At 11:44 AM 7/21/06 -0400, John Howell wrote: >I think Dennis mean copying from the original, not a facsimile of the original.
No, copying content from the 'facsimile' is what I meant. Copyright subsists in the photograph itself, which is not truly a facsimile... >Why >exactly are their copies of the original, whether photographs, >scans, or whatever, copyrightable when there is exactly zero >added intellectual content? Photographs and scans are different to some degree, but let's stick to photos. The US copyright law protects the fixing into a medium, even if it is a photo of something else. This is a rabbit hole, where a photo of a photo is protected, too. (Just look at the enormous number of permissions required and credits given in a typical feature film these days.) >Is this one of the differences between European copyright law >--under which I understand that page layout can be copyrighted >--and U.S. law, which has never recognized such a copyright? But we have design patents. (I really don't know about patents or European copyright law, so scratch that as a meaningful comment.) My reading of US law goes back a long way, but as an amateur informed by lots of (too much) reading. My first real run-in was interviewing Bill Gates about (the not yet available) software copyright for an article back in 1980. From then on, I've kept a close eye on developments and tried to make sense of the letter of the US law as well. If I photograph a page of a public domain document, have I created a separate work of art? What if I photograph two pages in one frame? Several in an arrangement? Several pages in separate frames? What about my contribution of lighting and depth of field to illuminate a fuzzy text? At one point does it go from a simple copy to a separate work of art containing other art? What about the roll of microfilm or the facsimile book? What contribution was made to the work as a whole that makes it eligible for protection? Because the sections of the law I quoted earlier are flexible, it's not an easy call. In the frenzied protect-everything environment, either objection-by-action or caution-by-inaction is in order. For the impecunious among us, caution is the likely choice. :) Dennis -- Please participate in my latest project: http://maltedmedia.com/waam/ My blog: http://maltedmedia.com/bathory/waam-blog.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
