Taking a photograph is creation of a new copyrighted work under some now-very-old United States Law. The key idea is "transformation": it's understood that phot

Taking a photograph is creation of a new copyrighted work under some now-very-old United States Law. The key idea is "transformation": it's understood that photography includes an editor's eye of what is worth taking a photograph of. Making a copy of a public domain book does not create an independent claim of copyright to the contents of the book. You can make a case that maybe it should, but it legally does not; that's just not how it works.