At 10:06 AM 9/1/2007, you wrote: >As a case in point, organizations like Topozone considers the images >they provide to be within their copyright. >You can't use them without paying for that right. Yet the images are >based on USGS public property maps. True, they are probably using >digitized data to >generate their maps rather than scanning them, but the raw data is >public property, and so their use would seem to be public property. >Yet you can not use the images for anything other than personal use. > >Is this not the case? The Topozone images are protected by license (their Terms and Conditions of use), not necessarily by copyright. Individual images within their collection may be protected by copyright (theirs or others), and the collection as a whole is protected by compilation copyright. But the individual images copied from the public domain remain public domain and the companies "sweat of the brow" in digitizing those images can only be protected in the U.S. through licensing. When you use the site to access an image from their collection, you agree to their Terms and Conditions. Reading the licensing agreements on websites and CDs containing data or image collections can be a real eye-opener <g> Pat

Ah! Thank you. That clarifies the issue nicely. Bill On Sep 1, 2007, at 10:50 AM, Pat Asher wrote: > At 10:06 AM 9/1/2007, you wrote: >> As a case in point, organizations like Topozone considers the images >> they provide to be within their copyright. >> You can't use them without paying for that right. Yet the images are >> based on USGS public property maps. True, they are probably using >> digitized data to >> generate their maps rather than scanning them, but the raw data is >> public property, and so their use would seem to be public property. >> Yet you can not use the images for anything other than personal use. >> >> Is this not the case? > > The Topozone images are protected by license (their Terms and > Conditions of use), not necessarily by copyright. Individual images > within their collection may be protected by copyright (theirs or > others), and the collection as a whole is protected by compilation > copyright. But the individual images copied from the public domain > remain public domain and the companies "sweat of the brow" in > digitizing those images can only be protected in the U.S. through > licensing. When you use the site to access an image from their > collection, you agree to their Terms and Conditions. Reading the > licensing agreements on websites and CDs containing data or image > collections can be a real eye-opener <g> > > Pat > > > > > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to COPYRIGHT- > request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes > in the subject and the body of the message