On 1/19/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
The challenge to Google's claim of copyright on the image (which in itself was educational) didn't come until the image had already been up there for months. In fact, the image itself didn't even include a claim of copyright by Google, it was from one of the very first editions of the software when Google didn't yet have the audacity to make such an obviously specious claim. (*)
Anthony
(*) The image in question was exported from Google Earth (example at http://www.newrecruit.org/images/blog/googleearth/paris.jpg). The compass on the bottom left was not present and neither was the copyright notice on the bottom right (not because I removed them, but because Google had not yet added them). Like the image I presented there were no 3-D elements. I think it's clear to anyone with any knowledge of copyright law that Google has *zero* copyright interest in such an image. You don't get copyright on something simply because it is part of the output of a program you wrote, and all the rest of the possibly copyrighted features are held by someone else (in the case of my photo, the state of New Jersey).