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National Museum of Health and Medicine Releases Archive Under Creative Commons
The National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington DC is in the process of releasing a massive archive of military medical images on Flickr under a Creative Commonsi Attributioni license. When interviewed by Wired Magazine, the head archivist said, "You pay taxes. These are your pictures. You should be able to see them."
One step closer to Open Source Science!
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Excellent Point
An interesting point, and one that did not escape me when I initially saw the Wired article. Unfortunately, I don't think that most government officials are aware of the Public Domaini-ness of government property, much less what that means. Perhaps I'm wrong. The archivist did say, "You pay taxes. These are your pictures."
Mostly, I'm impressed that a federal governmental body is bothering to digitize the pictures at all, much less put them on the internet for the world to see. You're likely right that the CCi license should be changed to a PD "license," but the net effect is that the information is more free on Flickr, license or no, than it is sitting in a box in a basement in DC.
the library of congress on flickr
That reminds me that the Library of Congress, and some other International repositories of images, governmental and nongovernmental, have some pretty amazing collections of images up on Flickr as well, all without use restrictions (note I don't say public domain for the reasons below).
http://www.flickr.com/commons/
On "the Commons" page, rights of the various photos breakdown as follows according to Flickr:
"Participating institutions may have various reasons for determining that "no known copyright restrictions" exist, such as:
1. The copyright is in the public domain because it has expired;
2. The copyright was injected into the public domain for other reasons, such as failure to adhere to required formalities or conditions;
3. The institution owns the copyright but is not interested in exercising control; or
4. The institution has legal rights sufficient to authorize others to use the work without restrictions."
The Library of Congress photos are here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/
Why are the images Creative Commons rather than Public Domain?
This raises an interesting question, is the license even valid?
If these images are "property" of the federal government, then the Creative Commonsi Attributioni license is void because there can be no license without a valid copyright.
Did the National Museum of Health and Medicine license these from private photographers or were they taken by military officers? If it is the latter, then section 105 indicates no copyright exists, and the works are public domain.
Interesting.
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