[Clipart] 3000+ SVG files available

[Jon Phillips]

On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 23:37 -0500, Andrew Archibald wrote:
> Jon Phillips wrote:
> 
> > I started a list here:
> > 
> > http://openclipart.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?SimilarProjects
> > 
> > But, I know there are so many more. I also think it would be possible to
> > find those cdroms like 30,000 clip art or whatever and if they say they
> > are public domain, its free for the taking.
> > 
> > Really, I think the best procedure would be to develop some form of
> > script or spider that seeks out public domain clip art. It might even be
> > useful to develop a specific script so that once you find a site that
> > has PD, to do a harvest of the whole site and directly import it to OCAL
> > -- of course, trying to follow good netiquette ;)
> > 
> > Jon
> 
> You do have to be a bit careful about this!  There are a few ways OCAL could 
> get badly burned by this (worst-case: "tainting" the whole archive, so nobody 
> can trust any of it to be PD).
> 
> * You can't copyright PD material, but you can copyright material based on PD 
> material.  The test is whether you have added "expressive content", but the bar 
> is traditionally set very low (a preface to a Shakespeare play, minor spelling 
> corrections, and so on).  In our case, the addition of metadata might be enough 
> for a site to claim copyright.
> * You can't copyright unmodified PD material, but you can copyright a 
> collection of individually uncopyrighted works - notionally what you are 
> copyrighting is the expressive content involved in selecting and organizing the 
> content (the phone book is a classic example).  So if we import a clipart 
> collection entire and unchanged, we're probably violating copyright.
> * PD content may nevertheless not be safe (or appropriate) to include in OCAL. 
>   Security issues (trojan anyone? how about a virus?), offensiveness issues 
> (talk about censorship aside, do we really want a vectorized goatse?), 
> trademark issues (hey look at this neat picture of the Apple logo I just drew!)...
> * Many sites may mix PD and "do what you like" content - even a license that 
> places no restrictions on the user whatsoever is not the same as public domain. 
>    And sites may mix in "royalty-free" content willy-nilly.
> 
> Unless content has been explicity flagged as public domain, preferably by the 
> author, I don't think it's safe to include in OCAL.  The only reliably 
> machine-readable indicator of PD content I can think of is the Creative Commons 
>   gizmo.

I agree with you as well. I think also any content harvested from
elsewhere should have a reference to its location in the metdata. Also,
the name of the site taken from would be good for tracking.

I do agree that images must be checked and have a clear PD declaration
near their use/name.

Jon

-- 
Jon Phillips

USA PH 510.499.0894
jon at rejon.org
http://www.rejon.org

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