On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 07:49:48 -0600 Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net 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. The Japanese stamp you reference is just a photograph or scan of a stamp which anyone can make and publish, although perhaps, in Japan, there might be some restriction as it is a Japanese stamp.
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.
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.
Andre Engels