How would this affect things like gutenberg.spiegel.de? Would a German digital transcriber of a PD work then hold the German copyright for that digital version, until 70 years after the transcriber's death? Ridiculous!
Photographs have a slightly elevated standing in German law, with lower demands on creativity to get protection, and I'll assume that's the way the court got to this decision. We'll see if it survives in front of higher courts. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't.
In your transcriber example (assuming transcriptions and photographs would follow the same rules, which they don't), the transcriber would have the rights to his/her transcription, but couldn't stop anybody else to transcribe the same PD work and release their transcription.
I agree with wikipedia that this question shouldn't have come up, because I'd prefer if public museums were required to release such photos under some kind of free license, although I'd be fine with restrictions for commercial use.
Once you create something above the "threshold of originality", you own the copyrights to it and can freely license it if you want to (if it is a derivative of a protected work, the owner of the rights on the original gets rights as well and could potentially stop you from doing so, but in a case of a public domain work that doesn't matter). If just creating a 3D model of something is above this threshold depends on the details, generally an as-precise-as-possible replica doesn't require originality though, so probably not.
For photographs there a exists a category where this threshold doesn't apply as strongly, and the court argued that in this category, the amount of expertise and work necessary to create it was enough to make it a work of it's own. This potentially conflicts with older decisions, that did not grant pure reproductions copyright protection.
EDIT2: after reviewing the old case I had in mind: It denied protection to a copy of a photo of an original, explicitly citing that it is not desired to allow infinite copyright extension by creating copies. We'll see in the next round if removing one layer of indirection changes the situation.
EDIT: I use "freely license" above because the concept of releasing something in the public domain doesn't exist in Germany. In practice, licensing it as e.g. CC0 is the clean way of achieving the same.
You can't provide it to the public domain. You can, if you have copyright on the work, publish it under a license which permits others the freedom to re-use it. The work is still copyright protected though.
The existence of copyrights on these photographs was the subject of the trial: Can these photographs be considered new (derivative) works? If so the author of the photos ―the museum― owns the copyright. If not the photos are protected by the same copyright as the paintings, although the paintings fell into the public domain as the original author has died more than 70 years ago.
If you make a 3d-model of an object which is still protected under copyright it's for a judge to decide whether you've infringed on that copyright or created a derivative work.
That's all, of course, completely separate from trademarks.
How can a person tell I was using the museum's faithfully reproduced image, and not one that I scanned myself?
That's the crux of the Bridgeman v. Corel decision in the US: If I make a perfectly faithful copy of a PD work into another medium, have I really created anything? And US courts decided that no, I just copied something, and thus I don't get to enjoy my own new copyright as merely a copier of an already copyright-free work.
I admittedly know nothing about German law--I certainly hope you're right in guessing higher courts will overturn it.
Preparing a halfway decent digital image requires a great deal of skill, in the same way that a decent transcription of a written text requires a great deal of skill.
Someone transcribes a text of a manuscript, and according to Bridgeman, anyone can reproduce that text that the original transcriber established. This is precisely the same free-rider problem that legal tool of copyright attempts to solve. Of course copyright doesn't apply for a transcription because a transcription isn't a creative work, but there is still the free-rider issue and no legal tool available to solve it. For services there are trademarks, for processes there are patents, computer code is copyrightable or patentable, but for text there really is a legal hole.
Back then, before the digital age, image libraries would charge for reproducible copy, but nowadays there are lossless copies, and Bridgeman is very much out of touch. The German court, thankfully, had some better sense.
So a US court would look at a photo reproduction of a piece of art and determine if it qualifies based on whether it meets the bar for being a creative work -- is it "original" in any way? If the photograph does nothing more than faithfully depict the work, then it could be painstaking work to create it, but it still carries no copyright.
If someone transcribes a book (i.e. makes a copy of it by hand) or photocopies a book, they have not created an original work. The copyright, if any, remains with the original author. A translation or a derivative work may itself be eligible for copyright, but would also require the original copyright holder's permission, if any copyright on the original work remains.
This seems a strange and kind of arbitrary requirement to me.
So, for example, creating a transcript of an audio recording does not create a new copyrighted work, because it is simply documenting a fact like 1+1=2.
If I put effort into creating a transcription of an audio recording, then why shouldn't I be the one that decides what others can do with this transcription? What does it matter that it did not take any creativity? End everybody else is free to create his own transcription and do with that whatever he wants, my control over the usage of my transcription does not affect them in any way.
The intent is to protect creative expression that provides society with something new, not to protect any easily reproducible duplication effort.
If you choose not to make a transcript of an audio recording, someone else will do so if there is a demand for a transcription, hence the benefit to society in providing protections for your transcription is minimal.
In your example, literally writing down the words spoken during a film would be to transcribe it. If I, or another, took the time to do such a thing, it would be identical presuming we both did this correctly. This would not be creative as we are simply doing something as procedural as doing weights and measures.
I find these things somewhat arbitrary, because, conversely if I were to read aloud a book and make an audio recording, presumably that would be copywritable. If I had the rights to make such a recording, or if the work was in the public domain, I believe my voice & intonation would constitute either creativity/originality and the uniqueness would allow me to apply.
I am not a lawyer, nor am I sure whether there is precendent. The point is, that these are very similar things and it is treated very ambiguously. Should I own my own voice? Should I be allowed to simply read something and consider it a creative work? Does intonation and enthusiasm matter in the delivery of the work?
It is all a bit rediculous, and frankly copywrite should be limited substantially. However, it is clearly a case by case basis and thus super difficult.
Certainly, we would want to promote people like Elon Musk to create things like the Tesla (ironically much of it is open sourced) but at the same time, would want people to build on innovations and enjoy these things unhindered, or what is the point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow#US_copyright...
Pedantic aside: Musk didn't exactly start Tesla...
You are correct Musk didn't start Tesla. However, he did create it and Eberhard basically sank the company. Also, I meant to put the Model s instead of Tesla. I will also, correct myself to say that certainly Musk himself didn't create the model s, Tesla, ect alone. The point was that patents, trademakrs and copywrite are there to protect the people who build and create things, however the system is obviously very broken.
No it does not at all and as said already it needs to be a creative work(meaning transformative work that deviates from an obvious conclusion) as opposed to simply being difficult. And again, it is definitely not difficult.