Google To Host 10M Images From Life Magazine's Archive 79
CWmike and other readers alerted us to Google's announcement that it was making available 10 million images from Life magazine's archives dating back to the 1750s. (Most of the news accounts covering this announcement refer to Life's "photos," and none mention that photography wasn't invented until early in the 19th century.) Only a small percentage of the images — including newly digitized images from photos and etchings — have even been published. The rest have been "sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints." At this point about 20% of Life's archive is online; the rest is promised within months.
Copyrights vary (Score:5, Informative)
The copyrights for previously-unpublished works vary, Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia probably have the answers you are looking for.
In general, anything created more than 120 years ago in the United States is in the public domain. Works that weren't "work for hire" live various-numbers-of-years after the death of the photographer but there is a presumption of public domain after 120 years unless it can be shown the photographer was alive "recently enough" that the copyright hasn't lapsed. There's also a "presumption of death on or before insert-date-here" under certain other circumstances.
I don't have the rules for previously-unpublished works-for-hire handy, but I think that for stuff not published before now, anything before 1923 is in the public domain in the USA. There were special rules in place a few years ago to "encourage" publishing previously unpublished works but I think that is over with.
If Life had done this during that special window, a lot of stuff that would have had only the remaining copyright would have enjoyed extended protection.
find using google image search (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Public domain? (Score:4, Informative)
From
http://englishhistory.net/tudor/art.html [englishhistory.net]
The Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd., Plaintiff, - versus - Corel Corporation, et ano., Defendants.
97 Civ. 6232 (LAK)
Their decision was one of the most important copyright decision affecting museums ever filed. The decision was based on both US and UK copyright law.
WHO WAS INVOLVED IN THE CASE & WHAT WAS IT ABOUT?
The Bridgeman Art Library had made photographic reproductions of famous works of art from museums around the world (works already in the public domain.) The Corel Corporation used those reproductions for an educational CD-ROM without paying Bridgeman. Bridgeman claimed copyright infringement.
WHAT DID THE COURT DECIDE?
The Court ruled that reproductions of images in the public domain are not protected by copyright if the reproductions are slavish or lacking in originality.
10,000,000 images, not megapixels (Score:4, Informative)
That's 10,000,000 images, not 10 megapixels. Images will be standard 160x120 internet resolution with watermarks & popups.
Re:It's lifelike pictures Jim (Score:3, Informative)
Lifelike... you betcha. I've been dying to get my hands on some Margaret Bourke-White images without having to pay Getty Images a few grand per print. Her pictures give a lifelike experience of what it was like to be in so many historical places back in the 40's. It's good that I can finally view these images without having to deall with GI's rediculous pricing policies.
Getty Images has long been the world's largest intellectual property holder. While the general public can get a hold of some of their holdings as prints through poster companies, etc., it's a very small percentage of what they have, and they make no apparent effort to deal with end consumers directly.
While this seems like just a nifty place to view pictured for some, I see it as a victory for those that oppose intellectual property abuse.
Re:It's lifelike pictures Jim (Score:3, Informative)
Arrgghhh... Scratch what I said before. New master, same slavery. The medium-view images are nice to look at but I tried blowing one up to a decent size and it's pretty heavy on artifacts. The high rez version has a nice big TIME watermark on it. However, the option to fram any print at a somewhat reasonable price ($80-$110 depending on size) is definitely a plus, and I think I may still act on it. It's still about a tenth of the price I was getitng from GI to get a full res print.