[doubleshuffle]

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-...ing-180962080/

It’s a milestone for the museum, which is one of the world’s most visited. Though many of the Met's works are in the public domain, it’s taken years for the museum to revise its open access policy and make those images accessible to users for free. As Barone reports, hundreds of thousands of artworks are now digitized, licensed under the Creative Commons Zero, and ready to download.

Creative Commons Zero, or CC0, is the least restrictive type of copyright license. It allows the holders of content to completely waive their copyright and related rights. Though the works now being released by the Met are currently in the public domain, images of them haven’t been readily available. Nor has the database information that accompanies them. By adopting CC0, the museum has now made that information available to all—and as the museum clarifies in its image policy online, it’s now making database information about images not currently in the public domain available using CC0 as well.

http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collect...t=0&pageSize=0