Is there any copyright problem if I rip old paintings pics (hundreds of years) and stick them in my games?

There MAY be a problem. Someone might be the 20th descendant of that artist and copyrighted the painting. It''s quite possible. There may not have, though. It depends on the painting.

I think its ok if you dont copywright your game, and give credit to the artst in your credits page.

"I''''ve sparred with creatures from the nine hells themselves... I barely plan on breaking a sweat here, today."~Drizzt Do''''Urden

Just because you may decide to make your game public domain, doesn''t mean you can use someone else''s copyrighted material in it. But I don''t think really old pictures are covered by copyright.

http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/

You can find out all the details here.

Basically if its 75 years or more after the artists death youre safe, its totally public domain.

Maybe in the USA. There are still other countries in the world too...

Edited by - Jester101 on August 31, 2001 2:31:27 AM

most countries have similar copyright laws, so its pretty much the same for European law - for artworks i think its something like 70 years after the author dies or the work was first exhibited.

no countries has more than 100 years after the death of the author, the Bern copyright treaty (last one was in 1988 in which it was specified that there''s no need to register or include a copyright notice to have rights) signed by most of the countries says that the number of years cannot be less than 50 and the universal copyright treaty that was a to include more countries like some of Africa and was signed by all the countries except a very few states the number of years as 25 or more after the death of the author.
Copyright is something international!
If you make something then it will have different times in different countries and it doesn''t make any difference in which country you are.
If you want to use something made by someone else you only need to care about in which country you are and it doesn''t matter at all where the author lived.