On 11/26/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Careful and
precise are not the standards for copyright protection.
Creative is. In the case of an image which is completely from a
single public domain source, there just isn't anything creative being
done. You stitch together the tiles in a completely algorithmic
manner. If anyone holds the copyright on the resulting work, it would
be the person who chose what scene to picture (the user of the
software), not the person who wrote the software. That is also the
person who put the work in fixed form, another requirement for
copyright protection.
I say show me the creativity. I don't see it. I actually don't see
much creativity in any satellite photography, but when it comes to
creativity from Google in a typical Google Earth shot, I don't see any
at all.
The algorithm would be creative, which should be enough.
Depends on the purpose of the algorithm. If the purpose of the
algorithm is, for instance, to simulate as accurately as possible the
curvature of earth, then while the algorithm itself might be creative,
and worthy of copyright, the resulting output wouldn't be. (If the
purpose of the algorithm is to make a pretty picture, then it probably
would be.)
Would you say
a painting made using a rubber stamp wasn't creative because anyone
can cover stamps in paint and put them on a piece of paper? The
creativity comes in making the stamp, and so, what you make with that
stamp is copyrightable.
A painting made using a rubber stamp is a copy of the stamp. Not all
output from computer algorithms are copies of that algorithm.
Would you say a photograph made using a camera was copyrighted by the
person who wrote the firmware on the camera (the image stabilization
algorithm, the sharpening algorithm, etc.)? Of course not. The
algorithm is likely copyrighted by the programmer (the standard for
creativity in computer software is unfortunately very low), but that
doesn't mean the output of the software is copyrighted by the
programmer.
Anthony