With ‘Open Access,’ the Met Museum’s Digital Operation Has a Bona Fide Hit on Its Hands; artnetnews, August 10, 2017

Sarah Cascone, artnetnews; With ‘Open Access,’ the Met Museum’s Digital Operation Has a Bona Fide Hit on Its Hands

"In February, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it was pursuing a new Open Access policy—releasing high-resolution imagery of all its public-domain works (over 375,000 in total). Six months later, the new initiative has had a major impact on sites such as Wikimedia and Creative Commons, and the museum is continuing to branch out. This week, the Met announced a partnership with Google’s data analytics platform, BigQuery.

“During what is just the dawn of this new initiative, the responses so far have been incredible,” wrote Loic Tallon, the museum’s chief digital officer, in a blog post.

The numbers speak for themselves. According to Tallon, the Met’s website has seen a 64 percent increase in image downloads since Open Access was implemented, as well as a 17 percent bump in traffic to the online collection. Users who download photographs are now spending five times as long on the site."

Wikimedia’s art database violates copyright law, rules Sweden’s highest court; Ars Technica.com, 4/5/16

Glyn Moody, Ars Technica; Wikimedia’s art database violates copyright law, rules Sweden’s highest court:

"The Wikimedia Foundation said the judgment eroded "the freedom of panorama that is a fundamental part of freedom of expression, freedom of information, and artistic expression."

As Ars has reported, EU copyright is currently being updated, and one of the proposals of the European Parliament is for freedom of panorama to be enshrined in EU law. Referring to the Swedish court's ruling against Wikimedia Sverige, the author of the European Parliament's report on the proposed copyright reform, Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda, tweeted on Monday: "This is why we need EU-wide #FreedomofPanorama!""

If A Monkey Takes A Photo, Who Owns The Copyright?; NPR, 8/7/14

Bill Chappell, NPR; If A Monkey Takes A Photo, Who Owns The Copyright? :

"An argument is brewing between British photographer David Slater and the folks at Wikimedia over who owns the rights to a photo a monkey took with Slater's equipment. The website says the famous photo should be freely distributed, because it believes isn't bound by copyright law.

The dispute stems from 2011, when Slater's wildlife photography field trip to Indonesia produced a striking image of a smiling crested black macaque; another image shows it holding the camera. The story went viral, with Slater explaining that a group of macaques had taken over his equipment for a bit during the three days he spent in their company."