Dear Vin1,

Sorry your first post turned into a discussion, but please remembers that it’s not directed at you personally. The copyright discussion turns up on this forum from time to time; it’s something there are strong feelings about, because we all share a passion for historic aviation.

This forum have a large group of very knowledgeable members (not me, I’m just here to gawk at the anoraks) and they always share freely of the information they possess. Imagining it otherwise might seem odd, but it’s the natural extension of the current negative trend in personal copyright “enforcement”.

People here have spent years obtaining and processing information and in many cases have unique insight into certain things. This could be considered their personal information, just as an image could be considered a personal item. However, the information is always forthcoming and no question is ever asked about its use.

Many people in the historic aviation community feel likewise about imagery (there are also people who feel different, but I’m not among them and can’t speak for them). Owners of historic pictures should be considered merely custodians of the items, as they truly belong to history and our common aviation heritage. Also consider that very few actually holds the official copyright, possession is not the same as copyright ownership. If someone can use the image for anything, even commercially, there is no reason to withhold it from use, or demand specific copyright entitlement. These images, in their digital form, do not represent a value – unlike their period prints, which are collectables.

The US government automatically place any piece of work produced by its departments under public domain (unless otherwise classified). This means that every WWII image taken by a US serviceman is free for everyone to use. These include nearly every US image currently offered on Ebay – you are buying the print, not the image. Many of the images are even available for free online (in high quality), in the various libraries, including every NASA image and hundreds of images from the wonderful test-flight era of the 50’s and 60’s. Anyway, true public domain entitles anyone to use them, even to print them and sell them.

The official tendency, except for the Imperial War Museum (and please remember that IWM material from WWII is now also in public domain, as the Crown Copyright has expired), is to push these historic images online, so researchers have a decent chance of studying them, without traveling from one end of the world to the other. Currently many official collections are therefore being digitally processed and brought online for everyone’s pleasure. Personally I feel strongly about doing the same with private collections.

I hope you understand the feelings involved and don’t take the discussion to heart – deep down, we are all a happy bunch and always welcome new members.