Pictures copyright

Paintings, drawings, photograps and picture of a picture

[webjourneyman]

What is the out-of-copyright age for paintings, drawings, photographs? Would a scan of somebody elses picture of Mona Lisa be an infringement upon the photographer?

A hypothetical example of what I might need this for. If I was f.ex. writing an article about a historical person and I would like to provide with a pictore of said person.

[hunderdown]

Copyright regulations for pictures are the same as for text. So you could not scan in someone else's photograph, unless it was an old photograph, of course.

You also can't take someone's photograph and copy it as a painting--I've heard of cases where someone used a photo as reference for an illustration, basically copied composition, subject, details, with minimal alteration. On publication, it was noticed, and they had to pay the photographer for the infringement.

If you want to illustrate an article about an historical figure with a picture of them, and want to do it for free, find a book about that person that's now in the public domain, and you could scan any illustration in it and use it....

[webjourneyman]

Thanks, that's an exellent tip. I think the public domain age is something like hundred and fifty years past since publication. That would would mean books published around 1855.

[hunderdown]

The public domain cutoff in the US is sometime in the 1920s. I lost track of the exact year when Congress changed the rules recently.

You should be able to find the date pretty easily--either at the Copyright Office's site or a site with info. about copyright.

[topr8]

beware - public domain is not as simple as all that, also different countries have different rules.

there are also many exceptions and weird situations.

most publishers have no idea what is in their historic back catalog, but other people often do, infact some people specialise in buying up the rights to 'very old' (but still very much in copyright) publications, they then go about a lucrative business by taking action against breaches of the copyright - some of which have been going on for years.