The US Library of Congress has a great collection of digital images of maps and cartographic illustrations at this site:
I made some large prints for family who like this kind of thing as gifts from these digital files. It occurred to me that, being a poor grad student with some graphic skills and a nice printer, that I could retouch a lot of these and sell them at a local book store or gift shop, etc. Assuming the image is in public domain (pre-1900), is this legal? I cann’t see why not. The info on the site, I will email them, seems to be “here’s the law, decide for yourself what fair use is and if you’ve gone to far don’t blame us.”
Second question: As the color correction and removal of some stains and tears (some gives them character) does require some skill, especially with files this large, would be correction of public domain images by copyrighted? I.e., somebody can go print their own, but they can’t scan my print in and use it again. Make sense?
Remember that for the most part, the Library of Congress doesn’t own the copyright to nearly anything as an institution. That generally holds true for any creative work by the Federal Government (with numerous exceptions which are usually technical or scientific works done on a contract basis).
The photographs you see on the American Memory site were obviously covered under copyright by SOMEBODY at some time. It’s your job to determine whether or not your derivative work is not in violation of copyright laws.
The chances of getting a definitive answer are slight unfortunately.
Search on this message board under the words “Bridgeman” and “Corel”, and you will find me ranting for many, many paragraphs on this subject.
First question: If the work is in the PD, you may do whatever you wish with it. Under the Bridgeman findings, a slavish copy of a PD work is a PD work, despite whatever text appears on the website of the person copying the work. You may re-print, sell, trade for sex, whatever a PD work, or a slavish copy of a PD work (such as, a scan which is intended to be a true and accurate copy, and which contains no original creative content) to your heart’s content.
Second question: If the purpose of the colour correction and baising is to present a true and accurate representation of the PD work, then it is not a derivative work. If the colour correction and biasing is not intended to represent the original work, or removal of stains and tears is done for creative purposes, then it might be considered a derivative work. Remember the key component of copyright is that original, creative content is formed, as opposed to effort. Effort alone is (generally) not copyrightable, creativity (generally) is. So if the point of “fixing” a document or scan is to make it true to the original, then it is doubtful that that could be considered copyrighted. However, the court in Bridgeman did not rule on that specific issue, and to my knowledge no court has ever ruled as to whether or not altering a scan to remove the effects of ageing and wear is creative enough to warrant a new copyright.
Of course I didn’t define the jurisdiction, so I could always say that it was intended to only refer to those two counties or so in Nevada. “How much can I get for a print of the Santa Fe Trail? Roll it up and shove it where? Oh, I see…thanks. Nice piercings, by the way.”
The images in the American Memory project are usually public domain. A quick look at some of the recent maps indicate they were published by the CIA. Since the CIA is a government agency, its work is not copyrightable. (Though it could be declared secret and thus you could get in a lot of trouble reprinting those. :)) Government publications published by government agencies as government reports are public domain
So there is no copyright restriction on anything on those pages. The LOC is not creating a derivative work by scanning in the image, and couldn’t copyright the image anyway, since they are a government agency.