Okay, let me spell it out:
Documents, pictures, graphic artwork produced by government employees, paid by taxpayer dollars ... are in the public domain, and these works have NO copyright protection, by definition.
Now some guy with the pseudo name, Isaac, comes along and claims to reveal secret Defense Department drawings of alien technology. IF we are to believe the story of the person who uploaded the original images, then these images are now in the public domain, with NO copyright protection. The only way that the person, thus, could claim copyright on those images would be to deny his whole story about the images being produced by government employees. He, then, could claim the images, ONLY by admitting that his whole story was a hoax.
This person who uploaded those images has NOT denied his story, and so the images are free for anybody to use, as I see it.
I used them.
This issue is interesting, and it raises a question:
Are leaked secret government documents automatically in the public domain and immediately unprotected by copyrights?
My answer is "yes".
Practically speaking the only answer is "yes".
Legally, however, the answer might not be so straightforward.
Any thoughts?
To clarify:
The elaborate story was that government employees, NOT aliens, produced the graphics, which depict alien technology that the Defense Department was trying to duplicate and apply for Earthly use. The symbols are NOT definitively Japanese. They are a fantasy alphabet created by the perpetrator of this bizarre tale. But in holding to this tale, the individual gives away his artwork - he has no claim on it, other than he stole it and made it public.
I took the original graphics and digitally transformed, enhanced, layered and composed them into the image that I posted at the beginning of this thread.
