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Houghton is in the process of digitizing a collection of 19th century photographic portraits of African Americans. More than 100 are online so far. hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu

@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.

karen coyle

@overholt @jessamyn I’ve never understood how you can claim rights in a mechanical copy. I know that archives do, but I can’t imagine that it would survive a legal challenge. That said, yeah for HL’s sensible approach!

@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.