On 11/24/06, Earle Martin wikipedia@downlode.org wrote:
On 24/11/06, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/24/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Much of Google Earth imagery *is* public domain. Google has not added the necessary creativity to change this.
That said, it's much safer to just use NASA Worldwind.
I didn't say that Google has copyright over imagery in Google Earth. I said that the imagery is copyrighted.
IANAL, of course, but I believe that the work that Google has done in stitching together all the various image data sets to produce a derivative work (Google Earth) based on them would count as creative and original, so a screenshot of such a stitched area would infringe their copyright.
In 99% of cases, I doubt it the work done by Google would be enough to obtain copyright protection. Most of the time it isn't even something done by hand, it's something done by computer.
Anthony