Freedom of Information is a good idea, however the orignals are out of copyright (being 150+ years old). Just scanning a page of a book isn't a creative work, and hence you technically can't claim copyright on it again. Some mapping agencies like the Ordnance Survey of Ireland who have copies, scan and then join images up together, and rectify them so they work on google maps. This 'stitching & rectifiying' is a creative act, and hence they can (and do!) claim copyright on the new item. So this map from 1833 is Copyright 2008 OSi. :(
However a lot of libraries claim copyright on just a straight scan, even though they can't really. A FoI would get you the map, but probably something with a copyright symbol on the corner. If you want to use them (for OpenStreetMap tracing) the onus is now on you to prove you can. In short, they don't want to share them out to everyone. :(
>This 'stitching & rectifiying' is a creative act, and hence they can (and do!) claim copyright on the new item. //
I was trying to find the caselaw on a related point the other day. I remember there being something to do with, I think the British Museum or similar, taking high res scans of old paintings and claiming a renewed copyright term on that then ferreting away the original. Do you have caselaw to cite? AFAIR the act is supposed to be transformative to create a new work, stitching doesn't appear to be tranformative to me. However I also seem to recall the the "sweat of the brow" argument was made to support a new copyright in high res scans, that a large amount of work had been done and that this somehow earned them a new right.
It seems this sort of manoeuvring is within the letter of the law but not at all within the spirit of it. Very underhand for those who are supposed to be managing works owned by the country for the country itself using public money.
If one can get a copy of the original then it could be leaked to wikileaks ... the onus is not on the copier to prove they have a right but on those suing to show that tortuous infringement has occurred. The demands of OpenStreetMap may be different however.
Try Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), summarized in the Wikipedia article [1].
The court's opinion [2] surveys the relevant case law beginning at paragraph 19.
The court states its conclusion and summarizes its reasoning in paragraph 25: "In this case, plaintiff by its own admission has labored to create 'slavish copies' of public domain works of art. While it may be assumed that this required both skill and effort, there was no spark of originality -- indeed, the point of the exercise was to reproduce the underlying works with absolute fidelity. Copyright is not available in these circumstances."
Thanks for that, the Wikipedia page has some useful links and info on the relevance to UK copyright law. The case I was remembering is almost certainly this one - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_copyr... concerning use of photos of images in the National Portrait Gallery on Wikimedia pages, the case dating from 2009.
Freedom of Information is a good idea, however the orignals are out of copyright (being 150+ years old). Just scanning a page of a book isn't a creative work, and hence you technically can't claim copyright on it again. Some mapping agencies like the Ordnance Survey of Ireland who have copies, scan and then join images up together, and rectify them so they work on google maps. This 'stitching & rectifiying' is a creative act, and hence they can (and do!) claim copyright on the new item. So this map from 1833 is Copyright 2008 OSi. :(
However a lot of libraries claim copyright on just a straight scan, even though they can't really. A FoI would get you the map, but probably something with a copyright symbol on the corner. If you want to use them (for OpenStreetMap tracing) the onus is now on you to prove you can. In short, they don't want to share them out to everyone. :(