Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

You go to a museum - there are no photos allowed "because of copyright" even though most of the images are hundreds of years old. What's going on? It is a literal enclosure of public domain content, protected and monetized through the museum gift show. And protected with some very dubious legislation. "In Germany, for instance, the Reiss-Engelhorn museums have sued the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland over the use of images of cultural artefacts and paintings. Recently, the court has decided that even a photographer's own images of these works will infringe on the museums' property."

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

Copyright 2025
Last Updated: Aug 28, 2025 8:49 p.m.

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