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Originally Posted by Abecedary
I've seen people getting in an uproar over all over the place for a few days now. My question is this: How is this really any different than a PD book being published by Penguin or Random House? The material contained in the book is PD, but that particular manifestation of it is copyrighted (the presentation and specific formatting).
Images are the same way. It's not like they magically made themselves appear in a photograph (or jpg). A photographer had to spend some time ensuring the conditions were just right to get a good picture of the work (which isn't exactly simple because classic artwork can be very reactive to light--hence the 'no flash photography' rules in most museums). In that instance, like the book, the material contained within the image is PD, but the image itself is copyrighted.
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Wikipedia's answer is:
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Both the NPG and Wikimedia agree that the paintings depicted in these images are in the public domain – many of these portraits are hundreds of years old, all long out of copyright. However, the NPG claims that it holds a copyright to the reproduction of these images (while also controlling access to the physical objects). In other words, the NPG believes that the slavish reproduction of a public domain painting without any added originality conveys a new full copyright to the digital copy, creating the opportunity to monetize this digital copy for many decades. The NPG is therefore effectively asserting full control over these public domain paintings.
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When Penguin publishes a PD book, it typesets, does layout work, proofreads, commissions printing, et al. The case in question's analogue is Google claiming copyright over their (often not even particularly good quality) public domain book scans at books.google.com and suing anybody that posts partial or full PDFs (or PDF extracted images) on their own website.
- Ahi