open source optical illusions?

[dank]

One of the earliest pages I put together on my site back when it was little more than a personal homepage was a collection of optical illusions that are commonplace around the net and email attachments. The issue of them being copyrighted never crossed my mind... The past few months, I've been getting several requests a week from all sorts of people (authors, journalists, presenters, graphic designers, etc.) wondering if I can grant them use of certain images for use in their work. I'm baffled by this, to say the least. Why would anyone think I'm in a position to offer such a thing, and should I be concerned that there actually are copyright considerations to what is essentially passed around as clipart?

Dan

[sheila]

Originally posted by dank:
The past few months, I've been getting several requests a week from all sorts of people (authors, journalists, presenters, graphic designers, etc.) wondering if I can grant them use of certain images for use in their work. I'm baffled by this, to say the least. Why would anyone think I'm in a position to offer such a thing, and should I be concerned that there actually are copyright considerations to what is essentially passed around as clipart?

Why would they think you'd be in a position to offer such a thing?
Well, you are, so far as they have seen, the source of the image. It would be reasonable for such a person to assume that either you have the rights to the image, or it is in the public domain. (Or else, neither of those, but they figure, if you say, "yes", at least later they can say, "Well, I asked so-and-so for permission and he said it was 'ok'". I don't know how much of a defense that is, but...)

Should you be concerned?
In your position, I would (ideally) point out my source for the images and tell them to seek permission there. If you no longer recall where you got the stuff, or cannot point them to an alternate source, I would just tell them that you cannot grant permission, as you are not the creator of the works, but they seem to be public domain clip art, so they can probably use them just as you have done. (This will probably satisfy most of them.)


And, of course, IANAL.

[dank]

IANAL
Me neither. :)

would just tell them that you cannot grant permission, as you are not the creator of the works
That's what I've been doing. The thing I find curious is the frequency of these requests of late. The page of illusions is two and a half years old, and traffic to that page has not changed significantly over the past year, yet there were not any such requests until recently. It almost seems like I've been listed somewhere as the person to ask for licensing rights to optical illusions... Paranoid?

Dan

[Rich]

And, of course, IANAL.
ROFL - you are? :)

Rich