Hi Rod. As Greg has mentioned, the only way to get an "official" call on if a certain item can be cleared is to submit scans of the title page and verso. Otherwise, you just get an endless string of hypothetical questions. The final call on whether a work is copyright cleared for PG purposes is made by the copyright team (last I heard it was just two people) not the individual volunteer. It is also a good idea to get a clearance done before you start working on a particular item, as the title is then put onto an "in-progress" list, which can help to prevent duplication of effort. Now to address your specific questions: 1) "Works first published before January 1, 1923" ought to be quite self-explanatory. Usually you have some type of copyright registration or publication date on the title page and/or verso to guide you here. If there is none, library records may contain a date. 2) "copyright secured" This phrase is used because the date a copyright was registered may have been years after it was created, or even in some cases, after it was published. Before adjusting American copyright laws to comply with the Berne convention, an individual had to register a copyright in the US to before copyright protection was granted. (It's actually more complex--but it's getting late now, and I'm not thinking clearly.) 3) If you have a 2002 edition which clearly states "reprint of 1848 edition" in the front matter, it will probably be acceptable for PG purposes. If it only says "Copyright 2002" it will probably _not_ be acceptable for PG purposes. If it says anything along the lines of "edited by so-and-so" it will probably _not_ be acceptable for PG purposes. At this point, I would refer you back to my first paragraph of this email. Thanks, Andrew On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Rod Butcher wrote:
Thanks for clearing that up Wallace. At the risk of boring everybody silly, can I confirm one more thing before I start contributing. The FAQ states in Rule 1 : "Works first published before January 1, 1923 with proper copyright notice entered the public domain no later than 75 years from the date copyright was first secured. Hence, all works whose copyrights were secured before 1923 are now in the public domain". What exactly does "works first published" and "copyright secured" mean ? If a work was "first published" in 1848 it seems to meet this rule. But what is the status of say a 2002 edition of that work ? Is copyright established anew on a reprint ? Feedback so far seems to say I need to use pre-1923 editions, but the above wording seems ambiguous. thanks Rod