I keep seeing ebay listings by people who are selling collage sheets and transparencies and clip art sheets of various kinds. They say things like "these are vintage images from my collection" and it's obvious that they did not create the photos they're using but that they are so "vintage" that they're copyright free material (as in, pre-1923).
But then they go on to say that the "designs" are copyrighted by them - only I don't see how a person can claim to own a copyright on copyright-free images. Are they saying they own the rights to the arrangement of the images on a piece of paper or a transparency? This just makes no sense to me somehow.
I haven't done a lot of research into this sort of thing, but I probably should. So far on the collage sheets I've made, I don't claim to own the rights to what I assume to be copyright-free images that are from before 1923.
If any of you artists know more about this kind of thing than I do, please explain why so many people out there are claiming to own the rights to copyright free images... I just see that kind of claim so much lately, I figure I must not be understanding what exactly they're saying they own the rights to.
I'm interested also because I'm working on a CD of what I assume are copyright free "vintage" images I've collected over the past few years, and I don't plan to claim I own the rights to the images just because I collected them and put them on a CD. What would I own - the collection as a whole but not the parts?
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