On 5/21/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
This whole conversation is getting a bit silly. But I don't agree with your statement that releasing a copyrighted image into PD (insofar as that's actually possible) is necessarily morally wrong. Would my mother care if I published her photo of flowers all over the web with PD marked on it?
I think the more important question is whether or not she'd care if *someone else* did [whatever] with the photo. If there's a moral problem with marking something as PD which isn't, it's that someone else might use the image and then get in trouble with the actual copyright holder.
I think it'd be much better to tag the image with truthful information.
IOW, *if* the uploader of that picture was never the copyright holder of that image and *if* he didn't at least get permission from the copyright holder to release the image into the public domain, then I think he added the tag inappropriately. But as he did in fact tag the image as public domain, I'm going to assume in good faith that he has some reason to believe the image is indeed public domain.
Anthony