copyright question: photo of a statue

I suddenly realized that under Finnish copyright law you cannot add a photo of a statue on the commercial web site without the permission of the creator of that statue (or you can do so after the creator has been dead for 70 years). But LT is based on the USA. What the laws of the USA say about this?

In the US, photos of the statue are considered derivative of the copyright of the statue. While of the top of my head, case law has been pretty generous with using pictures of statues in movies and larger photos, pictures of statues to show the statue would be treated much a photo of a photo would, IMO.

Thanks. I hope you are right.

> 2

I don't think that's true. If I take a photo of, say, the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial, I hold the copyright in that photo. Even if the statue itself is in the public domain, you can't use my image of it.

>4 lilithcat: True. But if I take a photo of a statue that is still under copyright (unlike the Lincoln Memorial), I don't have the same type of ownership of that image. E.g., I can't take a picture of someone's drawing or sculpture of an author and then upload it as my work because it's my photo. The same holds true for a statue. I think that's what prosfilaes is saying as well.

5> Right; photo of a photo was misleading in that I didn't mean to deny a new copyright, just that it didn't avoid the copyright in the original work.

In Australia, copyright infringement is based upon reproduction in material form. So, a photo of a copyright work, like a statue, is a reproduction (by taking the photo) in material form (ie some form of media). I think the US position is roughly the same.

Photography of copyrighted sculptures in public places for private, non-profit use is generally allowed. If you are intending to sell the photos, then a license is required. I don't know how this applies to LT, which is commercial but not selling the photos in any way.

I refrase my question:
If I take a photo of a statue of an author, can I add the photo on the author page in LibraryThing?

As far as I know:

Is the statue still under copyright? If so, no--LT use isn't private use, it is commercial. If the statue is out of copyright, then yes.

>10 christiguc:

Is the only way to remove a photo to flag it? I can't see how I can remove the photo I have added myself.

>11 Anneli:

For the pictures that you upload, if you look in the bottom right corner, you have a pencil and an "X" option. You can delete it with the X.

>12 christiguc:
Thanks.

In reply to #4, in light of recent events, if someone took that photo of the Abraham Lincoln statue, then made it look like a drawing, (and drew some tree branches to it), and sold it as an original work of art the court will probably consider that derivative art and will probably reward damages to the statue artist. Said in that manner, it seems like an obvious case of derivative art, but many photographers are up in arms about what happened to the Postal Service and Frank Gaylord.

While it is and always will be wrong to use a work that is under copyright, "LibraryThing now relies on the instruments and protections of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)." (LibraryThing wiki) That is, if you upload a work that is copyright, e.g. a photo of a recent statue, LibraryThing is protected by being willing to remove the image at the rights holder's request.

It used to be a challenge to try to find images that allowed commercial re-use, or to specifically get permission from the rights holders, but so many people ignored those requirements that it became meaningless.