[WikiEN-l] "Permission required" on copyright expired images...

[Steve Bennett]

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 4:11 PM, Chris Down
<neuro.wikipedia at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Although I suspect what's also happening is the image that we see
>> there is low quality, and you'd need permission to get a higher
>> quality, printable version. And they'd never give permission to cc-sa
>> it.
>
> Copyright doesn't work like that. An image is not copyrighted by itself, a
> "work" is, and most people would not consider an image that is simply
> resized to be an entirely different work to the original. Therefore,
> licensing a resized version differently to a higher quality original (or
> whatever) is simply not possible

What I was getting at, is that the image you see on the web is low
quality. Since it is a different form of the original PD image, you
presumably can do what you want with it. If you want to do something
with the high quality image, you're going to have to get it from them
- regardless of what the copyright situation. (Just like galleries
prevent you taking photos - the images may be PD, but if you can't
physically get a copy, that doesn't help you.)

My reasoning may be totally wrong, I'm just trying to explain my
thought process.

> Also:
>
> "The requirement for permission to publish is based on ownership, not
>> copyright"
>
>
> Does ownership actually allow you to supersede copyright like this? Surely
> not.

That's what I want to know. They're effectively asserting that they
have the right to set conditions on your use of the work. I would like
to know on what basis they make that claim. What I'm presuming is it's
just based on the fact that they physically control the high quality
versions of the work, which means that once you physically get a copy,
they're not in a position to stop you. But again, I could be well and
truly wrong.

Steve