Daverj, the case in which you say that a photograph can be recopied extending the copyright is not the case under the ruling. A photograph that includes the Mona Lisa can be copyrighted. A photograph that duplicates the mona lisa can't be. For the photograph to be copyrightable, it must contain original content to be considered a derived work. If it is an attempt to reproduce (or preserve in a digital medium) a work, it does not have original content, and thus is entirely still in the public domain. A bumpmap created from a work in the public domain CAN be copyrighted, in theory, but it's less likely to hold up if it's done with Poser than if it's done by manually creating it like Dodger does his. Museums and other people cannot apply copyright to a work in the public domain simply by changing its medium. If that were the case, a copy of Treasure Island, which is public domain, could be copyrighted simply by putting it on the web. However, a recording of Treasure Island read aloud could be copyrighted, as the actor involved adds inflections to his speech and so on based on his creative interpretation of the book. As another example, the script to the movie 'Romeo + Juliet' that came out a few years back is public domain. The audio track is copyrighted. The visual imagery is copyrighted. You can make a movie of Romeo and Juliet with the exact same script and you cannot be successfully sued. But if you download a copy of Romeo and Juliet of Kazaa and you do not own a copy of the movie in some form then you are pirating it. The production company has not gained copyright to the script simply because they made a copyrightable movie out of it. The same thing happens with images. If a JPEG is a reproduction (or pushed as such) of a work that is in the public domain, then the JPEG is in the public domain whether the scanner likes it or not. If a JPEG is a deliberate modification of a public domain work, then the JPEG is copyright the person who created it.