- Bricks on 5th St. NE get pulled up, back in November, as a demo of the work to come.
The Downtown Mall rebricking has begun, Rachana Dixit writes in today’s Daily Progress. Beginning at Central Place, the $7.5M project will work outward from there, continuing six days a week for the next four months. The city did a legendarily terrible job working with merchants when the Downtown Mall was initially constructed, and did little better when bricking over 3rd St. last year. This time around they’re working closely with merchants, timing the work to avoid disruption, even skipping work on Saturdays, at the request of businesses. But lots of downtown merchants remain dubious of the whole project, fearful that it will be more expensive, more disruptive, and lengthier than the city has promised.
Want to follow obsessively each day’s progress? You’ve got a couple of options. There’s C-Ville Weekly’s “Brick Watch!” And there’s also, impressively, the city’s own blog dedicated to the project, complete with a Flickrstream. (Though all their photos are copyrighted, rather than being released into the Creative Commons, so I’ve had to illustrate this with an old photo of my own. That’s my sole quibble in an otherwise great effort.)
I imagine that it’s not uncommon for a government entity to copyright its pictures although, since the public owns them, the public can’t freely use them. Probably, the city doesn’t want people to use the pictures down the road to support its criticisms.
Bring on the bricks. The guys were out in the rain today working hard. Looks like they’re off to a good start.
“(Though all their photos are copyrighted, rather than being released into the Creative Commons…”
The photos are only copyrighted by default. EVERY PHOTO IS COPYRIGHTED (including photos released under the Creative Commons license).
Its highly unlikely you’re going to get sued for embedding the photos. Of course, if you acknowledge that fact, it becomes useless as a rhetorical device.
There is no point in speculating on why they’re copyrighted since there is no way for them to NOT be copyrighted.
Why are they not released under your personal license of choice? For the same reason they weren’t printed and delivered to your house by a singing telegram clown.
I’m well aware of how copyright and Flickr work, but for the purpose of something as simple of this, for a non-legal audience, I suspect we can stick with the copyrighted/not copyrighted dichotomy, false though it may be.
I don’t like how those barriers on the west side of central place funnel people together like cattle. It’s too narrow. Other than that it’s just a pain in the butt that will hopefully finish on time and on budget.
I wonder if they’ll find the buried treasure.