Images I posted are off copyright but there is usage fee for publication of the images that would probably apply if we put them in Card Culture. Free for individuals to download low-res images from the site, and free for research. Here is the link to the whole publication. http://www.sil.si.edu/imagegalaxy/imageGalaxy_MoreImages.cfm?book_id=SIL-038-33
So how does that work - a usage fee, but no copyright? The lack of a copyright means the image is in the public domain, useable by anyone without paying copyright fees - no one owns the rights to the image. I'm not trying to sound like a smartass - I want to know if there's a legitimate situation, legally-speaking, where this would apply.
For example, the original movie (not the musical) "Little Shop of Horrors" was a Roger Corman film on which the copyright expired and wasn't renewed, thus leaving it in the public domain. When the subsequent musical play and musical movie were produced, no one owed so much as a thin dime to Roger Corman as a result. Now, if I tried making another work derived of the original, I'm fine, but if I try making a work derived from one of the subsequent productions, they have their own copyrights to be considered and thus I'd have to pay fees to the owners of those works. The same would apply to any modern movie made based on the plays of William Shakespeare - no one owes William or his heirs a dime, but if I tried making a TV show based on one of the movies rather than the original work, I'd have to check if that particular film was still protected, while a TV show based on the original work is free and clear of "prior art" of any kind. The trick there would be sticking to the original script and making sure that any deviations from the script weren't already employed in someone else's more recent work - for example, if I changed the setting to the modern, functional city of "Verona Beach," I'd be treading dangerously close to the version created for the cinema by Baz Luhrmann...
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