As I understand it, copyright expires 70 years after: -
1) The death of the author.
or/...
2) Publication where there is no author (for works produced by
organisations or the author is unknown)
There is also typographical copyright which expires after 25 years and
relates to the publisher rather than the author.
If someone produces a new edition of Oliver Twist (which Dickens being
dead for more than 70 years) then that is legal but if someone (within
25 years) copies this new copy of Oliver Twist copyright law applies!!!
If however an identical copy is made from the same book produced more
than 25 years before this is OK.
David
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Higginbotham
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thu 12/23/2004 11:49
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc:
Subject: Re: Fwd: Historic boundaries within the Isle of Man
Frank,
in your scenario, the book I produced would still be copyright
(by whom might I guess depend on the terms of our contract).
Otherwise your argument would surely apply in the same way to
copyright material as much as non-copyright Material, e.g. if
you
license me
to produce a book of your own recently taken photographs,
the images in the book are still in copyright
and have not suddenly "escaped" into the public domain.
If there was no copyright applicable to reproductions of old
works,
there would be little incentive for anyone to invest in
publishing material that is out of originator's copyright
otherwise
anyone else could immediately copy the reproduction and
republish it
themselves.
There is a difference in this respect between images and textual
information.
For example, page images of old Kelly's directories are
copyright,
but the text they contain is not. The publishers of CDs etc. of
such works will generally not provide the raw text of the
directory
which have required much effort in transcribing, but may provide
it in a
hidden but searchable form in order to locate the page image on
which it
a particular search string occurs.
Peter Higginbotham
Frank Sharman wrote:
> Peter Higginbotham wrote:
>
>> I thought the law was fairly clear on this. Original
documents that are
>> out of author's or originator's copyright are still subject
to
>> "publication copyright".
>> Thus if I have an original copy of say an 1857 issue of
"Punch" I can
>> claim
>> copyright on reproductions of images from that particular
artefact.
>> Equally, if you have an original copy of the same issue, you
can claim
>> copyright on reproductions made from your copy.
>
>
> I do not think this is the case - though I agree that a lot of
publishers
> and others think that it is.
>
> What confuses the issue is that if I have an out of copyright
original I
> can sell you a copy subject to a term in the contract that you
will not
> reproduce it without my permission and, if I want to make
money from it,
> unless you pay me for doing so. This is how most picture
libraries, art
> galleries and the like, operate. But that contract is
personal and
> cannot
> bind others. So if I let you have my out of copyright photo
subject to
> such conditions, and you print it in a book, then anyone else
can copy it
> from that book and use it - the photo has escaped into the
public
> domain.
>
> Anyway, that's my reading of it. But I have ideas about
information
> being
> free and I may be influenced by a bit of wishful thinking. It
would be
> nice to get this settled with greater clarity and certainty -
but I do
> not
> know how that might be done!
>
>
>
> Frank Sharman
> Wolverhampton
> 01902 763246
>
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