On Sun, Mar 27, 2005 at 07:04:12PM +0200, Marcello Perathoner wrote:
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Thought on http://www.gutenberg.org/faq/C-18.php Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2005 17:24:47 +0100 (BST) From: Nick Burch <nick@gagravarr.org> To: webmaster@gutenberg.org
Hi
I'm not sure if you're the right person on the guttenberg team to send this to, but hopefully if not you're close.
I happened across http://www.gutenberg.org/faq/C-18.php from a discussion on slashdot, and I had a thought that there is something you can try. It should be possible to use a copyright repository to prove a book is out of copyright, without having to use the old (and hard to find) edition.
Hi, Nick. Thanks for your suggestion. In fact, this is our procedure. We should probably mention it more prominently in our FAQ & Copyright HOWTO. -- Greg
I live in Oxford, and we have one of the UK's three copyright repositories, in the form of the Bodleian library. Most people can get temporary access to it for research, and I believe the same is true of the other two libraries. These libraries hold most books published in the UK.
So, the steps for a book which you think is out of copyright would be: 1) Get a copy of the new version of the book 2) Find your nearest copyright library 3) Check to see if they have a copy of an older version - the search of the collection should be available online, eg http://library.ox.ac.uk/ 4) Arrange temporary membership of the library 5) Turn up, request the book, and go away for a few hours while someone retrieves it from the stack (most books aren't on open shelves) 6) Compare lots of pages to ensure the text is the same 7) Photocopy a few pages (including the copyright info to be sure) 8) Head home, and set to work on the new version
I hope the above makes some sense, and might be of use
Nick
-- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org