Andre Engels wrote:
On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 07:49:48 -0600 Fred Bauder wrote:
If you take a photograph or scan a postage stamp that image is not copyrighted even though the underlying design may be. Sometimes a nice image, for example of a butterfly or bird or even a person can be included in Wikipedia in that way.
Anyone _can_ make and publish it. But that does not mean that it's legal. Making a photograph of something and copying that photograph is a way of copying, and disallowed just like all other methods of copying copyrighted works.
This is somewhat muddled. Saying that an act infringes copyright would be more accurate that saying that it is illegal or disallowed. There are circumstances, such as fair dealing, where the copying is perfectly legal. A copy of a copy can indeed infringe an original copyright whether or not there is a derivative copyright in the first copy. Every current Canadian stamp has a copyright notice on it, but catalog manufacturers quite readily reproduce them in their books without any hint of having sought permission from the Post Office. The Scott Company, on the other hand, is very protective of its own copyrights.
It occurs to me that there is a sort of disconnect here. If you take a photograph of painting in an museum or someone's home that is copyright free but if you scan a reproduction of a painting in a book it is not, yet there is very little difference in what you have done.
Indeed, there's little difference, and your statement is wrong.
This is a variant of the issue about the National Portrait Gallery in London.. The copyright depends on the underlying work, not the reproduction.
Ec