Copyrighting Coin Images

I think that the question as asked is to broad to be answered in detail,, there are such things as how and where the photo was disseminated IE was it posted to a public message board, were all appropriate disclaimers and exclusions listed ,, were any restrictions for use by the public denied in writing ,, our laws as cool as they are are filled with minutia that failure of any of the minute details renders them inactive.

Just to throw gas on the fire, I did a Google on "copyrighting photographs" and came up with a LOT of sites. It appears any photograph of anything can be copyrighted for a $45 fee and with the correct application form.

http://photography.about.com/cs/bus...opyright.htm

http://www.copyright.gov/

From the above US Copyright Office site: "Copyright in a work that portrays a useful article extends only to the artistic expression of the author of the pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work. It does not extend to the design of the article that is portrayed. For example, a drawing or photograph of an automobile or a dress design may be copyrighted, but that does not give the artist or photographer the exclusive right to make automobiles or dresses of the same design.".

The way I read it, any person can copyright any pic of any coin (or a pic of anything else for that matter), but not of the object being photographed (in this instance, a coin). But, why would anyone want to do so when somebody else can come along, take a pic of the same coin and copyright that picture? There might be isolated examples of images of specific rare coins (say, an 1804 Bust dollar) in which the owner of the coin wants to protect the coin's ownership by photographing it for the record, then copyrighting it such that he has a legal basis in the instance that someone else attempts to state that the coin belongs to him.

Just my two FECs.

Fred

There is a thin line between illegal and immoral when it comes to photo copyright. It's immoral to use someone elses work without giving them credit for it (just add something like "image courtesy of so-and-so when you post), and it becomes illegal when start talking about making money off of this photo. To make this clearer - if your using of someone elses photo affects their financial situation in any way - it can be grounds for a lawsuit.

At least that's what I remember from my digital copyright class. You have to keep in mind that issues with digital media have only been appearing in the last 5-or-so years and most of the conventional non-digital laws do not apply, while correction to these laws have not been made yet to include digital.

~Roman