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   John Overholt (overholt@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 22-Jan-2025 12:35:06 JST John Overholt

   Houghton is in the process of digitizing a collection of 19th century photographic portraits of African Americans. More than 100 are online so far. https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/24/resources/12085/digital_only

   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Wednesday, 22-Jan-2025 12:38:12 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     • Jessamyn
     • karen coyle

     @kcoyle @overholt @jessamyn You can't, in the US, though it doesn't stop people from claiming copyright on verbatim reproductions of public domain work.

     In the UK it's a little muddier, but still just as gross.

     Only creative work attracts a new copyright. Making a faithful duplication that by design does as little interpretation as possible does not give rise to a new copyright.

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     karen coyle (kcoyle@mstdn.social)'s status on Wednesday, 22-Jan-2025 12:38:13 JST karen coyle

     in reply to

     • Jessamyn

     @overholt @jessamyn I’ve never understood how you can claim rights in a mechanical copy. I know that archives do, but I can’t imagine that it would survive a legal challenge. That said, yeah for HL’s sensible approach!

   • Embed this notice
     John Overholt (overholt@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 22-Jan-2025 12:38:15 JST John Overholt

     in reply to

     • Jessamyn

     @jessamyn We have a blanket HL policy that we claim no additional rights in public domain material that we digitize. (I won’t say you’ll never find something in our maze of systems that says otherwise, but the policy overrides that.) https://library.harvard.edu/policy-access-digital-reproductions-works-public-domain

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     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Wednesday, 22-Jan-2025 12:38:18 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     @overholt This is a neat project! Do you know offhand if Harvard is claiming copyright of the scans it's making of what I presume is public domain material or if they're just making them available? I clicked around what I though was a reasonable amount of time before asking you and couldn't find it stated anywhere.