
>
> Then is clarifying the copyright of transcriptions.
>
> The copyright of the transcriptions themselves seems to depend on the
> skill required, so that in theory a transcription of mediaeval texts
> would be closer to copyright than modern type.
>
> What happens if I make a transcription that is identical letter by
> letter to another transcription? The PRS in relation to folk music
> transcriptions claims that identical transcriptions would have
> independent copyrights:
> http://www.prsformusic.com/creators/wanttojoin/how_it_works/arrangements/Pages/arrangements.aspx
>
> How can this work in practice? Anyone can then copy and claim they have
> an identical transcription. Maybe before computers this could be proved,
> but it seems nonsense to me to try to sustain this argument in the
> digital milieu.
>
> On another possible option, what if we OCR the scans and then corrected
> the computer generated texts by looking up the existing transcriptions
> only to check for some words? Or even better get a computer to do it?
>
> Then if the transcriptions are organised and indexed is the database right.
>
> Ben Laurie was mentioning the other day that with computer power
> nowadays it may be easier to put certain materials in a single text file
> and use search tools, rather than databases. Could we just dump the text
> into a file this way without replicating the database structure and
> bypass the database right if the database contents are public domain texts?
>
> TBH I seems apparent that copyright law may be a bit of a dead end in UK
> as a tool to fight for digital versions of public records to remain in
> the public domain, and this is mostly an issue of policy,
> particularly as we are dealing with publicly funded institutions. It
> would be good to exhaust all possibilities though.
>
> best, Javier
>

As someone who has transcribed records and digitises records I can see 
the argument from both sides.

First unlike the USA a large amount of records in the UK are not in the 
Public Domain.

It seems to me that many who demand free access to records forget that 
to provide records online costs money and even groups such as FreeBMD 
have benifited from the fact that commercial concerns have allowed them 
access to more than a few digital copies of the records they transcribe.
Though I would like to see more records available online with free 
access we must remember that someone has to pay for that facility.

If commercical concerns cannot claim copyright or as many do these day 
place conditions of use on their images and database they will not 
digitise the records and we the public will be the losers.

Rather than fight these companies it would be better to try to find 
common ground where there is a balance between commercial access and 
free access.
Cheers
Guy


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