In a message dated 3/10/2006 8:27:56 PM Eastern Standard Time, deasonh2@netzero.com writes: What HeritageQuest has done (or its agents) is to make a digital image of a census page and add to it with some page identification information and that is the creation to which they hold the rights. If you think about it, HeritageQuest's digital images came not from photographs of the original pages (I think I am right on this) but from scan of microfilm (probably masters?). The source of HQ's digital images would have been another film. That film would also not have been copyrightable as it was merely a reproduction of the government census pages. The images themselves cannot be copyrighted because nothing original was created. HQ's copyright would not extend beyond the compilation copyright to their database as a whole. Photographing a tombstone which you seem to be trying to claim is similar to photographing a census image is not the same thing. In photographing a tombstone there IS a degree of originality and creativity in the photographic process and although the tombstone inscription isn't copyrightable by the photographer--the photo would meet the test of originality. Joan