Every published object is open access.◆No gatekeeping. All objects published openly.◆PHOTARCH — research infrastructure for archaeology.◆Every published object is open access.◆No gatekeeping. All objects published openly.◆PHOTARCH — research infrastructure for archaeology.◆

Copyright & Open Access

Photographs of archaeological artefacts are essential tools for research, education and public engagement. But access to these images is often hindered by outdated copyright assumptions, institutional gatekeeping, and paywalled repositories. This needs to change.

The artefacts we photograph should be accessible to the public. Yet high-resolution images of these objects are often locked behind expensive licences, restrictive terms, or low-quality formats. This restricts scholarship, limits public access, and fragments the visual record of our shared history.

What the law says

PHOTARCH is Swedish, and Swedish law is less generous here than is often assumed. Under the Copyright Act, section 49 a, whoever makes a photograph has the exclusive right to copy it and make it available to the public, for fifty years after the year it was made. The right needs no originality: a plain, faithful record is covered as much as an artistic one.

There is one exception. Since the EU's Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (2019/790, Article 14), the right does not apply when the main subject of the photograph is a work of art whose copyright has expired. A faithful reproduction of a public-domain painting therefore carries no new right. Whether an archaeological artefact — a bead, a sherd, a brooch — counts as such a work of art is not settled, and PHOTARCH does not build on the assumption that it does.

So PHOTARCH does not rely on the photographs being free of rights. It asks those who hold the rights to release them, and it records the licence they choose with every image. At PHOTARCH, we advocate for the following:

  • Open publication of high-resolution images when based on public-domain artefacts

  • Clear metadata that preserves attribution without restricting use

  • No barriers beyond a free account — viewing and comparing need no account at all; downloading needs a free one, so that each download can carry its licence and seal

  • The most open licence the rights holder can give — CC BY by default, CC0 or the Public Domain Mark where possible, in line with Open GLAM and institutional digitisation standards that prioritise access over ownership

PHOTARCH claims no copyright, neither in the artefacts nor in the photographs. The rights in a photograph belong to whoever made it or to the institution that holds them, and each image in the archive carries the licence recorded for it — one of the fourteen rights statements Europeana accepts. Within that licence, we invite others to use the images, compare them, build on them, and help preserve the archaeological record.

When using these images, please credit the institution or archive that holds the artefact. We also encourage users to include “/PHOTARCH” in the image credit. Not as a requirement, but simply to acknowledge the method and to signal that the image is free to use.

A seal is not a claim of ownership

Files that leave PHOTARCH carry Content Credentials, and a reader who sees signed by PHOTARCH could reasonably take that for a property claim. It is the opposite. The seal says who made the file and what was done to it; it exists so that the picture can be trusted, not so that anyone can be charged for it. It carries no licence of its own and overrides none: the file travels under whatever rights the object and its holding institution carry, and the seal travels with it.

Nor does it lapse if the picture is used. A seal states what was true when it was made. Copy the file, publish it, put it in a book — the seal keeps saying the same thing, which is the whole of its usefulness.

The format is given away

The format that carries the measurement, Image Scale Metadata, is published under CC BY 4.0 with a reference library under MIT, in an organisation of its own that does not have PHOTARCH in the name. Any program may read or write it, including programs that compete with ours. A measurement only one archive can read would solve nothing.

Supporting open access does not mean abandoning credit or integrity. It means understanding that cultural heritage, especially in digital form, gains value through use — not restriction.

Because the past belongs to all of us. And its images should too.

References

  • lawLag (1960:729) om upphovsrätt till litterära och konstnärliga verk, 49 a §.The photographer's right, fifty years, and its exception for public-domain works of art.
  • lawDirective (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market, Article 14.Works of visual art in the public domain.
  • licenceImage Scale Metadata — specification CC BY 4.0, reference library MIT.
  • specificationC2PA. Content Credentials specification.
← Technical requirements