- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

re: [gutvol-d] Copyright to 1909
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 17 Sep '06

17 Sep '06

y.a.n.a.l. (you are not a lawyer.) -bowerbird p.s. ...even if you _might_ look good in one of those powdered white wigs...

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Re: [gutvol-d] Copyright to 1909
by Wallace J.McLean 17 Sep '06

17 Sep '06

Jon Ingram writes: > The UK law is life+70, for books both before and after 1909. Is it? The Canadian amendment in the 1920s which moved us from fixed to life+ terms, expressly provided that the life+ term did not serve to revive copyright in works which had already passed from copyright: 11-12 Geo. V., c. 24 41(1) Where any person is immediately before the commencement of this Act entitled to any such right in any work as is specified in the first column of the First Schedule to this Act, or to any interest in such a right, he shall, as from that date, be entitled to the subsituted right set forth in the second column of that Schedule or to the same interset in such a substituted right, and to no other right or interest, and such substitued right shall subsist for the term for which it would have subsisted if this Act had been in force at the date when the work was made... (3) Subject to the provisions of subsection six and seven of section 18 of this Act, copyright shall not subsist in any work made before the commencement of this Act, otherwise than under, and in accordance with, the provisions of this section. 44. No person shall be entitled to copyright... otherwise than under and in accordance with the provisions of this Act... The schedule sets out the old and new definition of "copyright" in works other than musical works. The effect of this transitional provision is that works which were still under copyright — i.e., in which a person was entitled to a right — are subject to that right for the new, life+50 Berne term. By necessary implication, those who do NOT have a right as of the commencement of the Act, do not have the benefit of the new term. By a later amendment, the commencement was fixed as January 1, 1924. The pre-Berne copyright term in Canada was the old 28+14 renewable one, with formalities. Thus, any work published in Canada before January 1, 1924 without the appropriate formalities, is public domain in Canada regardless of whether it would be copyrighted under the life+50 rule, if it applied. There is Canadian case law upholding the pre-Berne formalities requirement. Similarly, no work published in Canada before 1883 can possibly be copyright in Canada, as even if the formalities were complied with, and the term was renewed, such a work was public domain — no one was entitled to a right — by the time the new Berne term cam in on January 1, 1924. Works published outside Canada are in a murkier area, which I still haven't been able to resolve. I thought the Canadian transition to Berne was modelled to at least some extent on the UK one. It might be worth double-checking the UK statute which adopted the Berne term to see whether, upon a proper construction, and in concert with the stupid, stupid, stupid move to life+70, it would result in a larger public domain than the life+ rule, strictly applied, would give.

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Re: [gutvol-d] Copyright to 1909
by Wallace J.McLean 17 Sep '06

17 Sep '06

>From the UK Act: Duration of copyright Section 12: Duration of copyright in literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works 12.-(1) The following provisions have effect with respect to the duration of copyright in a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work. (2) Copyright expires at the end of the period of 70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the author dies, subject as follows. SCHEDULE 1 Copyright: transitional provisions and savings 3. The new copyright provisions apply in relation to things existing at commencement as they apply in relation to things coming into existence after commencement, subject to any express provision to the contrary. 5.-(1) Copyright subsists in an existing work after commencement only if copyright subsisted in it immediately before commencement. Duration of copyright in existing works 12.-(1) The following provisions have effect with respect to the duration of copyright in existing works. The question which provision applies to a work shall be determined by reference to the facts immediately before commencement; and expressions used in this paragraph which were defined for the purposes of the 1956 Act have the same meaning as in that Act. (2) Copyright in the following descriptions of work continues to subsist until the date on which it would have expired under the 1956 Act- (a) literary, dramatic or musical works in relation to which the period of 50 years mentioned in the proviso to section 2(3) of the 1956 Act (duration of copyright in works made available to the public after the death of the author) has begun to run; Unless I'm missing something, reading all these sections together, esp. s. 5(1) of the Schedule, spell non-retroactivity of the stupid, stupid, stupid 20-year extension to life+70. If the life+50 term had already run out, the life+70 term does NOT apply.

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Re: [gutvol-d] Copyright to 1909
by Wallace J.McLean 16 Sep '06

16 Sep '06

Jon Ingram writes: > Yes. The move from life+50 to life+70 in the UK was retroactive, and > brought 20 years worth of material back into the copy-restricted realm > from the public domain. Which provisions of the UK Act operate to make the term retroactive? By my reading of the provisions of the Act which I have cited, it expressly does NOT make it retroactive. > Note, however, that if a non-UK work becomes public domain in its > country of origin, then UK law states that it is also public domain in > the UK... a common provision in copyright law in many countries, In the EU, yes. "The rule of the lesser term." It's mandated by the EU's garbage copyright directive, as a pressure tactic to try and get the rest of the world to "harmonize". It's not all that common in the non-EU countries I've looked at, though.

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have a nice weekend
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 16 Sep '06

16 Sep '06

oh, this is rich. > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=22216&start=0 it's a discussion over at distributed proofreaders about repurposing digitizations found elsewhere on the web into the d.p. workflow, jumpstarting the proofing process with a text that has already received a good amount of proofing. the catch? the other digitizations have linebreaks removed, making proofing more difficult for d.p. people... kind of ironic, isn't it? anyway, have a nice weekend! :+) -bowerbird

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Copyright to 1909
by Norm Wolcott 15 Sep '06

15 Sep '06

I believe PG has been clearing books published pre 1923, even if published in London. Now I read about another case saying all books pre 1909 may be free of copyrigiht. I do not know if this will increase or decrease the pool of books. I believe that all books published after 1923 in England are still subject to copyright unless they fall into the 75 year death rule. What is the status of 1909-1923 books? nwolcott2(a)post.harvard.edu

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re: [gutvol-d] Re: Search by subject for ebooks?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 Sep '06

12 Sep '06

so, did anything get done on this matter on this round of the merry-go-round? -bowerbird p.s. nice summary, john... ----------------------------------------------- j.hagerson said: We have the classic PG conundrum: In response to a suggestion to make a change, someone helpfully (sarcasm, people!) indicates the enormity of the task and asks if the person making the suggestion is willing to single-handedly implement it or to raise tens of thousands of dollars to hire one or more professionals to "do it right." Another responds with a willingness to participate in an aspect of the solution, but only after someone else gets the ball rolling. Another person reminds us that Distributed Proofreaders has already collected the data to provide a partial solution; we only need to create a mechanism to bring their data over to the "parent" site. Finally, someone pipes up that some material provided to DP is so rare that the only records of the material even being created are buried with some defrocked monk who drowned off the coast of Antigua under mysterious circumstances. And someone else will contribute yet another dead horse for us to beat. Come on, people. There is no magic wand to provide a complete instant solution to this issue. There is also nothing wrong for multiple partial solutions. If someone is really excited about petunias, let that person create a petunia page. If the LOC has an official subject category for petunias (I don't know, Science - Botany - Perennial Plants - North America - Petunias), then let's link things that way too. We have Distributed Proofreaders. Do we need Distributed Catalogers? I would be willing to read a book and tell you what categories would be significant to me. I am not a professional cataloger, but I have used a library before and I have some concept of a subject index. The original post was along the lines of "it would be nice if we could do this." Yes, lots of things would be nice and not every nice thing deserves to be done. However, if we fancy ourselves as a library, is not a subject index part of the catalog? Let the flames begin.

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creative commons success-story
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 09 Sep '06

09 Sep '06

this just came across cory doctorow's listserve... any p.g. e-texts that might appeal to navy kids? -bowerbird ------------------------------------------------ Heartwarming Creative Commons success-story Last week, I received the most remarkable letter from Jamie, a U.S. Navy seaman stationed on a ship in the Mediterranean Sea. Because my novels are Creative Commons-licensed, he is able to download them and print them out onboard ship, and pass them around to his comrades. The absence of quality reading material on the ship has turned Creative Commons texts into hot items on the ship: > Just like to thank you, from some undisclosed (for operational > security reasons, doncha know) location in the middle of the > Mediterranean Sea, for keeping my sanity. I'm in the U.S. Navy, and > my ship got surge-deployed without warning a couple weeks ago to > "help" with the situation in Lebanon. On a ship underway, there's > no room to keep books -- unless they're the ancient, creaking John > Grisham paperbacks in the ship's library -- and no time to get some > anyway if you're scrambling around for the couple days of warning > you have trying to get your bills set up to pay themselves and > telling your landlord you're vanishing for an "open-ended" period > of time. So, the ability to download your stuff from craphound.com > has permitted me to feed my addiction to the printed word without > having to have someplace to store the physical artifact of the books. > Of course, I actually printed out "Someone Comes" and "Down and > Out", the two I don't own dead-tree copies of yet, and stuck 'em in > a binder, where they've been passed from person to person in my > department, helping keep the other sci-fi junkies similarly sane. > > [three days later] > > Thought you might like to know that what started as "Jamie feeds > his print addiction" has turned into something else entirely. The > sci-fi addicts rapidly finished off the two novels I'd printed out > and bindered, and I had the binder with me in the engine room, > reading to pass the time, when one of the other guys asked what I > was reading. > > A couple hours later, the only noise in the place was when one of > the half-dozen guys sitting around would look up and ask, "Hey, > who's got page 41 of Down and Out?" It was... well, I'm not sure I > can express how weird it was. These are men who aren't normally > readers, much less consumers of slightly wacky science fiction, and > they're now getting impatient with each other to finish chapters so > they can find out what happens next. > > It's starting to change the very *tone* of where I work on the > ship, six hours on and six hours off: instead of the ever-present > three B's of talk to pass in the time in the plant -- beer, babes, > and bodily functions -- it's discussions of which novel (or short > story, since we've now got printouts of every piece of fiction on > craphound.com stuffed into a file cabinet) we liked best, and why, > and what makes this stuff cool, and where can we get more like it, > and even starting to talk about the copyfight, and why that's > important. > > I spent about two hours last night as I was reading glancing up > every so often, and grinning like an idiot every time 'cause there > were five guys whose talk usually revolves around how drunk they > were this one time head-down in some pretty intense reading. > > Thank you. This is really something else.

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PG site down - when will be back up?
by Jared Buck 09 Sep '06

09 Sep '06

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Headline news on gutenberg.org wiki?
by Greg Newby 07 Sep '06

07 Sep '06

Hi, Marcello & other Wiki experts. Is there a reasonable way to put the headline news we used to have on the main page, back? Currently, news appears here: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:News but no headlines on the main page. I thought it was nice to have them there...just a simple "3 most recent" or "this month's headlines" would be great. Thanks for considering... -- Greg

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