The argument is that a photograph is a creative work (there are lots of decisions that go into it) whereas a scan is a mechanical reproduction, and therefore isn't creative, and so can't be copyrighted at all.
I don't know what the state of the law on this is.
It seems like it comes down to the content, not the form. If I arrange a scene with a bowl of fruit on my dog's head and take a photograph of it, or a 3D scan of it, I can call it a creative work either way.
If a photographer operating a photo booth at a party can claim copyright on the photos, then someone making 3D scans of party guests as they pose should be able to claim copyright also.
Taking a 3D scan of a random building should be just as copyrightable as taking a photo of the same building. One could argue that neither should be copyrightable, but all the photographers I know would say any photo they take is "creative work", even if it was done with a smartphone camera in auto mode. If simply framing or cropping a photograph is what makes a photo creative, the same concept scales to 3 dimensions just as easily. You have to decide how much of the building to capture, whether to include the parking lot, the nearby power lines, etc.
With a bulk capture of geography, I suppose the photographic equivalent of a 3D scan would be aerial photography or Google's street view or something. Is that copyrightable? I assume Google and other companies act like it is. Someone had to decide the resolution and precision to capture at, at least.
How does that make sense for a taxpayer-funded resource? I'm sure that some projects that rent time on Hubble have private funding, but does that apply to all of them?
That images taken by hubble aren't used commercially without paying a license fee to NASA? I imagine the tax payer is okay with getting some money back.
NASA stuff isn’t copyrighted, and only the logo is even trademarked.
> NASA content - images, audio, video, and computer files used in the rendition of 3-dimensional models, such as texture maps and polygon data in any format - generally are not copyrighted.
I believe the reasoning is that everything paid for by your tax money should be free for everyone. I think some state-level governments prefer your argument.
It depends on how much original creative effort went into it. Copyright is fuzzy on purpose.
Copyright vests automatically and immediately in the creator of a creative work. This can be assigned or licensed to another party in part or in whole, at the discretion of the copyright holder.
Whether a work is creative, and therefore protected, by copyright is open to interpretation.
Facts cannot be protected through copyright. A creative representation of facts may be protected. E.g. a specific map might be protected, but this wouldn't prevent someone from making another map representing the same places
