[Clipart] Librarians be aware of http://www.freeclipartnow.com

[Nathan Eady]

chovynz <chovynz at gmail.com> writes:

> One thing I think we need to consider when talking about all this
> clipart, is the medium as in use.  OCAL uses svg. FreeClipartNow
> uses jpgs. Two different formats, and I consider ours to be
> superior.  So that may negate their exceptions anyway, since they
> are different works in themselves, I believe.

IANAL, but to the best of my understanding, that's completely totally
utterly irrelevant.

Redrawing an image does not automatically free it from copyright.  If
it's a copy, it's a copy, regardless of whether you make the copy via
photographic reproduction, tracing, copying by eye (if you have the
skill to do that), or by some other means.  It's still a copy.

Remember, copyright law is older than computer filesystems (and
photocopiers and even camera film) and was based on the older,
standard English definition of the word "copy", from back in the day
before computers.  Consequently, the definition of "copy" when it
comes to copyright law is not "made from the same bits" (like "I
copied the file from my home directory to yours").  When copyright law
was first written, copying was done by hand, and the law reflects
that.  Under copyright law, if you're looking at the original and
drawing your image to look like it, that's copying.  (If you use a
computer to make a perfect pixel-for-pixel copy, of course, that's
also copying.  It's copying any way you do it.)

Now, if you look at half a dozen images of squirrels, just to get a
general idea what squirrels look like, and then go draw your own
squirrel image that doesn't really look like any of the ones you
looked at (except insofar as it looks like a squirrel), then that's
okay.

And yeah, the line can be blurry, but if it's obvious at a quick
glance that your image is clearly a redrawing of the original, then
you're not on the blurry line at all.  At that point you're very
definitely over the line, on the "clearly need permission" side.

"This is in SVG format, and that one was a JPEG" means absolutely
NOTHING to copyright law.  Heck, it doesn't matter if the original is
ASCII art and you sponge paint it on a T-shirt; a copy is still a
copy.  If it looks like basically the same drawing as the original,
then it generally is considered to be a copy.  You wouldn't argue,
"but sir, I didn't shoot that man, because shooting is with a gun, and
I used a bow and arrow, so I'm innocent."  The law doesn't care *how*
you accomplished it, and copyright law also doesn't care how much work
you put in (compare Bridgeman vs Corel).  Copyright law is concerned
with whether the one work is substantially the same expression as the
other.  If you want to create an original work, you have to actually
create an original work, not copy somebody else's.

-- 
Nathan Eady
Galion Public Library