Update to:

http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/5319473/

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Sopraintendenza_ai_Beni_Culturali_dell.27Etruria_meridionale
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#More_about_the_problems_with_the_Italian_law_about_museums_.28discussed_here.29

Excerpts:

* in 2004 the Italian lawmakers enacted a new law on cultural goods (meaning artworks in museums and archeological remains). The law creates some kind of tax on every reproduction of a cultural good, except in some cases like when the reproduction has an educational purpose.

* as a consequence, the Italian Wikipedia created a new template it:Template:Soprintendenza which Italian Wikipedians use whenever they post a picture of a cultural good. The template says "use only small size (640*480) pictures" and "don't use the large size pictures from commons".

* Until now it looked like a good compromise, not affecting non-Italian Wikipedias or Wikimedia Commons.

* But the other day some Italian authorities from a specific Italian region said that Commons or the Commons users should pay the tax for museum and archeological artworks from their region.

Some background from an Italian user:

In the past, I tryed to BUY a permission to photograph in museums, but it is simply impossible. They do not even know how to do, or if they know, the person who should look after it is not "at the moment" in the office. What they can do, is SELLING me the one-use only images that THEY shot, which are obviously copyrighted by them. This is the same as putting a copyright on public-domain, publicly owned artworks, which is against the Berne Convention, yet this was quite the intention of the law. And I cannot afford to test it in court, as it should be done.
The law was not intended to help Sovraintendenze to collect money, but to grant monopoly on the reproduction to a few publishers, such as Electa, which is owned by Mondadori, which is owned by famed Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi. Got it, now? [...]

The point is that Sovraintendenzas rule not only on what is contained into museums, but also on whole monuments, including the outside part. For instance, the entire Colosseum: inside, AND outside. Fullstop. If you can read Italian, please read here: http://www.fotografi.org/arte_musei_beni_culturali.htm




Fotograf: Diliff, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/

Via HEXENFORSCHUNG list
http://www.listserv.dfn.de/archives/hexenforschung.html

2008/11/19 Jean-Claude Guédon wrote in the AMSCI OA Forum:

> Larry is right, and Stevan is right. Both routes should be followed and both
> routes should be demanded by students. Let us stop this exclusive attitude
> with regard to OA. Two roads exist. They are equally valuable. Rather than
> declaring one suprior to the other, it would be far more useful to examine
> how to make these two approaches help each other.

I agree with this.

Rainer Kuhlen has posted in INETBIB a question regarding Professor Harnad's position to the aims of the German "Urheberrechtsbündnis" ("improving copyright is slowing the OA movement"):

http://www.ub.uni-dortmund.de/listen/inetbib/msg37662.html

I have replied to this at

http://www.ub.uni-dortmund.de/listen/inetbib/msg37671.html

Here is a short summary in English:

1. It is a myth that green OA only works with a mandate.

Have a look at the NL "Cream of Science"!

2 It is a myth that mandates are legally possible in all contries.

At least in Germany it is impossible or very difficult to make mandates legally valid.

3. It is a myth that deposit with closed access is legally possible in all countries.

At least in Germany the copyright act forbidds such depositing without the consent of the holder of the exclusive rights. See

http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/5193609/

4. It is a myth that the "Request Button" works.

See my little tests

http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/5193609/
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/5247312/

On October 11, I requested 7 titles from the U of Tasmania repository found with the following query:

http://tinyurl.com/5dbssm

On October 12 and 14 I get summa summarum 2 results, i.e. the PDFs of the requested eprints.

For me this is enough empirical evidence to say that there is until now no empirical evidence that the RCB works!

5. It is a myth to think that is all a question of embargo terms.

There are disciplines with publishers which are making case-to-case decisions and publishers which don't accept green OA. Depositing eprints closed access which cannot be used before the last dying author is 70 years dead doesn't make sense.

6. It is am myth that the primary aim of the OA movement is to make the journal literature free.

A lot of people don't share this position. For a broader definition of OA see

http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/5251764/

The Royal Society Digital Archive is easily the most
comprehensive journal archive in science and contains some of the
most significant scientific papers ever published. Covering
almost 350 years of scientific research across the disciplines it
is a priceless academic resource. The Royal Society Digital
Journal Archive, dating back to 1665 and containing approximately
52,000 articles, is available online and is FREE for a three
month period.

http://journals.royalsociety.org/home/main.mpx

http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=-2245387161960017497

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalmaritimemuseum/

http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/spec307web.pdf

Only a summary is online.

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/bustech/story.html?id=e1a69f5b-3452-41dd-89a3-beea1d8a8ccd

Google expected to take over Ottawa data firm

Bert Hill, The Ottawa Citizen

Published: Friday, November 14, 2008

Google, the Internet search giant, is expected to announce today that
it has bought a vast Canadian digital database of newspaper microfilms
and other historical records from an Ottawa company.
Bob Huggins, chief executive officer of PaperOfRecord.com (POR), said
yesterday that the deal means that thousands of genealogists,
researchers and history buffs can now access information previously
locked in the dusty microfilm records of newspapers and libraries.
"We have build a vast compendium of 20 million images of newspaper
pages recording everyday life over 500 years. Much of this information
previously was not available to ordinary people." [...]