As for all monuments of cultural heritage, permission from the Greek Ministry of Culture is required for the reproduction of photographs of the inscriptions. The scientific data of the collection is the product of research work undertaken by researchers and collaborators of the Institute, therefore copyright for all data in the collection belongs to the Institute for Greek and Roman Antiquity of the National Hellenic Research Foundation. These data may be used freely, provided that there is explicit reference to their provenance.
In most other countries, the inscriptions would be in the public domain (because of their age) and so would digital photographs of the inscriptions (because of their lack of originality). But a country could expand its copyright law to cover antiquities and unoriginal reproductions. Does anyone know whether Greece has done so? Egypt considered doing so in 2007. (Did Egypt go through with it?)
Update (4/18/09). Also see Eric Kansa's discussion of the copyright antiquity problem from last November. (Thanks to Chuck Jones.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/13/2009 04:14:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
