On 24/11/06, Stephen Bain
<stephen.bain(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/24/06, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org>
wrote:
Much of Google Earth imagery *is* public domain.
Google has not added
the necessary creativity to change this.
That said, it's much safer to just use NASA Worldwind.
I didn't say that Google has copyright over imagery in Google Earth. I
said that the imagery is copyrighted.
IANAL, of course, but I believe that the work that Google has done in
stitching together all the various image data sets to produce a
derivative work (Google Earth) based on them would count as creative
and original, so a screenshot of such a stitched area would infringe
their copyright.
In 99% of cases, I doubt it the work done by Google would be enough to
obtain copyright protection. Most of the time it isn't even something
done by hand, it's something done by computer.
Anthony