Copyright a Land Feature? This sign is posted on private property in New Mexico, USA at: 35.47212, -106.15719 COPYRIGHT NOTICE Photos and videos taken of Lone Butte Mountain may not be directly or indirectly published, reproduced, stored, modified, published, copied, transmitted, sold, projected, redistributed and used in any way without the permission of the owner, to avoid copyright infringement. Issues/Questions: Just a comment. Given the poor writing, this sign does not appear to have been written by an attorney. Is it legally valid to copyright a land feature? Does this make it illegal for me to photograph (and publish) a photo taken while I'm standing on public land (in this case County Road 45) Same as 2, but supposed I own the land on the other side of the road and take the photo Supposing that the land owner has no legal right to copyright, is it illegal to post this sign? Edit: I showed this to an attorney friend this morning and he said &quot;kind of like trying to copyright air&quot;.
Who knows. It doesn't matter. 17 USC 102 lists the kinds of things protectable by copyright under US law. These are: (1) literary works; (2) musical works, including any accompanying words; (3) dramatic works, including any accompanying music; (4) pantomimes and choreographic works; (5) pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works; (6) motion pictures and other audiovisual works; (7) sound recordings; and (8) architectural works. A landscape feature is none of these and is not subject to copyright protection under US law, nor I think under the law of any other country. The &quot;copyright notice&quot; has no legal effect. 17 USC 120 Specifically prohibits copyright being used to prevent the taking of pictures of a building from a public place. In many countries Freedom of panorama (FOP) specifically permits publication of photos taken from public places. Se also this article on FOP. FOP is an exception to copyright protection, which applies to copyrighted architectural works and publicly posted works of art, such as sculptures. Since landscape features are not copyrightable at all, FOP does not strictly apply to them, but all the arguments for FOP would apply to them even more strongly. In US Law, particularly under the Fiest vs Rural case, only works with original content, created by a person, are protected by copyright. (Other countries generally have similar limits on copyright.) But a feature of the landscape is not the original creation of any person. (If someone carved the landscape into a designed shape, it might be protect able as a sculpture.) 3 and 4. If it were a building, you could take pictures of it from a public place or a private place where you have a legal right to be, under 17 USC 120 . But since a part of the landscape is not protected by copyright at all, this is not really relevant. No under the US First amendment there is generally a right to say even false things. But if the landowner attempts to enforce this &quot;copyright&quot; it would be considered frivolous and any court proceeding would be promptly tossed out. The sign gives the landowner no rights s/he would not otherwise have.
What do you mean by "a public building"? Just because a place is owned by the public, doesn't mean anyone can go there any time they wish. Military bases, firehouses, and jails are owned by the public, but many of these have limited access to the public. It may be open to the general public, but that does not mean restrictions cannot be put into place, either on times, or activities, or individuals. For example, public parks often have time and activity restrictions; schools have the power to restrict individuals from their premises, either specifically or by general category. As a general point of law, the owner of any property, or their agent, can order anyone without the right to stay (e.g. not a co-owner or tenant), and that person must depart, otherwise that person is tresspassing. Assuming that the Senior Center is owned by the town, it is probable that the Administrator is empowered to act as the town's agent in this matter. Now, since this "No Trespass order" is specifically directed at you, there is a reason behind it. It may be something you've done. It may be that complaints have been received about your behavior. It may be an actual abuse by someone who doesn't like you. We have no way of knowing. It the order itself doesn't give you a hint as to why, you can ask the town administrator for the reason. As for being against your rights, there is nothing inherently illegal about this situation(that is, an agent of a property owner exercising the latter's right to prohibit an individual from said property), but some of the details, especially why it was specifically applied to you as an individual might be a civil rights violation.
It's a typographic divider line dating back to the days of typewriting; there's a passing reference to the practice on the Typography for Lawyers website. Standards for formatting documents -- especially those being uploaded as text into online repositories -- are generally set by the local jurisdiction; some courts may specify exactly how and where to use this sort of spacer; others may not allow it at all. For example, this E-File Manual for the Ventura (Calif.) Superior Court specifies "There is NO blank line between the ' ---000--- ' and the caption," whereas the Typography for Lawyers sample document from the Supreme Court of Utah uses "----ooOoo----".
united-states The composition of a photograph, a painting, or an image of any sort is one of the elements that can be protected by copyright, and indeed one of those aspects that make an image original and thus a proper subject of a copyright under US law. A new image that imitates the original and distinctive composition of another might be held to be a derivative work, and thus an infringement of copyright if done without permission. Note that the composition must be original. A photo of, say, two people standing side-by-side has been done many times, and would probably not have any distinctive element of composition. The images shown as part of the question look rather distinctive to me, but for all I know this is a cliche that has been done over and over. If this came to an actual lawsuit a defendant could present evidence showing the composition to have been previously used by others, and thus common coin, free for anyone to adopt. This would be similar to the Scènes à faire concept. Things that have been done over and over are not original and are thus not protectable by copyright. That would ultimately be a judgement for the court to make, dependent on the facts of a specific case. I suspect this answer is correct for the laws of many countries, but I can only confirm it for US copyright law.
It's still under copyright, so you'd need to contact the publisher for permission, although if the artist (or in this case the executor of the estate Lynn Caponera) still retains the rights to the work sometimes going straight to the them can be a better option, especially in this case as it's for a non-profit and for a library in particular. The library also might have certain rights for reproduction, they generally pay a bulk fee to publishers but outside lending I'm not sure what that covers, so I'd check with the library manager (either branch or regional depending on who handles legal and licensing) as well.
If a work is in the public domain, then there are no particular requirements on its use; in particular, it can be used on a book cover without a copyright notice, a public domain notice, or any other kind of notice or mark. Wikimedia Commons' public domain template says, &quot;You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States.&quot; This is a notice to users of Wikimedia Commons, informing them that if they upload a public domain image to Wikimedia Commons, they must include a public domain tag. That's a policy of Wikimedia Commons. It doesn't apply to people using the image outside of Wikimedia.
Although the exact answer should depend on the country you are, in general private copies of copyrighted works are allowed. General rules are: You need to have got the work in a legitimate way. That is, that you have purchased a copy of the work with permission from copyright owners or you have got the work from an act of public distribution authorised by copyright owners - if you got it from a website that is not making a copyright infringement itself, you are in the second case. That you don't make a collective or commercial use of the work. (I took these rules from Spanish Intellectual Property law (article 31), but most countries have similar rules, specially in the European Union. Anyway, the exact limits of private copying exception may differ). Since private copying might have an economic effect, some countries collect private copying levies to compensate copyright owners - probably you have already paid for those when purchasing the printer. Therefore, you can print a book downloaded from a website (unless the site is hosting the work without authorization of the copyright owners, as pirate sites do) for your own use. You can't sell the copies or made a collective use of them. Although reach of collective use might be hard to assess, I would suggest that if you want all the people in your class have the book, send them the link so that any one could print their own copy. Update about the USA As the OP has now specified now their country I update the answer with a comment, although an additional answer by anybody more knowledgeable on US law would be great. I'm quite sure that for practical purposes the result is that you can print such a book anywhere in the world. However, I don't know which laws regulates that in the US. Google doesn't return meaningful results for "private copy usa", so I suppose it is know there by another name. Furthermore, statutes in common law countries tend to be less explicit and there might be no case law applicable. For example, I nobody printing a copy of a pdf for himself to read at home has ever been challenged in court in the USA, there might be no explicit rule about the subject.
If the author died in 1946 then copyright in his works expired at the end of 2016. The work is in the public domain. The relevant section of the Copyright Designs &amp; Patents Act 1988 extends to the whole of the United Kingdom, but not Crown Dependencies or colonies. You need to be sure that the work is the author's own work. If someone else has contributed then the copyright endures until it expires 70 years after the death of the last of the authors. The same applies to art. If you want to reproduce artwork, say for a cover/sleeve design, that would also have the artist's copyright, which lasts for 70 years after that person's death. The typography of a book has copyright which lasts for 25 years from publication.