What’s Wrong With This Picture?

by Alan Mairson on June 24, 2009 4 Comments

archivescreenshot

LIFE magazine’s photo archive (via Google) goes back to the 1860s.

The New York Times offers an online archive that goes back to 1851.

The Washington Post‘s online archive goes back to 1877.

TIME magazine’s online archive begins in 1923.

But National Geographic (published since 1888) has an online archive that begins in 2005.

Why?

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  • a friend of NGS

    The lack of a deep archive could be mired in a copyright/wrong morass,
    but there used to be an online archive of rich web content going back to 1997.

    It seems quite Stalinistic to erase access to access to non current web regime content.

    The good news is most of the old, ellie award winning blue site is still hidden online if you know the url structure.

    http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0009/index.html

    After all might not someone, somewhere want to remember Louis Marden’s Lobsterettes?
    http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0011/feature4/zoom3.html

    I gather they only want to register hits on their current efforts and are blind to any value expressed in their inherited history.

    Thats not my grampa’s Oldsmobile

    • I figured it might be a legal issue. But last July, the 11th Circuit Court ruled in favor of NGS in a copyright case that’s been going on for years. “Freelancers cannot collect royalties from magazine’s CD-ROM of its archives,” says the headline at Law.com.

      National Geographic won its dual victories after more than a decade of litigation in two federal circuits. The publisher of National Geographic has battled freelance writers and photographers over whether it must pay them additional royalties associated with the sale of “The Complete National Geographic” — a digital version of the magazine’s published archive. http://bit.ly/L7JR9

      There’s also this:

      … although photographs could not be reprinted in computer databases without permission, they could be republished on CD-ROM or DVD in a reprint of the original work, (in this case, issues of National Geographic) without infringing freelance contributors’ copyrights.

      Sounds like each advance in technology (DVD to online) might well generate yet another round of litigation.

      Then again, much of the Society’s archive must have been produced by NGS staff, so copyright shouldn’t be an issue. Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to at least get that material online?

  • a friend of NGS

    The lack of a deep archive could be mired in a copyright/wrong morass,
    but there used to be an online archive of rich web content going back to 1997.

    It seems quite Stalinistic to erase access to access to non current web regime content.

    The good news is most of the old, ellie award winning blue site is still hidden online if you know the url structure.

    http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0009/index.html

    After all might not someone, somewhere want to remember Louis Marden’s Lobsterettes?
    http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0011/feature4/zoom3.html

    I gather they only want to register hits on their current efforts and are blind to any value expressed in their inherited history.

    Thats not my grampa’s Oldsmobile

    • I figured it might be a legal issue. But last July, the 11th Circuit Court ruled in favor of NGS in a copyright case that’s been going on for years. “Freelancers cannot collect royalties from magazine’s CD-ROM of its archives,” says the headline at Law.com.

      National Geographic won its dual victories after more than a decade of litigation in two federal circuits. The publisher of National Geographic has battled freelance writers and photographers over whether it must pay them additional royalties associated with the sale of “The Complete National Geographic” — a digital version of the magazine’s published archive. http://bit.ly/L7JR9

      There’s also this:

      … although photographs could not be reprinted in computer databases without permission, they could be republished on CD-ROM or DVD in a reprint of the original work, (in this case, issues of National Geographic) without infringing freelance contributors’ copyrights.

      Sounds like each advance in technology (DVD to online) might well generate yet another round of litigation.

      Then again, much of the Society’s archive must have been produced by NGS staff, so copyright shouldn’t be an issue. Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to at least get that material online?

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