On Tue, Jan 23, 2007 at 04:03:55PM +1100, Stephen Bain wrote:
When you start mixing stuff you complicate things. If I were to take a screenshot of a page on Wikipedia, for example, the text of the page would be GFDL (unless there are some quotes or something in the text, which would be fair use), the MediaWiki elements would be GPL, the browser window could be anything (if you're in Firefox, for example, then the picture of the browser interface is under the Mozilla Public Licence). The skins that come with MediaWiki are GPL just like the rest of MediaWiki.
So unfortunately you can't get PD screenshots of MediaWiki. The best you can do is GPL screenshots, but only if you show only GPL content in it and either cut out the browser interface or use a GPL browser.
Someone vastly misunderstands the nature of copyright law, I think.
(Though, admittedly, IANAL, either. I just play on on the net.)
If I create a screenshot of a browser page on my computer displaying wikipedia, there is *one* copyright involved: *mine*. The image is not a derivative work of the browser, the OS, or the website. Therefore, none of those people's copyrights apply, and therefore by induction, no licenses are necessary. I created an image, and I own its copyright.
The situation is pretty much identical to my *taking a photograph* of the screen displaying said browser.
If I want to use that image for *commercial advertising*, there msy be some issues with respect to model releases for pictures of identifiable people, or trademarks (though this is even less clear), but -- and particularly if the destination of the image is pedagogy -- underlying copyrights don't, that I am able to determine, have anything whatsoever to do with it. Trademark law doesn't say you can't reproduce the trademark, it says you can't make money off it, or confuse other people about who it refers to.
I'm sufficiently confident of this that I'd say "don't worry about it" in a public place, unless I'm contradicted by an attorney whose practice is in copyright law.
Cheers, -- jra