Talk:John Franklin/Draft

A note to other pilot editors/authors: While I am using some bits of the wikipedia source here as scaffolding, I plan to eventually re-write almost the entite article. The wikipedia entry was rife with errors (4 substantial errors of fact, and dozens of misleading/incomplete statements). Drawing from many years working on and writing about Franklin, I'm hoping to eventually make this a showcase entry, adding illustrations from my own collections of images.

Russell Potter 08:19, 31 October 2006 (CST)

Picture

I've already left a note on Eric's user page, but wanted to note here also that while the daguerreotype by Beard is an ideal image of Sir John Franklin, it is not fully in the public domain.

There's a twist in copyright law in the UK and US which allows owners of drawings, objets d'art, and photographs to control "derivative images" even when any original copyright inhering in the work itself is extinct. It's actually not copyright law, but property law -- imagine if someone took a photo of your house and you did not want it used without your say-so. Images derived from items in museums and archives may be restricted -- and often are -- under this principle.

So the image of Franklin captured by the daguerreotype, only two copies of which exist (Beard's camera used a prism to split the light and make two images in relatively rapid sequence) can't be used without the permission of one of those parties, since it is a "derivative" work of them.

I've updloaded an old newspaper engraving from 1855 -- no copyright is in it (UK engravings become PD 100 years after the death of the illustrator) -- as john_franklin1.jpg, but have had trouble getting it to display properly, as the dauguerreotype currently does. If Eric or anyone could lend a hand on this I would be most grateful.

Russell Potter 10:04, 1 November 2006 (CST)