Reproductions of Public Domain Works Should Remain in the Public Domain - Creative Commons
▻https://creativecommons.org/2019/11/20/reproductions-of-public-domain-works
We acknowledge that in some cases cultural heritage institutions use CC licenses in order to get credit for their work or to indicate the provenance of the digital surrogates. There are better, more appropriate technical tools to achieve that goal, including metadata and machine readability standards.
Lastly, we understand the concerns over revenue and profit that some cultural heritage institutions express when evaluating open access policies. However, claiming copyright over public domain works and successful revenue strategies are different conversations that don’t belong in the same space. If anything, there is a growing amount of evidence that shows that the associated costs for licensing images dwarf the potential benefits or revenue streams for licensing images.2