Editing a public domain photograph and claiming ownership?

Question

I do not want to hear anything about ethics or what is nice or polite, I want to know the facts. I understand that with a CC0 public domain photo I can use it for anything I would like, even sell it, as long as I do not claim ownership. If I edit that picture and make it look quite different would I then be legally allowed to claim it as mine?

I will add one example:

Answer 1

You can only claim something that is yours that you produce, changing another persons work is theift, think stupid, you did not do the work.

Answer 2

First off, Creative Commons is not a government system. It's just a licensing scheme established by a nonprofit to try and encourage some creators to share their works publicly with standardized limitations. It's no guarantee you won't run into trouble. And I don't see anywhere in what they describe this "don't claim ownership" limitation for their CC0 category.



You think you downloaded some "public domain" image? Really? Where? How sure are you it's public domain? Why are you even asking about CC0 licenses? A lot of the time people think they've found "public domain" images, and they have not. Everything is copyright protected automatically unless the creator clearly indicates otherwise. And it's not uncommon to find person B taking something from person A, then trying to say person A's work is public domain... when it's not. So if you got something from person B saying it's "public domain," it could be utterly worthless. Are you sure it was person B's work?



As far as "claiming ownership," you've made a derivative work. When it comes to copyright protection of derivative works based on public domain works, you'd have protection only for the original elements of your own work. For example, if you're Disney and you do your version of Alice in Wonderland, you have protection only for your own original elements, not for the whole thing.



In your sample, adjusting the perspective isn't really doing anything original. Filling in a colored sky may be moderately original, depending on where you got it from and how you did it, but that's still not the core value of the image. And because so much of your image is based on work supposedly public domain, you'd have a lot of problems trying to protect your own work.



Ignoring the Creative Commons issue, if you were to take somebody else's copyrighted work, you'd have to engage in "transformative use" -- with a totally new original message -- for the new work to be "yours." A derivative work is not "yours." And unless you're a professional artist like Andy Warhol doing soup cans, you're not likely to meet the transformative use standard. And even if you do meet the transformative use standard, you're not likely to have the time, energy, or resources to defend it in court if necessary, nor find those kinds of battles worthwhile.

Answer 3

Noehiar has it correct - " it has to be UNRECOGNIZABLE as a copy of the original per the observation of an ordinary observer."



That means that your example would be a clear cut case of plagiarism.

Public Domain or Google Image theft, the key word in the courts is "UNRECOGNIZABLE."

There is a very famous court case of Blanch vs. Koons where artist Jeff Koons was found NOT guilty of plagiarism (for once). Generally, he loses every time he uses the works done by others.

Polite is not your issue. Legality is, and the legality is that CCO works while in the Public Domain, STILL have some usage restrictions. Simple editing will not absolve you of those restrictions.

Answer 4

No. Creative Commons is still a form of copyright and limits what you can do to the image, even though you are free to use it as you decide.

Answer 5

It is not yours and no. Normally in order to claim credit for an image by changing it, it has to unrecognizable as a copy of the original per the observation of an ordinary observer. A creative commons image is not in public domain but may be used by permission of the author or holder of the rights to the work.