Berne Copyright Convention One must remember that this convention (or really "treaty") is an agreement that has different implementations depending on the part of the world you are in. I am talking about "US Copyright Law" and it's applications here. Europe has different standards (& exceptions) as does Australia, etc. Remember, that the US has "signed" the Kyoto Treaty but will not "ratify" it. In other words, international agreements, conventions, etc are only applicable so far as they are implemented in law. --EK

What is legal and what is ethical often conflict. If a person doesn't care to face common sense when making an ethical decision, turn to the store in which they broker. Ask the Store ownwers what their official position is on copying. However don't have high expectations. these days it's all about what you can get away with. People have seem to dismissed basics like common sense right and wrong.

If a single rotation cannot be copyright, then how about two rotations? Three? Twenty? All have a defined effect. The whole thing is a mess. I don't dispute the advice not to steal poses - as I said, the ones I released myself were all created from a zero base. But looking at it from the point of view of theory of law (which is cheap and entertaining if one does it in this forum rather than in a courtroom) there are grave philosophical problems in supposing that a few dial settings can be considered a "work" subject to copyright.

Exactly how copyrightable poses and such are is a grey area because there's no legal ruling. If you use MS Word to create a thesis on Poser copyright law, that document is copyrighted by you even though you used only 26 different letters and probably 3 to 4 different punctuation marks. I couldn't grab your document, change a few words, then claim it was my own creation. On the other hand, I could write my own thesis on Poser copyright law and although it would be the same topic and contain much the same terminology as yours, each of us would have our own copyrighted work. As for arguing on length determining how copyrightable something is, there's a problem with that: You can't copyright a word. You can copyright a poem. How many words does it take to make a poem? Regardless of legality, ethically it's not nice to take someone else's work, make a few changes, then call it your own without the original creator's permission.

Attached Link: http://www.hindu.com/2005/05/15/stories/2005051500682000.htm

A somewhat relevant illustration that anyone (with money) can sue anybody: Beverly Hills yoga franchiser Bikram Choudhury claims to own a copyright on a series of 26 ancient yoga poses. A group of yoga studios to which he had sent cease-and-desist notices sued him, claiming his copyright was not valid, but the preliminary ruling was not in their favor. However, their suit did seem to frighten him into agreeing not to sue those particular studios as long as they don't use the name "Bikram" (which he has trademarked).