Copyright on 200 year old artworks – seriously?
OK. Everyone has to earn a living. I accept that. I have no issue at all with photographers charging for their work, whether it’s an outright fee or a license per copy. Similarly, I have no issue with artists, musicians, graphic designers, fontographers and other creative professionals doing the same. They did the work, they deserve not only the credit, but also the fees arising from others benefiting, and often profiting from it.
So far so good.
Where it all begins to go wrong for me is when an institution sees fit to charge a fee for reproducing an image where the artist (to use a generic term for a moment) cannot possibly receive a percentage because they’ve been dead for a couple of hundred years.
Think I’m overstating? Just try to find a public domain, copyright and royalty-free image of Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet (and barring maybe Billy Connolly 😁), probably the best known Scots-born person ever. If you’ve never heard of him, think Auld Lang Syne. That’s Robert Burns.
His best known likeness was painted by Alexander Naysmith, who died in 1840 (more than 40 years after Burns himself). I can go and look at the painting at the excellent National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh for free. I have done so a number of times and it’s splendid, but if I want to reproduce it on a jigsaw then I discover it’s “OK, but it’s covered by copyright and can only be licenced for a fee.” Aargh!
So then I wonder if the fee is set at a level which supports small crafters making high quality, specialised products? Of course not. It’s set at a level appropriate to large businesses who decorate shortbread tins by the thousand with a montage of “Scottishness”, which usually includes images of Burns, Edinburgh Castle, Balmoral and the Old Course at St Andrews, all wrapped up in swathes of tartan!
And talking of tartan … you guessed it! It’s not straightforward to get your hands on that either. Most images of individual tartans on the internet are copyright and have to be licensed for reproduction. Hats off, then, to the fine folks at www.tartanmaker.com who have develop a web app to allow you to design and download your own. For free. If you want the proof of the pudding, here’s one we designed for a couple of puzzles celebrating International Women’s Day here in Scotland.
So here’s my thought for today (with apologies for the rantiness of the post)! If ye want a wee bit o’ tartan, dae it yersel …
As for Rabbie Burns, it turns out that someone called Cook in the 1890s produced his own “based on Naysmith” painting which is free to use! Probably an early jigsaw puzzle maker!
