Dear Harry Spier,

I believe you are thinking of the NGMPP and not the NGMCP, which is the later caloging initiative started in the 2000s. Some years ago while I was working at BDRC I had attempted to forge some agreement to make the NGMPP images available online. For example, in Hamburg there is an intranet with many of these images available to research staff (I'm not sure if this is the case still). During a trip there, I had a meeting about this where I laid out my understanding of copyright law, which I understand just as Jonathan and Stefan have already explained, and was met with polite but firm disagreement where I was told that it would be absolutely impossible to make the images publicly available. I looked into the situation with the National Archives in Nepal and, as Prof. Michaels has suggested, they do not wish for these images to be freely available. I was told that this may hypothetically change at some point, but at least five or so years ago it was impossible. Good luck!

With my kind regards,

Charles

Dr. Charles DiSimone

Department of Languages and Cultures

Ghent University

On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 3:13 PM Harry Spier via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

Thank you Dr. Michaels,
Its my understanding that the NGMCP project started around 1970, so some of the photographs/microfilm were taken over 50 years ago. That makes me wonder if by international copyright law, some of the earlier images are not already legally in the public domain.

I think for books, if the copyright is owned by an individual then the copyright expires 50 or 75 years after the authors death, but if the copyright is owned by a government then the copyright expires 50 or 75 years after the date of publication. (I'm not sure if this is by international copyright law or just by Indian copyright law) and I'm wondering if it is the same case for photographs/microfilm. I.e. copyright expires 50 or 75 years after the photograph was taken.
Harry Spier

On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 4:38 AM Michaels, Prof. Dr. Axel <michaels@hcts.uni-heidelberg.de> wrote:

As far as I know, National Archives Nepal does not allow the NGMPP microfilms or any scans from manuscripts or documents to go online. The reason ist the same as Jonathan mentioned: they want to make money. The situation is terribly complicated and many colleagues have suffered from it. However, you can always ask for a permission to publish the copies, and the South Asia Institute branch office of Heidelberg University in Patan is ready to give you assistance: see here: https://www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/kathmandu/

What we do in our project on cataloguing and editing historical documents from the NGMPP collection (https://abhilekha.adw.uni-heidelberg.de; https://nepalica.hadw-bw.de/nepal/catitems/searchpage but unfortunately today not reachable due to maitenance work), we publish images under a special agreement with a low resolution .

Best,

Axel

__________________________________________________

Prof. Dr. Axel Michaels

Senior Professor

Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS)

Südasien-Institut / South Asia Institute

Universität Heidelberg

Vossstr. 2, Geb. 4130

D-69115 Heidelberg

T: +49-6221-5415209

E: michaels@hcts.uni-heidelberg.de

W: https://www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/krs/abteilung/michaels.html

www.hadw-bw.de/nepal.html, https://www.hadw-bw.de/en/research/research-center/nepal-heritage-documentation-project-nhdp

From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces@list.indology.info> on behalf of "indology@list.indology.info" <indology@list.indology.info>
Reply to: Harry Spier <vasishtha.spier@gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, 10. April 2022 at 14:56
To: "indology@list.indology.info" <indology@list.indology.info>
Subject: [INDOLOGY] NGMCP images and copyright law

Dear list members,

Does anyone know, if according to international copyright law, the manuscript images of the NGMCP (Nepal German Manuscript Cataloguing project) will eventually go into public domain. And if so, when. Or do the agreements signed between the project and the Nepal government supercede this, and the Nepal government has copyright for the images forever.

Thanks,

Harry Spier

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