[WikiEN-l] copyright on scanned copy?

Mon Nov 20 01:53:19 UTC 2006

On 11/19/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/19/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You are not "free to try and claim" so much as "it is very rare that
> > people ever get taken to court for false copyright claims over PD
> > material, even though it is illegal."
>
> How is it illegal?

It is illegal (in the US) to make claim that you own the copyright to
something that is in the public domain.

(Obviously I'm aware of the fact that this would, in the end, rest on
the decision that scanning a PD work does not create a new copyright,
but I find it very hard to believe that anyone with half an
understanding of copyright law and its intentions would think that
merely putting a photo on a scanner and hitting "scan" counts as
"creativity" sufficient to take something out of the public domain).

> That would be the result of  Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.

Technically it is the result of (the much more important) Feist v.
Rural (1990) and its implications for what it means to be "creative",
and technically you are mixing up the reasoning with the enforcement
(the case is the enforcement, the reasoning about creativity and rote
copying existed before that case), but yeah, obviously I was referring
to that.

> First the scan was made in the UK so slightly different laws apply.
> Secondly the scan is not perfect you will note that some lines that
> should be striaght were bent. Still up to this stage your no
> creativity holds since the only changes were due to my being in a
> hurry and doing a rather poor job. However it doesn't stop there. The
> image was cropped. Is that non creative? Then User:Steinsky takes the
> scan and cleans it up and shapens it a bit. is that non creative?
> remeber it is likely that User:Steinsky has never seen the original so
> they are probably not trying to recreate it.

It's a derivative work even at best, and courts have long established
(in fair use cases) that making small modifications does not always
count as "creativity". I don't think that's a very tough case, in the
end -- does cropping a public domain image suddenly give you the right
to claim that no one else is allowed to crop the same public domain
image in the same way? A judge would either have to be an idiot or
drunk to think that made sense. Of course I don't put it past a judge
to be either of those things! ;-)

> "ignorance of the law is no excuse" There are many problems caused by
> poor understanding of IP law this is just one of them.

Well, of course.

FF