Jim Breen's Ukiyo-E Gallery

Copyright and Copying

1. requests from people for permission to reproduce the images in the pages elsewhere;
2. questions as to whether I have violated copyright in having these images on display, especially where the images have demonstrably come from other digital collections.

1. as the artists who produced the works have all been dead for more than 70 years, there is no issue of copyright with regard to the individual works;
2. the act of taking a work of art, or a reproduction of such a work, and placing it on a scanner, is in no way a creative act. The resulting digital image is not a new creation, and the person who made the image has no valid claim for copyright over it;
3. the assembly of a set of digital images into a collection may lead to a valid establishment of copyright over the collection itself, including, for example, the accompanying text, the theme of the collection, the particular selection of prints, etc. This, of course, does not establish any valid copyright over the individual prints, as they may validly appear in other collections by other people.
4. I do not believe I have violated any copyright in assembling these pages of prints. Moreover, I do not claim any copyright over the images themselves, or the collection.