On 11/19/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
You are not "free to try and claim" so much as "it is very rare that people ever get taken to court for false copyright claims over PD material, even though it is illegal."
How is it illegal?
CORBIS does the same thing, by the way -- they have a huge number of PD images in their photo collections which are labeled as (c) CORBIS. I think it is ethically indefensible -- one can want to protect ones labors how one wants but copyright is supposed to protect creativity, and scanning something -- no matter how hard it was to find or track down -- requires no creativity.
That would be the result of Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.
However there are complications. Take this for example:
[[Image:Bridgewater map 1946.jpg]]
First the scan was made in the UK so slightly different laws apply. Secondly the scan is not perfect you will note that some lines that should be striaght were bent. Still up to this stage your no creativity holds since the only changes were due to my being in a hurry and doing a rather poor job. However it doesn't stop there. The image was cropped. Is that non creative? Then User:Steinsky takes the scan and cleans it up and shapens it a bit. is that non creative? remeber it is likely that User:Steinsky has never seen the original so they are probably not trying to recreate it.
There are other ways to protect content and labors other than false claims of copyright (esp. in a culture which is hypersensitive about copyright in days of late). It is a gross abuse of the ignorance of most people about copyright law.
FF
"ignorance of the law is no excuse" There are many problems caused by poor understanding of IP law this is just one of them.