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From my limited understanding of copyright law, the copyright holder
also has the exclusive right to produce "derivative" works. I know
some graphic artists in the US have been held liable for doing as
Geoff mentions below. (One artist won a CorelDraw contest using an
illustration created by tracing over a photograph created by someone
else. He changed the image noticeably in the process, but was still
held liable for copyright infringement.)
If you do this, I'd suggest having a good lawyer handy ... I'd also
suggest that there are enough copycat images out there on the
Web. Budget and time permitting, I'd make my own images, anyway.
If you do this for a commercial site of any sort -- particularly your
employer's! -- I'd insist on using only original images. It's not
hard to get a fast start on them now (depending on factors/skills/etc
too numerous to list here) using a good camera and color scanner.
JFOA. I'm no lawyer, so YMMV and that's not *my* responsibility!
On 27 Sep 96 at 15:16, geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA wrote:
> clear violation. (Un)fortunately, if you download the
> graphic, change its size, recolor it, change the text, add
> and delete elements, and otherwise provide significant
> intellectual input to the redesign, you're probably safe...
David Jones, Technical Writer
David_Jones/KSBEISD -dot- KSBEISD -at- Datahub -dot- com
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