Richard Grevers wrote:
On Mon, 26 May 2003 21:11:23 -0400, cprompt cprompt@tmbg.org gave utterance to the following:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
Is anyone at Wikipedia a cartographer?
In responce to the first post (which I accidentally deleted), is a cleaned up picture (obviously with most of the pixels different, but similar colors) still a violation of copywright? I made one if it would help. --LittleDan
Sorry, but I tend to think it would still be a violation of copyright, just as much as taking a popular song and adding a drum beat, or using an acoustic guitar instead of electric guitar. In this case, you are changing the original, rather than using the original to create your own work.
I disagree. The information (in this case borders established by a 9th century treaty and the outline of Europe, plus some place names) is not copyrightable, only the presentation of it is. I quite often have to make maps showing the locality of some project. I might have traced the location of the streets from some other source, but it is impossible to tell from the finished work which if any of multiple sources (including public records) it may have been based upon.
But is a cleaned up picture with different colors really the same as tracing a map? I see tracing a map as akin to paraphrasing a document which should be okay. In any case, I'm not willing to fight on this issue, and will go with whatever the consensus is. :-)