Hi: I have over the years purchased a few old picture postcards (typically ones published by Francis Frith) at antique fairs, and then have asked (and received) advice as to which ones it would be OK to put online, being out of copyright. Several picture postcard dealers have been able to answer me based on the layout and style of the printing on the back of Frith postcards. Unfortunately I do not recall the details, and was wondering whether anyone here knows, or can point me to a source of such information. (I can't find this information in the pages of the Francis Frith Photo Library, despite all they do say about copyright and dating - their apparent preference being to respond to individual copyright queries.) Cheers Brian Randell . -- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = [email protected] PHONE = +44 191 222 7923 FAX = +44 191 222 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell

On 21 Feb at 10:17, Brian Randell <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi: > > I have over the years purchased a few old picture postcards (typically > ones published by Francis Frith) at antique fairs, and then have asked > (and received) advice as to which ones it would be OK to put online, > being out of copyright. > > Several picture postcard dealers have been able to answer me based on > the layout and style of the printing on the back of Frith postcards. > Unfortunately I do not recall the details, and was wondering whether > anyone here knows, or can point me to a source of such information. (I > can't find this information in the pages of the Francis Frith Photo > Library, despite all they do say about copyright and dating - their > apparent preference being to respond to individual copyright queries.) The question is who own the copyright. If the photo was taken by Francis Frith himself, then he would have owned the copyright and it would have survived. in Britain, for 50 years (had he lived a tad longer it would have been 70 years) after his death in 1898. So these photographs expired in 1948. But many of the photographs were taken under contract by his staff or by sub-contractors. By then he had founded a company and undoubtedly that company bought the service and held the copyright. This area of commercially commissioned and owned copyright is unclear and I think it only lasts for 50 years after the date of first publication. The firm closed in 1968 and presumably the last of the photographs had been taken by then. Any taken by contractors in 1968 would have their copyright (under the rule suggested above) expire in 2018. We are now in 2012. I would suggest that there are very few photographs left with any copyright on them at all. Publish and be damned? -- Tim Powys-Lybbe [email protected] for a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/