Copyright was extended to 70 years in 1996, the only exception being
Crown copyright, which remains at 50 years. Although this brought some
works back into copyright, it did not necessarily place those who'd used
them outside the law, as there were specific rules to allow for this.
With regard to facsimiles of works where the copyright has expired, it's
only the facsimile that has new copyright protection, so anyone else is
free to go back to the original and produce their own version.
What makes the situation even more of a problem is that copyright is
only one aspect of intellectual property, and you also have to take into
account such things as trademarks. Furthermore, even if the copyright on
a work has expired, if there's only one copy available, the owner is
perfectly entitled to impose whatever conditions he likes when allowing
access to it, so if he says you can't copy it, then you can't copy it.
Of course, all this is only my understanding of UK law, and I'm not a
lawyer, so it would be a good idea to get advice from an expert before
committing yourself to anything.
A good source of general information about copyright can be found on the
TASI website at
http://www.tasi.ac.uk/advice/managing/copyright.html
Keith Ramsey
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