koyaanis qatsi wrote:
do we have a boilerplate asking about what we believe
to be false copyright claims? I ask because a few
weeks ago I visited the site of a university hosting
pictures from the late 1800s and claiming copyright on
them.
As far as I know, simply scanning an image in does
*not* constitute creative input, and does not make the
photo a derivative work eligible for copyright. I'd
like to go about asking several sites to clarify their
copyright claims, but when I first see something I
strongly suspect to be false and/or greedy, I turn
green and say things like "arrrrgh! smash!"
How should be go about phrasing the question, or has
it been done already?
When discussing images of out-of-copyright paintings, [[Wikipedia:Public
domain image resources]] suggests "Accurate photographs of paintings
lack expressive content and are automatically in the public domain once
the painting's copyright has expired (95 years after initial
publication). All other copyright notices can safely be ignored."
I think this is probably a good policy -- if you're quite sure that the
copyright notices are invalid and the images are in fact public domain,
just use them and ignore the copyright notices. Then if someone
complains we can try arguing with their copyright claims, but no need to
pick fights unless we have to.
-Mark