January 2005 - PGCanada - lists.pglaf.org

Re: [PGCanada] Copyright clearance for PG Canada
by Wallace J.McLean 16 Jan '05

16 Jan '05

----- Original Message ----- From: Andrew Sly <sly(a)victoria.tc.ca> Date: Saturday, January 15, 2005 4:27 pm Subject: [PGCanada] Copyright clearance for PG Canada > As the concept of public domain can be nebulous (I don't > believe it is actually defined in our copyright laws) It's not actually defined in most countries' copyright laws. More worrying, a lot of legal scholars ignore the concept in works on copyright, or manage to obfuscate it beyond recognition.

1 0

Copyright clearance for PG Canada
by Andrew Sly 16 Jan '05

16 Jan '05

Copyright clearance for PG Canada is one of the issues that needs more attention. I believe Wallace has the most interest and understanading of Canadian copyright terms among the people on this list, but I thought I'd post this message here for general feedback. As the concept of public domain can be nebulous (I don't believe it is actually defined in our copyright laws), I was thinking we might want to prepare a list of different criterea we could use for copyright clearances, something along the lines of: http://www.gutenberg.org/howto/copyright-howto I was thinking, for our most often-used rule, something like: 1) An item which was produced by one author, whose date of death was over 50 years ago, where that date is common bibliographic knowledge, and the text was published during his lifetime. Some other possible situations could be: 2) Same as #1, only the text was published posthumously, but still more than 50 years ago. 3) Same as #1, only we have to do research to find the author's date of death, in which case we should keep a record of our source for that information. 4) An item published anonymously or pseudonymously over 50 years ago, where a reasonable search cannot determine the author's true identity. 5) An item where the author is known, but his date of death cannot be reasonably determined, and the work was published a certain number of years ago. (This would be for mid-nineteenth century and older works, where one can assume that, given a human life-span, the author could not have lived past a date of 50 years ago. I don't know how long ago this number should be.) 6) An item of joint authorship, where the terms of #1 apply, and the last surviving author died over 50 years ago. (This would also apply for anyone contributing to the intellectual content of the item, such as an editor or a translator.) #2-5 may also be applicable to works of joint authorship. 7) An item which was published by a Canadian government department over 50 years ago. I would suggest that for our "beta-stage" we just concern ourselves with texts which present no difficulties or uncertainties in copyright clearance. Andrew

2 2

Re: [PGCanada] Moving ahead with PGCanada
by Wallace J.McLean 15 Jan '05

15 Jan '05

----- Original Message ----- From: Andrew Sly <sly(a)victoria.tc.ca> Date: Friday, January 14, 2005 3:27 am Subject: [PGCanada] Moving ahead with PGCanada > I would like PG of Canada to be more restrictive in its "guidelines", > even if this does mean that fewer titles will be contributed. Can you offer some guidance as to more restrictive, how?

4 4

Michael hart says PG Canada needs help
by Mfulton 15 Jan '05

15 Jan '05

I can offer only to prepare a book in plain text from time to time. I sent to PG Australia three of charles Williams' novels, and Gertrude Bell's letters. in the last two years. I am midway through "The Great Lone Land". I thought I might later do the biography of Lord Minto (published 1935) by John Buchan (died 1940). Would these be suitable? Please tell me what is the status quo with PG Canada, and what does it need? Marjorie Fulton

2 1

[gutvol-d] Wired Magazine "gets it" on copyright (fwd)
by Michael Hart 15 Jan '05

15 Jan '05

Resent-Subject: [gutvol-d] Wired Magazine "gets it" on copyright http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/view.html?pg=5 _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d

2 1

bounced mail
by N Wolcott 15 Jan '05

15 Jan '05

I joined PG of Canada and now when I set a post I get bounced mail "sent by a non-member to a member only list" what gives? N Wolcott nwolcott2(a)post.harvard.edu

2 1

Re: [PGCanada] Michael hart says PG Canada needs help
by Wallace J.McLean 15 Jan '05

15 Jan '05

----- Original Message ----- From: Mfulton <mfulton(a)eisa.com> Date: Thursday, January 13, 2005 7:20 pm Subject: [PGCanada] Michael hart says PG Canada needs help > I thought I might later do the biography of Lord Minto (published > 1935) by John Buchan (died 1940). Would these be suitable? That would be a great start! A 1935 pubdate means it's not clearable under PG-USA rules, but the 1940 death date means it IS clearable for PG-Canada's future purpose.

1 0

Re: [PGCanada] if there's anything I can do ...
by Wallace J.McLean 14 Jan '05

14 Jan '05

Has it been? Can we get a status report from whoever is "in charge", technically speaking? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stewart C. Russell" <scruss(a)sympatico.ca> Date: Wednesday, January 12, 2005 4:12 pm Subject: [PGCanada] if there's anything I can do ... > I've been offering assistance to this (moribund?) project for some > years, so I'm glad to see it has been revived.

5 7

Moving ahead with PGCanada
by Andrew Sly 14 Jan '05

14 Jan '05

Seeing the messages posted to this mailing list in the last week has made me reevaluate my position relative to PG of Canada. I had just assumed that work was going on behind the scenes, and eventually, something would come out. When I read James' message of Jan. 6, that made me consider what the possibility was of taking a more active role myself. Right now, I really want this to happen, so I will begin trying to act as "main organizer" unless any objections are made. First of all, I assume that we are working together, doing this as a group. Because we are a group, there are issues that will have to be worked out, either ahead of time, or as they happen to come up. If you are a single person making your own collection of books, such as Stephen Davies at Gaslight (http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/) or Aurthur Wendover at Arthur's Classic Novels (http://arthursclassicnovels.com/) then you can work details out as you go along, and handle them in your own way, because no one else needs to be aware of the details. But with more people, communication of some kind is needed. In my experience, if you get four PG volunteers discussing a particular topic, you already are likely to have five different viewpoints. These are the kind of ever-circling discussions that James has expressed a distaste for. But an exchange of views must happen unless we want to just have one person dictating "This is how it's going to be!" I must make comparisons here with what I know, which is what I've seen with volunteers for PG-US. Despite some people who argue to the contrary, PG has traditionaly avoided dictating how details ought to be handled and been very open to volunteers who want to do things a little differently. What this means is that there have been many times when, for one particular detail, you have had various volunteers each use their own preferred method, and then eventually a consensus would emerge, and later it would be stated as a "rule". A good example of this is italics. In PG plain text files, you can find italics indicated /like this/ or LIKE THIS or _like this_ as well as occasionally other methods. In the end the use of _underscores_ has become the "rule". This approach of gradually letting a consensus find itself can be seen in many other places, such as the encoding of emdashes, use of HTML markup, how and when "new editions" are made, etc. This has the benefit of encouraging volunteers, and, I would argue, is partly responsible for the continuous growth PG has seen. However, it does mean that there are a vast number of undocumented inconsistencies in the PG archive, ranging from the very small to the glaringly large. I would like PG of Canada to be more restrictive in its "guidelines", even if this does mean that fewer titles will be contributed. Right now I would suggest that effort should go toward getting the legalities and a basic framework for a preliminary set of test files in place. Andrew

1 0

Re: [PGCanada] Historical look at Canadian Copyright
by Wallace J.McLean 14 Jan '05

14 Jan '05

----- Original Message ----- From: Andrew Sly <sly(a)victoria.tc.ca> Date: Thursday, January 13, 2005 1:57 pm Subject: [PGCanada] Historical look at Canadian Copyright > > A new title just released to PG, that provides a historical view > of copyright concerns about 100 years ago may be of interest: > > The copyright question : a letter to the Toronto Board > of Trade by George N. Morang > http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14673 Better yet, look up Henry Carey's "Letters on International Copyright", which is also on PG.

1 0