Alex R. wrote:
See Bridgeman Art Library ltd. v. Corel Corp. SDNY
(1999) 36 F. Supp. 2d
191.
You can read the case here:
http://www.constitution.org/1ll/court/fed/bridgman.html
Copyright of photographs of works that are in the public domain are not
original
enough to afford them protection under US copyright law, even when such
works
might be protected in other countries that afford greater protection than
US law.
I haven't heard of any jurisprudence that has overturned this ruling; as far
as I can
tell it is still generally accepted. Feel free to correct me if anyone has
any other citations.
This, along with the typeface copyright issues (typefaces are not
copyrightable in the US, but are copyrightable in the UK and Germany),
makes it seem like Wikipedia essentially has to remain hosted in the US,
and is problematic for overseas distribution and mirroring. If we have
to strip out all our images of fontfaces (see [[A]], [[B]], etc., and
[[typefaces]], for some examples), and all our images of public domain
paintings in order to redistribute in Germany or the UK, that would be
quite problematic.
-Mark