[WikiEN-l] Google Earth copyright (now that you bring it up)

Sun Jan 22 16:31:49 UTC 2006

On 1/22/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/21/06, Haukur Þorgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
> > That wouldn't be a bad thing. But remember that it's not as simple as
> > 'free' and 'non-free'. We have *a lot* of images which are in the public
> > domain in the United States but not elsewhere.
>
> If I remember correctly, another category is US government works.  The
> US government has before asserted that just because US law requires
> works of the US government be freely available within the US does not
> mean, in their view, that the works are PD elsewhere.  They have
> certainly, as I recall, charged non-US corporations for using such
> data.
>
> -Matt

Umm...  I'm fairly certain that that's incorrect.  Do you have a
citation for any of that?  I seem to recall the exact opposite, though
I can't find a citation myself.

The only thing I could see possible is that the United States sued the
non-US corporation in some non-US court.  Even so, I'd be somewhat
shocked, and I'd love to see some documentation that that's occurred.

Anthony