Anthony wrote:
I say show me the creativity. I don't see it. I actually don't see much creativity in any satellite photography, but...
Um, have you ever looked at Google Earth? It contains much more than satellite photography. Most major cities (including the ones people are snipping scenes of schools from) are overlaid with high-resolution photographs taken from airplanes. Those datasets were collected (as far as I know) by commercial aerial photography companies, and licensed by Google for big bucks.
Typically you see two or three different copyright notices at the bottom of a Google Earth screen, covering the licensed, commercial photographs used, the data overlays (roads, rivers, etc.) applied, and anything else. (And the notices change as you pan around, and hit coverage from different datasets.)
The stuff ain't PD. I'm prepared to be proved wrong, but as far as I know, it's quite legitimately copyrighted.