May 2016

There were 2 posts published in May 2016 (this is page 1 of 1).

Can I Publish This Photograph of the Mona Lisa?

by Jack Lyon

In a departure from my usual technical stuff, I recently finished writing a rather specialized book on Christian symbolism, featuring numerous works of art from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Rather than publish the book myself, I decided to go with a publishing company that has considerably more marketing mojo than I do. And of course, that’s when the fun started:

Dear Mr. Lyon:

We would respectfully request that you please send documentation of your permission(s) to use third-party images and a list of the images for which you feel permission is not required. The list should include (1) the title of the image, (2) where the image can be found online, and (3) why you feel permission is not required.

Here is my reply:

I respectfully decline your request as unnecessary. The images I’m using are in the public domain.

The publisher’s representative replied:

If I take a photograph of a Leonardo da Vinci painting, I own the copyright in that photo. And even though it’s a photo of a public-domain item, you still need my permission to use my photograph.

So what do you think? Is the publisher’s representative correct? After all, that’s the common understanding. But actually, it depends on the nature of the photograph. In both the United States and in Europe, a photo that is merely a reproduction of a public-domain work (such as an old painting or stained-glass window) is not protected by copyright. To quote the U.K.’s Intellectual Property Office (based on the opinion of the European Court of Justice), “Copyright can only subsist in subject matter that is original in the sense that it is the author’s own ‘intellectual creation’” (for more information, see Wikipedia).

In the United States, this issue was decided in the case of Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., in which the court ruled that exact photographic copies of public-domain images could not be protected by copyright in the United States because the copies lack originality (which, by the way, is the deciding factor).

So even if someone claims copyright in a photograph that reproduces a public-domain image, no permission is needed, because photos that are simply copies of public-domain works and lack any aspect of originality are themselves in the public domain. In fact, the more faithful the reproduction, the less originality there is. Wikipedia has an excellent example — a photograph of the Mona Lisa.

The whole point of that Wikipedia photo is to reproduce the Mona Lisa as accurately as possible — which is precisely to eliminate any elements of originality. In fact, dozens of such photos might exist, all indistinguishable from one another. And that’s why such reproductions are not protected by copyright.

Now, if you took a photo of the Mona Lisa that was not simply a copy of the painting but rather had its own original elements (such as special lighting or camera angle), that photo would not be in the public domain; you would indeed own the copyright in that photo. Here’s an example of an image that is not in the public domain: non–public domain Mona Lisa.

Here’s another version that would be under copyright because it includes original content: original content Mona Lisa.

Rich Adin raised an interesting question about this: Would a black-and-white photo of the Mona Lisa have enough originality to be protected by copyright? It would probably depend on how much originality the photo might be judged to have, and perhaps that would have to be settled in a court of law. Please note that just because you use someone’s highly accurate photograph of a public-domain image doesn’t mean the person can’t sue you for doing so, even though that person might lose the case.

Interestingly, contemporary photos of statues are always under copyright, as there’s no way to accurately reproduce a three-dimensional object in a two-dimensional photo. A photo of Rodin’s Thinker will always have elements of originality based on framing of the statue, lighting, focus, and so on.

But what about a photograph of artwork that’s not in the public domain? For example, consider the fine art of Carolyn Hutchings Edlund (who happens to be Rich Adin’s better half). If she takes a photograph of one of her paintings and posts it on her website, can I legally use that photograph as the cover image for my next book? No, I can’t. Why? Because Carolyn’s painting is not in the public domain. It’s her original creation, and she owns the copyright. Even though her photo of the painting may lack originality, her painting does not, and I’m not at liberty to use that image without her permission.

One question I haven’t addressed yet is how to know whether or not something is actually in the public domain — something that can be tricky to ascertain. In the United States, anything created before 1923 is generally fair game. In other countries, however, copyright terms may be more stringent, so care and caution are needed.

As the standard disclaimer goes, I am not a lawyer, and you should not consider this article as legal counsel in any way. Nevertheless, I hope that my experience with all of this might be useful to you in your own battles in the wonderful world of publishing.

Jack Lyon (editor@editorium.com) owns and operates the Editorium, which provides macros and information to help editors and publishers do mundane tasks quickly and efficiently. He is the author of Microsoft Word for Publishing Professionals, Wildcard Cookbook for Microsoft Word, and of Macro Cookbook for Microsoft Word. Both books will help you learn more about macros and how to use them.

Lyonizing Word: Using the “Find What Expression” Wildcard

by Jack Lyon

Rich Adin recently sent me an interesting challenge. He was using his EditTools Journal feature to mark journal titles in references. The power behind that useful tool comes from lists of incorrectly styled references with corresponding correctly styled references. He creates a separate list for each reference style. The list he sent me was for AMA style, in which the reference uses the PubMed abbreviation followed by a period. It looks like something like this:

A Gesamte Exp Med, | cyan -> Z Gesamte Exp Med.
A Gesamte Exp Med. | cyan -> Z Gesamte Exp Med.
A JR | cyan -> AJR Am J Roentgenol.
A M A Arch Ind Hyg Occup Med. | green
A of LTC | cyan -> Ann Longterm Care.
A of LTC, | cyan -> Ann Longterm Care.
A of LTC. | cyan -> Ann Longterm Care.
A&D | cyan -> Aging Dis.
A&D, | cyan -> Aging Dis.
A&D. | cyan -> Aging Dis.
A. M. A. Arch. Derm | cyan -> AMA Arch Derm.
A. M. A. Arch. Derm, | cyan -> AMA Arch Derm.
A. M. A. Arch. Derm. | cyan -> AMA Arch Derm.

The text to the left of the pipe (|) is how the entry might (incorrectly) appear in the references supplied by the author; the entry to the right is how it should appear. Each entry includes a color, either cyan or green, which tells the program to use that color in highlighting the reference.

Rich knew that some of the entries included duplicates, like this:

Arch Intern Med. | cyan -> Arch Intern Med.

In other words, the item on the left was identical to the item on the right, which meant that it shouldn’t be marked. That also meant the entry didn’t need to be on the list at all. But the real problem was that Rich’s reference list included more than 117,000 entries!

Rich’s challenge? Use wildcard find and replace to remove such entries, thus shortening the list and preventing unnecessary marking.

First, let’s look at that entry again to see what we might need to do:

Arch Intern Med. | cyan -> Arch Intern Med.

There’s a pipe symbol (|) in the middle, which gives us something to differentiate the left side of the entry from the right side of the entry. So we might set up the first part of our wildcard string to look like this:

([!^013]@) |

That tells Word to find any character except a carriage return, an unspecified number of times, until it comes to a space followed by a pipe symbol.

The wildcard for a carriage return is:

^013

The wildcard for “except” is:

!

And we have to put both of those in square brackets so Word knows that’s a set of characters. (After all, [!^013] finds any character, no matter what it is, unless it’s a carriage return.)

The wildcard for “an unspecified number of times” is:

@

Finally, we have to put all of that into a “group” by enclosing it with parentheses. And that’s important. You’ll see why in a minute.

Testing that part of our search string, we see that, yes, indeed, it finds the following:

Arch Intern Med. |

In fact, it finds the beginning of each entry, which is just what we want.

Now let’s look at the right side of our entry:

 cyan -> Arch Intern Med.

You can’t see it here, but there’s a space in front of “cyan” — the space that follows the pipe symbol. So we need to include that space in our search string, along with the word “cyan” (in the following examples, I use [space] to represent a space so you can see it; [space] should not actually be entered; use a real space created by pressing the space bar):

[space]cyan

There’s also a space after cyan, so we’ll need to include that as well.

[space]cyan[space]

That needs to be followed by a hyphen, a right angle bracket, and yet another space, like this:

[space]cyan[space]->[space]

But now you may be wondering why I put a backslash in front of the angle bracket. It’s because the angle bracket is itself a wildcard (a subject for another day), so we need to tell Word we’re using it as an actual character, which is what the backslash does.

Finally, the rest of our search string looks like this:

1^013

This part of the string —

1

— is the “Find What Expression” wildcard, which is what this article is about, and it certainly took us a long time to get to it!

Remember back when we grouped the very first part of our search string in parentheses?

([!^013]@)

That “group” is the “expression” that the 1 wildcard represents. In algebraic terms:

1 = ([!^013]@)

And that means 1 will find whatever is found by the ([!^013]@) expression, which, my friend, is extremely cool, because it will allow us to weed out the duplicate entries on our reference list—entries like this:

Arch Intern Med. | cyan -> Arch Intern Med.

Now, for the first time, let’s look at our entire search string:

([!^013]@) | cyan -> 1^013

By now, you probably understand this quite well. The string finds any characters except a carriage return until it comes to a space and a pipe symbol; then it finds a space, the word “cyan,” and another space, followed by a hyphen, a right angle bracket, and a space. Finally (and most importantly), it finds whatever was found by the parenthetical group, followed by a carriage return.

Now we simply need to make sure that Word’s “Replace with” box is empty and click “Replace All.” All of those unnecessary entries will be deleted. (We’ll need to repeat with “green” for the entries that don’t include “cyan.”)

Which would you rather do: Find and delete such entries manually (with just 117,000 to look through) or have Word do it automatically?

That’s the power of the “Find What Expression” wildcard. In future articles, I’ll show you more uses for this wonderful tool, along with other Word wildcards.

Jack Lyon (editor@editorium.com) owns and operates the Editorium, which provides macros and information to help editors and publishers do mundane tasks quickly and efficiently. He is the author of Microsoft Word for Publishing Professionals, Wildcard Cookbook for Microsoft Word, and of Macro Cookbook for Microsoft Word. Both books will help you learn more about macros and how to use them.