DB Annex

You're missing the point of what the public domain is. It contains
everything that's not covered by copyright, so people can do with it
whatever they want. And they do - it's a society based on money. I
mean if you extended your argument people wouldn't be able to sell
posters with Da Vinci Mona Lisa's, or you wouldn't allow selling
Albrecht Duerer's Praying Hands - oh so popular with the religious
crowd.
Whether you like it or not, a photo that is in the public domain
can be used that way, and that's just the way it is. I find examples
where people use copyright to suppress important new art (most famous
example: Disney) much more important than this.

> The public domain is vulnerable to exploitation because it's public,
> and therefore free.
> It's precisely that quality of the p.d. that I'm trying to defend, its
> free-ness.

If you don't want to buy such a photo, then you can go to the LoC,
download the photo yourself and print it yourself. That's the
difference between something that's in the public domain and something
that's covered by copyright restrictions. And there are good reasons
why that's the case, regardless of whether this right is being abused
(which is debatable here) or not.

Best,
Joerg
-

I'm not objecting to the *use* of the imagery.
Not at all.
I do that. I want to keep doing that.
Using them, juxtaposing them, yes.
I'm objecting to the misuse of the archival labor.
How is it being misused?
By its not being attributed, acknowledged, recognized.
These images are not floating around in some nebulous virtual-reality space - they're archived at the LoC.
The LoC specifically asks for attribution from anyone using their gathered materials. They could password-protect their archives at the drop of a hat, and they have every legal right to do that. But it isn't a legal issue is it?
It's moral, ultimately, the law issues from the ethic, not vice versa.
Once dude has acknowledged that, that all his "labor" was actually being done by scholars and interns at the Library of Congress, his little scam falls to nothing, because as you say anyone can do what he's done.
The difference is acknowledgment, not use, primarily, and only secondarily about trying to make it pay.
Someone making a poster of the Mona Lisa isn't monopolizing all access points to it. This would be impossible.
Whereas someone copyrighting something that's in the p.d. and then bottlenecking public access to it, in other words *removing* something from the p.d. simply because they got the opportunity to do so and lack the necessary emotional engagement with life and art to prevent themselves from resisting the temptation, is.
It's not a vague distinction but a necessarily fine, in the sense of narrow and requiring precision, one.

The LoC site:
"When material from the Library’s collections is reproduced in a publication or website or otherwise distributed, the Library requests the courtesy of a credit line.

Ideally, the credit will include

* reference to Library of Congress, and
* the specific collection which includes the image, and
* the image reproduction number (negative, transparency, or digital id number).

Such a credit furthers scholarship by helping researchers locate material and acknowledges the contribution made by the Library of Congress."

"Furthers scholarship".
He's doing the diametrically exact opposite.
I'm reminded of Hesse's "Magister Ludi" - all those scholars at their wonderfully arcane tasks - and here comes some cigar-chewing entrepeneur on the make, trying to harness their selfless labor to his own little get-ahead machinery.
Expropriation, appropriation, la-di-da.
There's something sacred in the vast digital halls of gathered and filed imagery there, like a profound collective memory. Further gathering, display, illumination, augments that - co-opting those images for selfish gain prevents it.

My position isn't as knee-jerk as it seems at first glance, I think.

cheers