Author's Right, Copyright and Free Licenses for Culture on the Web/Licenses and Reuse/Images of Cultural Goods in Public Domain

100. Which are the main legal limits to the reuse and dissemination of images of cultural goods?
The reuse and dissemination of images of cultural goods is bound to the compliance with privacy principles concerning personal data (for example, recent documents which are kept in archives), and with reference to such reuse and dissemination we recall the European ruling (UE 2016/679) and the copyright provisions aimed to protect creativity. For this reason, at an international level, the cultural institutions rule the online use of digital images and maintain their rights on the mere reproductions of original works, including those in public domain. However, such possibility will be partially modified by recent DSM directive, which excludes copyright protection for faithful reproductions of visual art works in public domain.


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101. Can cultural institutions protect images of visual artworks in the public domain?
It is highly recommended to cultural institutions to not apply any kind of protection to limit the access and reuse of digital reproductions of visual artworks in the public domain. What is in the public domain should stay in the public domain. Even thought, some cultural institutes still limit the reuse of the digital reproductions published online using watermarks or low-resolution quality or, if high resolution is allowed, the download is not, this practice is discouraged even by the European Commission: “The use of intrusive watermarks or other visual protection measures on copies of public domain material as a sign of ownership or provenance should be avoided”.


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102. Where and how can I find high resolution images of cultural heritage goods to reuse in an illustrated volume?
It is possible to download images of artworks released with open licenses or in public domain on museums, archives and libraries’ websites. In these cases, the reproductions are published and made downloadable at high resolution precisely in order to promote the free reuse of them for any purpose, including commercial ones. Wikimedia, Flickr and Europeana share images free to use according to the Commons tool/license used.


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103. Is it advisable to apply Creative Commons licenses to works in the public domain?
No. Creative Commons licenses cannot be applied to works in the public domain, as they require the existence of author’s rights/copyright in the works. Some cultural institutions have been claiming related rights on the reproductions of works in the public domain (where the legislation permits it) and wrongly released digital copies of works in the public domain using Creative Commons licenses. The EU directive on copyright in the DSM (art. 14) excludes, however, the possibility to rely on copyright neither on related rights to non-original photography of visual artwork in the public domain.

104. How can reproductions of works in the public domain be labelled?
After the implementation of art. 14 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market, we encourage Cultural Institutions to adopt the tool of Public Domain Mark (PDM) for the faithful reproductions of visual art works in public domain worldwide, or CC0 dedication to when there are concerns that the reproductions are subject to copyright in some territory and the Cultural Institution was the rights holder. In case of original reproduction of visual art works in the public domain, we ask Cultural Institutions to adopt CC0. At last, in the case where Cultural Institutions are not the right holders of the original reproduction of visual art works in public domain, we strongly recommend them to promote the adoption of CC0.

RightsStatements.org provides a set of standardized rights statements that can be used to communicate the copyright and re-use status of digital objects to the public. Those statements are supported by major aggregation platforms such as the Digital Public Library of America and Europeana. The rights statements have been designed with both human users and machine users (such as search engines) in mind and make use of semantic web technology and they are compatible with open licenses and public domain tools provided by Creative Commons.


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