Houghton is in the process of digitizing a collection of 19th century photographic portraits of African Americans. More than 100 are online so far. https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/24/resources/12085/digital_only
@overholt This is a neat project! Do you know offhand if Harvard is claiming copyright of the scans it's making of what I presume is public domain material or if they're just making them available? I clicked around what I though was a reasonable amount of time before asking you and couldn't find it stated anywhere.
@jessamyn We have a blanket HL policy that we claim no additional rights in public domain material that we digitize. (I won’t say you’ll never find something in our maze of systems that says otherwise, but the policy overrides that.) https://library.harvard.edu/policy-access-digital-reproductions-works-public-domain
@kcoyle @overholt @jessamyn You can't, in the US, though it doesn't stop people from claiming copyright on verbatim reproductions of public domain work.
In the UK it's a little muddier, but still just as gross.
Only creative work attracts a new copyright. Making a faithful duplication that by design does as little interpretation as possible does not give rise to a new copyright.
@pluralistic @kcoyle @overholt @jessamyn My understanding is that it does vary by country and that, for example, Italy's Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape places restrictions on how things you think would be public domain can be used. https://www.mondaq.com/italy/copyright/1289608/extraterritorial-application-of-the-italian-cultural-heritage-code-the-court-of-venice-orders-ravensburger-to-cease-the-marketing-of-its-puzzles-with-the-image-of-the-vitruvian-man