Bob YOu wrote: > The point is not whether there _appears_ to have been any creativity > involved in making the copy -- it is whether there was, in fact, any > creativity involved. If one takes a poor copy of a document (e.g., > because that's all that still exists) and reconstructs an image which > is indistinguishable from the document when originally published, > then that requires original creativity and is covered by copyright, > according to my intellectual property attorney. > > In other words, your talent in restoring an original doesn't > disqualify you from copyright protection on your creative work. I believe that's consistent with what I said >> In that regard making a VERY >> good copy (meaning an exact, indistinguishable copy) would seem to >> give no copyrightable status....but making an image of an image that >> involved some creativity (say using filters to selectively distort >> some portions of the images (ie, making it "artsy") might be >> copyrightable. What you are describing would seem to be in the later category---its making the image into something different from what it was. I spoke of it as "making it artsy"---thinking specifically of photographs that have been distorted for artistic reasons. But the same argument would seem to apply to "making it better". Bill