Re: what a slimey person
 

Care to elaborate, Bruce.

Cheers
Brian

Re: what a slimey person
 

No, think I've made my point.

Re: what a slimey person
 

Hi Bruce

I consider that I have also made my point - we disagree.

Some authors receive expenses to purchase photographs - I never have.

Royalties on WWII aviation books are probably at an all time low. However, I don't write for profit (although its always appreciated), but because I value history. If I am able to share what knowledge I have amassed over many years of research (mainly with no-longer-with-us veterans), then I am content.

Some authors charge a fee for information, others charge for copies of photographs. I have always allowed any photographs from 'my' collection to be used - often without any form of acknowledgement.

History belongs to all - and should be free IMHO!

Brian

Re: what a slimey person
 

This thread has drifted from the point I wanted to make, that, being that anyone who steals from the archives of any nations deserves the maximum penalty, whatever it is.

Re: what a slimey person
 

Hi there!
I don't wish to cause a controversy, but when it comes to using photographs in my books I invariably find myself in a quandary.
I'm the first to admit that I don't fully understand copyright laws, that seem to vary from country to country, but perhaps naively I believe that photographs, particularly of a historical nature, should be available for all to see - and use. Surely no one 'owns' them apart from the individual who took the original, and presumably he/she would have wanted to share the image? Surely, the more who see the image in an appropriate setting, the greater appreciation of said image will be possible?
take photos from here:https://damagedphotorestoration.com/
can find something useful, good luck with your research)

Re: what a slimey person
 

OK noyolo, so what about the person who located the photo in the first place (often incurring considerable expense in travel, correspondence, purchase and ensuing research) and put in all the effort to identify who/what it depicted and to put it into a historical context? If you just take the photo for your own use then you are forcing the original finder to do work on your behalf for no reward. To me that is morally wrong.

Re: what a slimey person
 

When I did my national service in 1995-1996 in the French Army archives (SHA), most of the officers files of the Napoleon era had disappeared, for the reason that they were signed by Napoleon himself and so were sought at by collectioners.

Now, when you go to these archives, security is much more reinforced, but too late for many documents.

My own opinion is that Internet is a huge booster for any historical research, and numerisation of archives is the best way to make them usable to many, especially abroad (and it is always a good thing to check both sides archives for WWII history, when possible), but also to protect them from theft or destruction (by reducing manual handling, or creating a "save" in case of fire).

Sadly French archives is decade late for numerisation. A pity because when I did my service 23 years ago I worked on such a project, but it was a total failure, due to a very bad choice of documents to be scanned: they were larger to the available scan, so we had to scan the four corners, then assemble them into one file, and then we were supposed to run a software on the image that will recognize the text. Sadly it was fully hand written on a dark paper with many vertical and horizontal lines, and the percentage of correct text was close to nil. Actually we were far faster by copying ourselves the text (that was perfectly readable for human eyes). But we had to follow orders and so use the software (and then correct 99% of the result manually). Last to be said, if the documents were in such a good state, it was because "nobody was ever asking to read them", so it was judged OK to take them out the archives to lend them to our service for months. Effectively, nobody ever asked for it in the 8 months I was there.