In the U.S., anyway, I think it is perfectly safe. There's no "creativity" in that scan in the slightest. The scanner did not expend any creativity in creating it, it should generate no copyright claims other than the ones already in the coin, which is well over the copyrightable age limit, unless there is some sort of special clause in the law about official currency.
(As an aside, the only real argument I've ever seen people raise against Bridgeman v. Corel is "museums depend on a lot of income from this practice." In my opinion that's the worst defense against copyright principles available: "we make money off of it, so damn the principles." That's the sort of nonsense which leads to the Sonny Bono Extension Act, which tries its hardest to do away with the whole "limited" part of "limited monopoly.")
FF
On 2/2/06, Joshua Griisser JDGRII8338@ngcsu.edu wrote:
According to our [[WP:IUP|Image use policy]]:
"''According to the image use policy: "Also note that in the United States, reproductions of two-dimensional artwork which is in the public domain because of age do not generate a new copyright — for example, a straight-on photograph of the Mona Lisa would not be considered copyrighted (see Bridgeman v. Corel). Scans of images alone do not generate new copyrights — they merely inherit the copyright status of the image they are reproducing.''"
Does this mean that images taken from coin auction catalogs (whether paper or online) could be uploaded under a {{tl|Money-US}} license? As an example of what I'm talking about, see this:
[http://www.coinfacts.com/nickels/shield_nickels/1866_nickel_obv.jpg]
This and similar images are clearly either scans or straight-on photos, with essentially no creative work involved. Since they are large, high-resolution pictures, they would be very useful on Wikipedia. Can they be used in compliance with copyright law and Wikipedia policy?
- [[User:Crotalus horridus]]
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