--- Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:
Translating from one medium to another is defined as creativity. Just as making a translation is copyrightable (though derrivative of the original work). However, taking a PD aerial photograph and taking a program to reduce it down to a line and releasing it under GFDL puts the material in the intellectual commons. The change is that in 1980 you had to hire a person to do the work, and companies successfully argued that if they could not make enough to pay that person, it would not be done.
Translating is one thing, literally tracing is very different. Tracing does not require any creativity at all. But as I said, the particulars in regard to GIS data have not been tested yet (AFAIK). The Court may find there is a compelling interest in giving that type of GIS data copyright protection. Thus we must play it safe and create our own whenever PD data is not available.
-- mav
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