On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 2:35 PM, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
As far as law outside the U.S. is concerned, the Feist
decision has had
more of an impact than Bridgeman (probably because it was a Supreme
Court decision). Since Feist (1991), many common
law<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law> countries have moved
towards applying the "threshold of originality" standard and away from
the "sweat of the brow" standard.[1] Canada, for example, now largely
follows Feist. Even UK jurisprudence is gradually transitioning (and is
currently inconsistent).
UK requires originality. But it's not at all clear that a photograph
of something out of copyright is unoriginal (even if that something is
"two dimensional").
By the common meaning of the word "original", I'd say the photograph
*is* original. OTOH, under US precedent it *probably* isn't within
the US legal meaning of the term. In any case, any copyright on the
photograph of course does not extend to the text.