Has there been a ruling on if the scanning creates a derivative work in New Zealand? The crazy argument in the US has been that the digital scanned copy is a new derivative work that gets copyright based on the scan date.
On the contrary, Feist Publications v. Rurual Telephone Service Company[1] (SCOTUS, 1991) and Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp[2] (NY district judge, 1990) both seem to show that scanning a document without original authorship does NOT support copyright in US law.
Do you have any sources that refute this?
[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/case/499_US_340.htm
[2] http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/36_FSupp2d_191.ht...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books#Copyright_infringe...
But as far as I know, there has been no ruling, yet, as everything is either still pending, or settled out of court.
(edited to add, another good example, is if media changes could be copyrighted, every academic paper with a quotation I've ever written would mean I now own the primary quoted source, which creates a weird chicken and egg for plagiarism where I don't need to cite myself as the source of my own words, so I need not cite anything I quote because I'd own it as part of the act of quoting it... so you can not have plagiarism if you can copyright media changes)
Second, plagiarism is an ethical standard that exists independent of law. It does not need copyright to exist. If you didn't write it, you quote it. Even if the original writer assigned copyright to you and you alone.