Britain’s National Portrait Gallery takes on Wikipedia

Recently a battle between two large organisations hit the headlines when the National Portrait Gallery took exception to a Wikipedia volunteer uploading 3,300 images from its website.

This disagreement has resulted in both the online encyclopaedia and Britain’s NPG being encouraged to rethink their roles. Wikipedia has accused the National Portrait Gallery of betraying its public service mission, while a spokesman for the National Portrait Gallery insists that, contrary to Wikipedia’s claims, it has not been denying access to a wealth of educational materials.

One of the legal technicalities that complicate this fraught situation still further is the fact that Wikipedia is a US based organisation and is therefore not subject to the copyright laws that would prevent a British site uploading images from the gallery’s collection.

A spokesman for the National Portrait Gallery revealed that the main concern was that Wikipedia (and its affiliate, Wikimedia) were undermining the NPG’s £1 million drive to digitise its collection. It also claimed that a Wikipedia contributor, Derrick Coetzee, would have been welcome to upload low-resolution images from its site. However he had somehow found a way to bypass the system to access high-resolution pictures.

Mr. Coetzee was issued with a legal letter courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery’s solicitors, Farrar & Co., which he has uploaded onto his Wikimedia page. The NPG has stressed that it is dedicated to avoiding any further legal action.

For more information see:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dcoetzee/NPG_legal_threat

New post on at Wednesday, 5 August, 2009, 8:18 am and is archived in Art, Culture, Lifestyle. Subscribe to answers with RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.