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Comment by illumen | Hacker News Reader

You could definitely call Standford part of the upper class.

The BnF comes from the Royal library, and the new building was announced by the President of France. It's one of the upper class organisations that has moved through various types of governments from Royalty to Napolean to modern Presidents. Now it is supervised by the Ministry of Culture and Communication. 3000 people daily go through the reading rooms, which is a very small percentage of the French public -- less than 1%, less than 0.1%.

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Stanford doesn't commercialize the images though.

The French National Library does, and actually Stanford makes freely available the highest resolutions[0] which are otherwise sold 25€ or 50€ by the BnF (which also sells, more legitimately in my opinion, high-quality physical prints for reasonable prices).

[0]https://stacks.stanford.edu/image/iiif/bv002kr2012%252FT0000...

Standford is using these in a commercial manner, and is also a commercial organisation.

"If you use content for general research, even if not for any specific purpose, and you or your organisation generates income, that counts as commercial use. So does using content for pro-bono work (from the Latin pro bono publico, meaning 'for the public good', or working for free), if it also enhances your reputation or leads to income-generating work in any way whatsoever."

Why was Stanford given permission where as no permission has been given to all French citizens?

Well, the BnF might not consider Stanford's usage as commercial, especially since they say it's a "collaboration".

Besides, as mentioned on the BnF website, the law allows public administration to charge for license or usage, regardless of commercial or not, of material they have collected, produced or provided at cost, as long as it doesn't make a profit[0].

I still think individuals should obviously have free access to it (citizens or not), but I don't see the current situation as as outrageous as you want to make it, and definitely not as abuse from the upper class (which is very real, in other domains).

[0]http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTE...

Not even the members of the Mountain, the last left wing (and most extreme) political coalition before the authoritarian left wing took over, were against commerce itself.

When the various revolutionary governments were managing government lands seized from the church, they didn't just open them up all French citizens, they sold them off to fund the war they started.

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