On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 07:49:48 -0600 Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> wrote:
If you take a photograph or scan a postage stamp that
image is not
copyrighted even though the underlying design may be. Sometimes a nice
image, for example of a butterfly or bird or even a person can be included
in Wikipedia in that way. The Japanese stamp you reference is just a
photograph or scan of a stamp which anyone can make and publish, although
perhaps, in Japan, there might be some restriction as it is a Japanese
stamp.
Anyone _can_ make and publish it. But that does not mean that it's legal.
Making a photograph of something and copying that photograph is a way of
copying, and disallowed just like all other methods of copying copyrighted
works.
It occurs to me that there is a sort of disconnect
here. If you take a
photograph of painting in an museum or someone's home that is copyright
free
but if you scan a reproduction of a painting in a book it is not, yet there
is very little difference in what you have done.
Indeed, there's little difference, and your statement is wrong.
Andre Engels