British Museum Makes 1.9 Million Images Available For Free

The British Museum has revamped its online collections database, making over 1.9 million photos of its collection available for free online under a Creative Commons license. ianVisits reports: Under the new agreement the majority of the 1.9 million images are being made available for anyone to use for free under a Creative Commons 4.0 license. Users no longer need to register to use these photographs, and can now download them directly from the British Museum. Under the terms of the Creative Commons license, you are free to share and adapt the images for non-commercial use, but must include a credit to the British Museum. The relaunch also sees 280,000 new object photographs and 85,000 new object records published for the very first time, many of them acquisitions the Museum has made in recent years, including 73 portraits by Damian Hirst, a previously lost watercolour by Rossetti, and a stunning 3,000-year-old Bronze age pendant. You can view the whole online collection here.

73 portraits by Damian Hirst?

[nagora]

Probably the least interesting things in the entire museum.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Half of it's stuff the British pilfered during the days of Empire and won't give back, not exactly something we should be proud of.

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[Joce640k]

It's not as if the Greeks were looking after their marbles when we pilfered them.

There probably wouldn't be much left now if we hadn't.

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[Revenge101]

"It's not as if the Greeks were looking after their marbles when we pilfered them" Untrue. They survived over two thousand years just fine under Greek control. It was actual Lord Elgan that damaged them when he incompetently ripped them off the Parthenon. Granted this pattern of thievery from the British state was from a different imperialist era but that the British Museum now ridiculously wants to hold copyrights on effectively stolen property is shameless. If anything the British museum needs to start r

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[Freischutz]

Half of it's stuff the British pilfered during the days of Empire and won't give back, not exactly something we should be proud of.

Well, you are in good company. The Met and most other US museums are also full of stuff that US soldiers pilfered during WWII, same goes for Russian museums. I would give the Americans credit for returning some of this stuff at least, like the contents of the Quedlinburg cathedral treasury, if it was not for the reason that apparently in the USA you can still legally demand ransom money for the return of stolen property. The German cultural fund had to ransom Quedlinburg hoard from the heirs of the estate o

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[nagora]

Half of it's stuff the British pilfered during the days of Empire and won't give back, not exactly something we should be proud of.

Why not? That's history. Or did you think the Greeks and Romans didn't "pilfer"? Or that no black person ever owned or sold a slave? How difficult it must be being so woke all the time. The lack of sleep gives you hallucinations.

Greece didn't even exist when Elgin bought the marbles, and if it had then the marbles would probably have been broken up to use in some local shithole church of the holy toenail.

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[Revenge101]

What a load of racist sound revisionist horse manure. A. The Marbles survived fine for over two thousand years in Greece without the "help' of Elgin that damaged them removing them. While true he took it during Ottoman occupation of Greece this doesn't mean it was the Ottomans's to give. They too stole them from Greeks by "generously" giving away something that was not theirs. B. Your argument that since thievery has been around for thousands of years ergo the British museum's own ownership of items that

Wrong license

[AvitarX]

The article links to CC-BY

But it's actually BY-NC-SA

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

So the article text about non commercial is accurate, but the linked license is wrong (it's the original article's fault, not /.'s)

Finally!

[fahrbot-bot]

I actually get to use the British Museum Search [wikipedia.org] ...

let's take this for a spin.

[sheramil]

Search, all fields, keyword, "Dalek".

One result, "badge"

"We have no available images for this object."

That's about what i expected.

License?

[Luthair]

Looking at the linked article, clearly some of the photos are reproductions of public domain works, so why does the British Museum think it came apply a license to them.

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[SandorZoo]

Because UK copyright law has a "sweat of the brow" doctrine as part of their copyright law, which says that sometimes sufficient effort is enough to create copyright, without any originality. This is mainly intended for compliations of facts, for example works like phone directories, or maybe the Guinness book of records. Somebody else can then create a similar work by recollecting the factual data themsleves, but not by copying the data directly from copyrighted work.

However, the UK's Intellectual Propert

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[Luthair]

Thats interesting, though doesn't apply to anyone who isn't in Britain, further if the last paragraph in the article you linked seems to suggest that the UK IPO may not agree with it either.:

In November 2015, the United Kingdom's Intellectual Property Office clarified in an informational document that, based on the opinion of the European Court of Justice, "copyright can only subsist in subject matter that is original in the sense that it is the author's own 'intellectual creation'. Given this criterion, it seems unlikely that what is merely a retouched, digitised image of an older work can be considered as 'original'."[19]

Digital museums

[swillden]

If you're into looking at art online, be sure to check out https://artsandculture.google.... [google.com]; digitized content from over 2000 museums, scanned at high resolution so you can zoom in to see tiny details.

Personally, I never saw the point of visiting museums online. I like visiting museums, but it's more about the experience of being in the physical presence of something amazing and old. Seeing it on my monitor doesn't have the same impact even if I can actually see the details better.

Slashdotted

[ebh]

I haven't seen the Slashdot effect this bad in at least a decade!

Slightly OT - 3D models available

[cellocgw]

Some sites like myminifactory.com have decently large collections of 3D-scanned models of (well, duh) 3D objects in art museums from around the world. Worth skimming thru if you're into art and printing.

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[AvitarX]

That's been resolved actually (specifically WRT printers).

You can't sell shirts with it as a product, but if you have a custom shirt business, and a user submits a CC-NC image, you can print it. The printer cannot charge extra because of the specific image, but if they are treating it as if it was the customer's original artwork, it has been deemed the printer is not using it commercially.

Note, I work for a printer, and we're extrapolating from a textbook case (we were closely watching, since a lot of schoo

Sometimes One Must Wonder ...

[Toad-san]

what in the world the British Museum had in mind. I mean, even if "portraits" are free, if the "artist" is vagualy famous ... I mean, really?

https://www.theguardian.com/ar... [theguardian.com]

[quote]More than 70 portraits by Damien Hirst – drawn on placemats at the breakfast table – have been given to the British Museum.

The drawings, some smeared with food and coffee stains, will be displayed at the museum, famous for treasures such as the Elgin marbles and the Rosetta Stone.[/quote]

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/medi [guim.co.uk]

not The (British) Science Museum 8(

[ka9dgx]

I did my usual search for Henry Maudslay, hoping to get better pictures of the first successful screw cutting lathe.... and it's not the right museum. 8(

Here's a slightly better place https://collection.sciencemuse... [sciencemus...oup.org.uk]