--- Rod Butcher <rbutcher@hyenainternet.com> wrote:
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.
It all depends on what the copyright notices at the start of the book say. Reprints of old works do not get new copyright, but new editions do. Technically only the new material is copyrighted, but it can sometimes be very hard to unpick the original material from the revised material. This is particularly annoying for some authors, with wonderful collected editions that have been 'edited' by someone who gives no indication as to exactly what they are claiming copyright over. If you are lucky, you may find a new edition of a work which only claims copyright over the illustrations, or a preface. In this case it's easy to isolate and remove the copyrighted portion of the work. -- Jon Ingram __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com