Haukur Þorgeirsson wrote:
For the record I think the idea that the British
Library
can copyright this image to be evil. There are lots of
pictures of old artworks at their website which I'd love
to plunder. But it would be nice to establish the legal
status of doing so under British law.
And that's right, there's a nasty little Copyright tag
there at the bottom of the page. They also have a copyright
statement in English:
http://www.kb.dk/elib/ophavsret/index-en.htm
As for Danish copyright laws it seems from my non-lawyer
reading that they "protect" any photograph, regardless
of creativity. I hope this sort of non-sense wouldn't
hold up in a Danish court but I really don't know if
it would.
Many of these things cannot be settled without going to court in each
separate country, and the putative copyright holders know that the mere
idea of landing in court can be a deterrent even when the chance of the
court upholding the copyright is negligible.
Lego is a good example of a Danish company that actively pursues
intellectual property rights against Megablocks in one country after
another, and consistently loses.
Ec