Considering the subject matter, the commercialization of these images in the public domain by the upper class is... quite funny.

Even though I really don't agree with what the BnF is doing, I don't think you can call the National library some kind of "representative of the upper class".

It's the nation commercializing national property, which is far from ideal, but still hugely better than the pre-revolutionary situation.

You could definitely call Standford part of the upper class.

The BnF comes from the Royal library, and the new building was announced by the President of France. It's one of the upper class organisations that has moved through various types of governments from Royalty to Napolean to modern Presidents. Now it is supervised by the Ministry of Culture and Communication. 3000 people daily go through the reading rooms, which is a very small percentage of the French public -- less than 1%, less than 0.1%.

Stanford doesn't commercialize the images though.

The French National Library does, and actually Stanford makes freely available the highest resolutions[0] which are otherwise sold 25€ or 50€ by the BnF (which also sells, more legitimately in my opinion, high-quality physical prints for reasonable prices).

[0]https://stacks.stanford.edu/image/iiif/bv002kr2012%252FT0000...

Standford is using these in a commercial manner, and is also a commercial organisation.

"If you use content for general research, even if not for any specific purpose, and you or your organisation generates income, that counts as commercial use. So does using content for pro-bono work (from the Latin pro bono publico, meaning 'for the public good', or working for free), if it also enhances your reputation or leads to income-generating work in any way whatsoever."

Why was Stanford given permission where as no permission has been given to all French citizens?

Well, the BnF might not consider Stanford's usage as commercial, especially since they say it's a "collaboration".

Besides, as mentioned on the BnF website, the law allows public administration to charge for license or usage, regardless of commercial or not, of material they have collected, produced or provided at cost, as long as it doesn't make a profit[0].

I still think individuals should obviously have free access to it (citizens or not), but I don't see the current situation as as outrageous as you want to make it, and definitely not as abuse from the upper class (which is very real, in other domains).

[0]http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTE...

Not even the members of the Mountain, the last left wing (and most extreme) political coalition before the authoritarian left wing took over, were against commerce itself.

When the various revolutionary governments were managing government lands seized from the church, they didn't just open them up all French citizens, they sold them off to fund the war they started.

So for fun, let's say they're assertion is legally valid, that the scans (not the original images) are copyrightable. What stops me from then taking screen caps of all their images, or copying the framebuffer from my graphics card or something (effectively "scans") and copyrighting those?

I don't understand how images outside of copyright can have a license enforced.

Some countries like the UK have a "Sweat of the Brow" [0] doctrine which lets them claim copyright by virtue of the effort put in to compile the work. However it isn't recognized in the U.S because they doesn't see this as requiring creativity so it doesn't count as a derivative work. This has the benefit that companies can't circumvent the public domain without altering the work, but it also disincentives them from digitizing older works. I don't know if french law acknowledges the doctrine or not. Regardless it is pretty unbecoming of a project started by government archivists and headed by a national library, though I do understand that they might want to recoup some of their costs.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow

But the site with the reproductions is hosted[1] in the USA[2], right? If so, then one could conclude that there is no copyright on the digital reproductions.

[1] http://frda.stanford.edu/

[2] © Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305

I think the copyright notice at the bottom is just website boilerplate. it's also on the main Stanford library website. The about page says "For commercial use, contact: [email protected]", so it is the Bibliothèque nationale de France that is claiming copyright. IANAL, but I think you'd be pretty safe using those images on servers hosted in the USA because then you'd be under the jurisdiction of U.S copyright law, but things can get messy as in this case where a British Museum threatened to take the Wikimedia Foundation to UK court: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_....

I don't think this would work in Germany (IANAL), because it only counts as a reproduction of the work and does not meet the Schöpfungshöhe.

The original image might be out of copyright, but someone's photograph of it is not. So, if you can take your own image you can do what you want with it, but you don't have any right to someone else's photograph of it.

> Note, as we have indicated in previous posts, there is no copyright in a slavish photo reproduction of a public domain painting.

via http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/public-domain/welcome/

I know that this is not true, so I linked to a site which will back me up on it.