On Sun, Jun 19, 2005 at 09:43:08PM -0400, Robert Cicconetti wrote:

On 6/19/05, shimmin@uiuc.edu <shimmin@uiuc.edu> wrote:

...

As another poster pointed out, in the U.S., Bridgeman v. Corel says that some mechanical reproductions are not "original works" for the purpose of copyrightability; indeed, the point of creating these works is to be unoriginal. Whether PGLAF wants to stand on Bridgeman in this particular case is their own decision; as always, the only sure test as to whether something is clearable is to try and clear it.

Okay. I figured it'd be "Less Work For Greg" if I asked the list in general first. :)

(Yes, it was a good discussion!)

I'll fill out the clearances tonight. To be honest, the differences are fairly small; they've cleared out some of the screening artifacts and the colors are a little more vivid; how much of that is because they are less than 20 years old I cannot say. :)

As people have said: doing such updates does not qualify for a new copyright, in our view.

...

That said, if it's not the illustrations you're interested in, but merely need to consult another edition to repair lacunae in the text you're dealing with, then just consult whatever editions you have easily at hand, and repair the text accordingly.

Unfortunately, I need both the images and the text.

We're fairly close to having a complete set; once I finish up the extant books (One will have to be DP-EU only; it's from 1930) I plan to go back and produce some cleaner scans for my first few books and possibly those from the other PMs (assuming I get permission; I don't want to step on toes.)

I know there were some issues with some Potter illustrations coming later than 1923, but as long as we can clear the images they're fine to include. For a reminder, here's our policy that relates (at least peripherally) to the issue of cleaned up images. Thanks! Greg PROJECT GUTENBERG'S POSITION ON "SWEAT OF THE BROW" COPYRIGHT CLAIMS Work performed on a public domain item, known as sweat of the brow, does not result in a new copyright. This is the judgment of Project Gutenberg's copyright lawyers, and is founded in a study of case law in the United States. This is founded in the notion of authorship, which is a prerequisite for a new copyright. Non-authorship activities do not create a new copyright. Some organizations erroneously claim a new copyright when they add value to a public domain item, such as to an old printed book. But despite the difficulty of the work involved, none of these activities result in new copyright protection when performed on a public domain item: - scanning and optical character recognition (OCR) - proofreading and OCR error correction - fixing spelling and typography, including substantial updates to spelling such as changing from American to British - adding markup (HTML, XML, TeX, etc.) - digitizing, cropping, color-adjusting or other modifications to images - addition of trivial new content, such as images to indicate page breaks in an HTML file, or pictures of gothic letters for the first letter in a chapter, or adding or removing a few words per chapter. - substantial reorganization, such as moving footnotes to end-notes, or changing the locations of pictures within the text - recoding to new character sets, such as Unicode, or new formats, such as PDF There is some value-added content that DOES get a new copyright, but only for the actual new work (that is, it may be possible to remove the new copyrighted content to go back to a public domain document): - translation into another human language - creating a new compilation of existing materials (though the individual items compiled retain their public domain status) - creating new original art work - creating an original derivative work, such as an audio performance, a new chapter, or a set of favorite quotations - adding a new introduction or critical essay Project Gutenberg is able to utilize any material which is judged to be public domain in the country of use (i.e., the United States). If it is determined that components of a digital item are public domain, but others are not, then the copyrighted components may be removed without the permission of whoever owns the copyright for the new content. It is Project Gutenberg's practice to seek permission of copyright claimants before harvesting their materials. This is done in order to be polite, and to allow the producer or distributor to request a particular credit be used. But if permission is not given, public domain items can still be used by Project Gutenberg, typically without any attribution. Because Project Gutenberg receives submissions from many different sources, it is not always clear where an item came from. Volunteers who submit content they did not themselves generate should be diligent about reporting sources, even if the source will not be credited in the item as distributed by Project Gutenberg. Most recently updated April 6, 2004