Breach of copyright! - photographs

[ArtieBob]

Dear Jan,

The German(and Japanese and Italian) material in the USA from WWII I mentioned as being in the public domain are IMHO considered as “war booty”. In this respect it has nothing to do with being previously published. IIRC, at least some courts in Europe have considered such items as not subject to recovery by the previous owners, whether or not it was government or private property.. As I said, the situation is very tricky. I do not know if any European nations have the public domain category as defined in the USA. For example, similar material in GB is subject to the Crown copyright. I do not know what the laws would be in Holland, but I suspect there is little there that would be considered as WW II “booty” as most of it was going the other direction.

Best regards,

Artie Bob