Fastfission wrote: > Just a note from a very occasional reader: one of the apparently final > determinants made by User:Nv8200p before he deleted the Einstein-Planck > images is that Corbis claims it as one of theirs, thus it must be > copyrighted. > I have found over the years that Corbis has many, many US-government > produced images in its catalog that they claim they own the copyright > on. They also have many images that are so old that they cannot possibly be > still copyrighted (images published first in the early 19th century, for > example). I once e-mailed them about this and the person who e-mailed me > back said that they were claiming the copyright on the _scans_, not the > images themselves. > > Which is of dubious legal validity, as all of on here know. > > So just a head's up on that. Corbis has no real problem in overextending > their copyright claims to things that we would probably not agree with based > on our own copyright policies and the goals of a free encyclopedia. As we > all know, there is virtually no risk to Corbis for doing so as long as they > don't sue anybody for these dubious claims (as the US Copyright Office does > not seem to prosecute false copyright claims of this nature). Just because > it is in a Corbis catalog does not mean it is not actually public domain -- > Corbis is not careful about these things. Corbis does it because it can. The comment about having copyright on the scans works because very few people are willing and able to challenge bullshit.
Some of the copyrights claimed by Corbis may be on material bought from another archive which in turn acquired them from a defunct newspaper. The newspaper would have had the rights to photographs which were works for hire, but it may also have used material from free-lance photographers who did not transfer copyrights. Who will have the energy to follow the paper trail? Ec _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
