File talk:Johns-James Smithson-1816.jpg

Assertion of copyright over digital copy of public domain images?

Hi, I would like to upload two images of paintings of James Smithson. One is a painting of Smithson when he was a student at Oxford which was painted around 1786 (i.e., 221 years ago) by an unidentified artist. The other is a portrait of Smithson by Henri-Joseph Johns painted in 1816 (191 years ago). I believe that both paintings are now in the public domain. However, the images available on the Internet were created by the Smithsonian Institution – the Smithsonian presumably digitized photographs of the paintings, or took digital photographs of the paintings. They have put the message "Digital Image (c) 1996 Smithsonian Institution" on the images. Are they entitled to assert copyright over what are essentially identical copies of images already in the public domain? Can these images be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons? Cheers, Jacklee 23:12, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

We don't, generally speaking, recognize that sort of claim. See a poster extracted from the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco ImageBase, and the discussion around doing so, as well as Template talk:PD-Art; in short, while simple reproductions of public domain images may be copyrightable outside of the United States (likely in the UK, for instance), they're almost certainly not in the United States, where the Smithsonian is. So copy them, upload them and tag them {{PD-Art}}. (Actually, I may do so first; if I do, I'll post a follow-up here.) grendel|khan 19:14, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I've uploaded James Smithson at Oxford-c. 1786.jpg and Johns-James Smithson-1816.jpg. Note that I cropped them to the size of the actual paintings, since there's no point in having the Smithsonian's lettering on the images, and provided a link back to the source for interested people to follow. grendel|khan 19:26, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much! I've added the images to "en:James Smithson". Cheers, Jacklee 18:57, 12 July 2007 (UTC)