Copyright on old photgraphs

cavedave

What is the legal situation regarding copyright of old photographs? Apologies if this is in the wrong forum or is obvious.

The national library has many great photo collections. Say you wanted to use one of their old photos in a public way. This photo on this page for example. Do you have to get permission from the national library or is it so old that the copyright has lapsed? Are there different rules for items you sell and items you give away?

To give one example if you hold an old photo (circa 1900) so it lines up with the modern day scene and take a photo of that do you need to get copyright permission on the old photo? Or if you are doing a book comparing old and new Dublin do you have to clear with the national library (or whoever owns a particular collection) the copyright on the old photos?
Thanks for any advise or pointers you have.

Ghost Train

some info here http://www.nli.ie/en/site-usage-policy.aspx

Copyright and Reproduction

Please note that copyright in all content comprising or contained within this website remains with the National Library of Ireland and other copyright owners as specified. In terms of artistic works, if the artist is alive, or has been dead for less than 70 years, there will be a separate copyright in the work itself that is additional to the copyright applicable to its digital reproduction on this website.

Copyright Restrictions

Some items may be Copyright and subject to restriction on reproduction and publication. In such cases, in addition to the permission of the Board of the National Library the researcher must secure the permission of the Copyright owner (generally the artist or his/her Estate).

It is the responsibility of the researcher and publisher to comply with the relevant Copyright legislation.

cavedave

Thanks Ghost Train for finding that (It was a complete fail by me to miss it)

So the national library (or whoever puts an old picture up on the web) has copyright on the 'digital reproduction' on a website? and if you go in and scan a picture in then

Permission to reproduce material from the collections must be sought in writing from the Board of the National Library of Ireland.

So the national libraries copyright on something in their collections seems to last forever. And private collections have similar protection? Which is not that weird. They have to pay for storage and librarians and such but I would like to know what the rules are.

Ghost Train

cavedave wrote: »

Thanks Ghost Train for finding that (It was a complete fail by me to miss it)

So the national library (or whoever puts an old picture up on the web) has copyright on the 'digital reproduction' on a website? and if you go in and scan a picture in then


So the national libraries copyright on something in their collections seems to last forever. And private collections have similar protection? Which is not that weird. They have to pay for storage and librarians and such but I would like to know what the rules are.

It sounds like you would need to get the national libraries permission as per the page you linked to and on items that require it, the permission of the copyright owner http://www.nli.ie/en/copying-services.aspx

cavedave

Yes it looks that way alright. The situation seems to be that whoever owns a collection keeps the copyright of that collections use forever.

So for example almost all images of the book of kells are under copyright

After a long search, we have managed to acquire a legal source for many of the pages and decorative elements from the Book of Kells, using images made in the 19th century, so that we can reproduce them without running into copyright problems.

Actually this quote implies that old images are not under copyright.

AnCatDubh

cavedave wrote: »

To give one example if you hold an old photo (circa 1900) so it lines up with the modern day scene and take a photo of that do you need to get copyright permission on the old photo? Or if you are doing a book comparing old and new Dublin do you have to clear with the national library (or whoever owns a particular collection) the copyright on the old photos?
Thanks for any advise or pointers you have.

The national library ran a competition in recent times (within the last 2 - 3 weeks) that was based on this exact thing. They encouraged people to print off images off their site and hold them into a photograph of a scene.

It could always be worth a phone call to them explaining what you would like to do and the intended use - they may be obliging if what you are up to is non threatening to their archive.

I saw an exhibition advertised somewhere recently where the NLI appeared to allow the old images to be used side by side with modern day shots of the identical spaces. Can't recall where / what it was but I definitely saw it.

cavedave

Yeah will ask them anyway. I am not criticizing the national library or anyone else just trying to figure out what the law is.