Copyright

[Kevink]

I am in the process of writing a book with a close family member and reached out to the Royal Museum in Greenwich to ask for the free use of an image of a painting of Nelson. Unfortunately they declined my request and were not unreasonable with their fee for Royalty payments.

“All commercial activity performed by our museum is not to create profit, but to generate a financial turnover to be then reinvested in the museum operations and activities, including the conservation of over 4 million objects which are part of our collection.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to waive the licence fee.
Please see an example licence fee estimate
Fee: £85 minus 20% = £68 per image, Image: Nelson Usage: Commercial/Trade Book, Proposed Title: TBC, Print run:500
Size: ¼ page, Placement: Interior, Retail Price: TBC, Licence Duration: up to 5 years, Language: English”

This book will have very little circulation and will at best breakeven on cost so we decided to either leave out old Nelson or are considering an AI generated image of the gentleman. In fact we have used a large number of Ai images in the book to illustrate key points. We also used AI to restore a number of old photographs all of which are free from copyright. To make sure we were not treading on difficult ground i spoke to a copy write lawer to confirm that we had not stamped on anyones rights. He gave us the all clear.
Thought you might like to know these things.

 

[AllanKP69]

Is the image available on the internet? I realize they need to be paid on many things, but as an example of that not being the case there are 800 high resolution plans from RMG that are available for free and in the public domain on the Wiki Commons site. At their current rate these would cost upwards of 50,000 pounds sterling. Your choice of painting may not be available but maybe worth a search to see if it is in the public domain.
Allan

 

[Kevink]

This is the image we were considering

 

[Albert Mary]

Damn Albion...

 

[Albert Mary]

This book will have very little circulation

Who can tell? The subject looks like a lot interesting. Good luck and get going.

 

[Bryian]

Hello Kevin, perhaps you could get a local artist to do a rendering of that photo for you, and it would be an original piece.

 

[-Waldemar-]

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It is quite possible that the institution where "your" image is stored is trying to charge fees for its use quite unlawfully, especially for non-commercial applications.

Admittedly, I am not in a position to check the generally applicable legal situation in your region, but for comparison, in mine, any public reproduction of original material, regardless of its nature (e.g. text or graphics), is fully permitted for non-commercial uses (popularisation, education, training, science, etc.). In such non-commercial cases, no one even needs to be asked for permission, let alone paid, and there are even no preliminary restrictions on the volume of material quoted. In fact, the only obligation is to provide a reliable reference (and even that is more ethical than legal in nature). Any disputes that may arise in this regard are settled individually by the court (if this were the case, you could argue, among other things, that the price of the book only covered the costs of its preparation, printing and distribution, without any profit margin or just minimal).

But of course, you have to decide for yourself whether to go down this route.

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