Category talk:Ferraris
Copyright problem with those Ferraris maps scans
[edit]Apparently, according to the site the scans come from, they're NOT public domain and not suitable for publishing on the Internet or commercial use. No amount of hiding behind a nice PD-Art banner will change that. Unfortunately. — Bjung (talk) 23:53, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
They might say that these scan are copyrighted but according to US law (where the wikimedia servers are located) the scans are in the public domain. And even according to Belgian law (where the old maps were scanned and published) the scans can be considered as public domain.
In the Belgian law "Wet betreffende het auteursrecht en de naburige rechten." of 30 June 1994, in chapter 1, part 1, article 2, paragraph 5 one finds:
- De beschermingstermijn van foto's die oorspronkelijk zijn, in de zin dat zij een eigen intellectuele schepping van de auteur zijn, wordt (vastgesteld) overeenkomstig de voorgaande paragrafen.. [1]
- (my translation): The protection duration of photgraphs that are original, in the sense that they are a proper intellectual creation of the author, becomes like previous paragraphs. (and thus copyrighted till 70 years after the death of the author)
The Belgian federal governement clarifies this on one of its websites:
- Worden daarentegen niet beschermd door het auteursrecht: wat uitsluitend door een machine wordt voortgebracht (satellietbeelden).[2].
- (my translation): Are not protected by copyright: what is made solely by a machine (e.g. satellite images).
Simple scans or photographs of public domain documents remain hence in the public domain. Donarreiskoffer (talk) 06:43, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
- I disagree.
- Not all Wikimedia servers are located in the US (there are mirrors) and Wikimedia is not US-centric; free license usage here is also mostly not country-specific.
- IMO the interpretation of "solely" is not so "simple". There's still a human involved who has used resources to scan or take photographs of PD material, so it's not "solely" made by a machine. Otherwise, many recent photographs of old buildings or paintings should also be in the public domain, not CC: taking a photograph is so easy with modern, entirely automatic cameras, that it could be argued they're "made solely by a machine". And what's the difference between the reproduction of a map, a drawing, a painting, a building? The "simplicity" of the scan or photograph is a nice pretext to steal others' work, isn't it? PD material reproductions found in recent books and encyclopedias would be PD too, right? And what about photographs taken automatically from moving vehicles, when a human is holding the camera and when not? — Bjung (talk) 17:59, 23 May 2011 (UTC)