1) Models of famous cathedrals or other architectural or geographical
landmarks,
modelled in fine detail with millions of polygons.
There are research projects alesady modelling historically significant buildings
that no longer exist. These projects take months of research and modelling
effort, and
cost tens of thousands of dollars in staff time, travel and equipment. If
such models
can be simply copied for free, they will never appear as VRML sites, since that
would prevent the companies involved from earning the money to pay their
modellers and
researchers.
2) Humans, animals and human faces, modelled in fine detail.
Designing the collections of vertices and polygons to accurately represent
humans, various
types of animals and human faces, particularly in ways that allow life like
animation, is
not trivial and is currently the subject of many research projects. There
are alesady several
commercial sets of such models that people pay good money for, presumably
because the models
meet some useful need for the buyers.
What's not copyrightable:
In discussing copyright, no-one advocates protecting cubes, cylinders and
"way-cool
worlds," and nor would they be able to.
Regards
Tony Healy
Design Engineer
Silicon CHiC
Sydney, Australia