The fundamental issue here is that the UK copyright law is up to date and quite sophisticated. They have thought through in detail what they are trying to protect and also that there are some things that are unfair or impractical to protect. In the UK, the work of the NPG is protected, regardless of what the position might be in another country.
As a UK citizen, I find it highly objectionable that some other country should ignore my country's legislation as if it is ignorant or incompetent. In this case it has a clear logic - which may not fit with legislation in another country, but it is consistent and as such should be respected.
In such an instance, it is highly immoral for citizens of another country to use illegal means (even if not particularly sophisticated) to subvert another country's legislation and to argue that because of the differing position in that country that they are right and correct to be the benefactors of an illegal act.
However, we come back to the fundamental problem of Wikipedia - it simply does not conceive itself as part of the real world and refuses to be bound by real world ethics practice and legislation. One day, that will be its undoing when the dysfunctional community decides that it is so important that it decides freedom of information is more important than national security, the mental health of an affected party or some such issue and is implicated in a major scandal that costs lives. What is worse, even when some tragedy strikes (and we see little tragedies on a regular basis) the Wikipedians will look the relatives in the eye and say "Not our problem - that is the cost of freedom of information, so fuck you."
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