QUOTE(dtobias @ Sat 11th July 2009, 5:07am)
Legally, the gallery might be right, at least in the U.K. (though not in the U.S., where the servers and apparently the individual Wikipedian are). Morally, however, I have to side with the "free culture" crowd and oppose efforts by institutions to gain proprietary rights over things whose copyrights are nonexistent or long expired, simply based on their possession of the physical objects and their limiting the ability of outsiders to make photographs or copies of them.
Typical freedophile nonsense. The National Portrait Gallery has gone to some effort to provide professionally produced using public money to provide a public service. Freedophiles seem to have determined that they are beyond the law. There is a tradition that you can campaign beyond the law and take actions, but that then you have to accept the risk that you will be punished.
In the UK, institutions like the National Portrait Gallery were expressly set up to preserve art (which is not really about copyright, it is about preserving, restoring, researching and displaying the works) and aside from an ignominious period in the Thatcher years, have been built on free access. The freedophile ignores this. So this quick snap that they perceive as having no value is built on thousands of pounds of effort.
The NPG has taken considerable effort to make available - for free - it's collection on the web. You can see the real things for free. However, th freedophiles only see one element, without grasping that there is more to art than being able to nick it. If it were established that it was perfectly acceptable and legitimate for users of a service to determine their own terms and conditions of use, then places like the NPG simply would not bother. Of course, the likes of Google might step in and do the work, so instead of having many institutions in the world providing a service, you end up with less free information as you end up selling your souls to Google as a result of your naive and blinkered views.
I am amazed that the WMF has not blocked and banned any user who has deliberately stolen copyrighted works.
With regards to the NPG, it seems that they are taking a route which is not about strength of legal cases, but about a moral argument - they are happy to work with the WMF, and happy that in some form that the images can be used, just don't leach off their premium service. If you understood the NPG, they are more than willing to ensure that their pictures are widely available through loans, for academic research, any other reputable institution can get hold of them.
I have yet to understand what the freedophile thinks will happen in their nirvana where everything is provided for free at no cost to the consumer. Like Americans who seem to think that a national infrastructure should be built without taxes then wonder why their bridges collapse, there is a basic failure to realise at some point someone has to do serious work and have a reasonable right to be recompensed. At some point the parents' money or benefits runs out and leaching off other people kills the golden goose.