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2011/6/20 Andrea Zanni <zanni.andrea84@gmail.com>:

I'm having different news from all over the places about
the "copyright of scans".

Some say "what is in PD remains in PD", and this is WMF position, and
it appears that
American and European legislation go in this direction.

Some other (well, all the GLAMs I know) say there is at least the
copyright of the scan,
that is 20 years (as a photographic image).

At least in Poland (and I guess in many other EU countries) - scans
are not copyrightable at all - as they are just mechanical copies of
the original work which is actually PD. However, there is an
additional  intelectual property right for database (even if a
database is a collection of digital copies of PD works it can be
copyrightable as a whole) and for "first publication of not yet known
archive materials". The last one - lasts in Poland for 20 years after
the date of the first publications. For example - if an archivist
finds an unique, not yet known work of Beethoven, which has not been
already published - the archivist has a rights similar to copyright
that works for 20 years after first publication. But it only applys if
the work was never ever published already - for example old uknown yet
manuscripts, paintings nad photos which were never exhibited in public
etc.. In Poland it is called "first finder rights".

In fact, every digital library write down in their footer that they
have copyright of the images,
and nonetheless Commoners and Wikisourcians download them all.
Internet Archive itself has a bot that crawls Google Books Search and
grabs the grabbable.

I guess Internet Archive can grab from Google mainly because in US
there is no database copyright regulations similar to the European
ones.

http://www.iusmentis.com/databases/us/