The New York Public Library unleashed a huge archive of images on the world. As something of a curator of these sites, I'm always curious as to what the reuse terms are. Apparently, most of the NYPL images are in the public domain, says the faq, but then mumbles about "freely available for personal use". That doesn't jibe does it?!
One other thing about these "public domain" archives. Why don't organizations ever make bundled versions of these collections available? Suppose I'm a scientist (I play one on TV) who thinks a collection of images, or recordings would make a great dataset. Maybe for some image analysis expriements, or explorations into digital media authoring tools. What're my options to get a hold of the complete archive in a nice handy tarball or iso? One, ask nicely and pray. Two, write a Web crawler. Both feel a bit,...unpalatable.