Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack Tingle
Wikipedia is welcome to use public domain or their own photos of the paintings. They just aren't welcome to use someone else's photos. Laziness is not a justification for the abrogation of copyright law, however flawed it is. And yes, copyright is one of the best ways of paying for creations of the mind.
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AFAIK, there are restrictions on 2-dimensional reproductions of a painting - which a photo might well be (if it included the frame, it could be argued that it is 3-dimensional). I don't know this exact case (they might have used copyrighted photos), but it would still be a problem if I went to a museum, took a photo of a painting and cropped it, and put the photo in wikimedia commons. It could then be considered a "copy" of the original work. A photo of a sculpture is different, as it depicts something 3-dimensional, it would be considered my own work, not a copy.