The US government stated, in its September 2017 update to its copyrights practices (link to PDF), that it will not register a copyright for any work that lacks human authorship. This includes, but is not limited to:
• A photograph taken by a monkey.
• A mural painted by an elephant.
• A claim based on the appearance of actual animal skin.
• A claim based on driftwood that has been shaped and smoothed by the ocean.
• A claim based on cut marks, defects, and other qualities found in natural stone.
• An application for a song naming the Holy Spirit as the author of the work.
You can be assured that all of the above stem from actual events.
The 1,100-plus-page Compendium of US Copyright Office Practices applies only to US copyright law but it does share many similarities with Canadian copyright law. For example, the third chapter explains what can and cannot be copyrighted and it’s reasonably similar to Canada. Canadian copyright law does not specify “human authorship” but it does state that copyright goes to an author who is “a citizen or subject of, or a person ordinarily resident in, a treaty country.”
Canadian Similarities
The US copyright office will not register a copyright for anything that’s “produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author.”
(Added February 2022: The US Copyright Office stated that copyright will *not* apply to any work autonomously created by artificial intelligence.)
Canadian copyright law, like the US, requires the work to be original and creative. Machine-produced works, such as medical imaging scans, and machine-produced lists, like the phone book, aren’t considered creative. One must distinguish between creative input and technical or mechanical input.
Ideas can’t be copyrighted. In the US, and maybe also in Canada, “idea” includes such things as mathematical formulas, DNA sequences, chemical compounds (man-made or natural), business operations or procedures, scientific discoveries and many more things you’ve never considered such as a calendar and a ruler. Do remember that trademarks or patents may apply to some of these.
You also cannot copyright facts, lists, schedules, letters, numbers, individual words, short phrases, titles, subtitles, names, colours, symbols, shapes, blank forms and many more things. But you can usually copyright a work that might contain some of these things. For example, you can copyright a book which probably has a title, words, numbers, facts, names, etc.
News cannot be copyrighted but a report of the news can be. Sports scores and statistics cannot be copyrighted despite what some sports leagues may claim.
For Photographers
When you copyright a photo, the copyright is in the photo itself, not the subject matter, not the photo technique, not the photo style or look.
If you make an exact (photographic) copy of an object such as another photo, a painting, a stamp, or a magazine or book cover, you cannot claim a copyright in your photo. Generally, an exact copy is considered a technical work not a creative one. But you already knew this, right? For example, if you make a copy of a someone else’s song or video, you don’t own the copyright to your copy; if you photocopy some pages from a book, you don’t have any copyright in those copied pages.
When someone edits or retouches someone else’s photo, does the retoucher own any copyright in the finished image? Maybe.
If the post-processing work is adjusting contrast, colour, crop, sharpness, noise reduction, removing blemishes or dust, converting to B+W, or running a bunch of plugins, then no, it’s unlikely a copyright claim can be made. If a retoucher restores an old image back to its original condition, a copyright claim is unlikely.
A retoucher must make sufficient changes to the original image. These must be original and creative changes not just technical or routine changes. Even then, the copyright claim will be limited to the changes made, not to the photograph.
Please check the date of this article because it contains information that may become out of date. Tax regulations, sales tax rules, copyright laws and privacy laws can change from time to time. Always check with proper government sources for up-to-date information.
Thank you for information.