PHOTO POLICY

401DutchOperas is a non-profit volunteer website that highlights forgotten Dutch opera composers and their operas, both from the past and present. The portraits of post-war composers were created in collaboration with the composers themselves, their relatives, and opera companies. Organizations such as the Dutch National Opera, the Concertgebouw, Opera Spanga, Lyrica Ghent, the composers themselves, or their descendants have provided visual material for this purpose. The biographies serve solely to promote the composers and their work. No commercial interest is served by them. This means it falls under the globally accepted 'fair use' principle, which also governs Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Recently, aggressive copyright groups have become active, laying bizarre claims on postage-stamp-sized photos, which they "track down" using obscure dragnet techniques. For us, it's very simple: if a photographer or a relative believes we are not allowed to use photo X or Y, we remove it. The aggressive approach of recent date is not without consequences though: we have now removed dozens of biographies of Dutch opera composers in popular post-war categories as a precaution (from Louis Andriessen to Hans Kox & co). Oh... the accompanying illustration is our own creation.