[at-l] Off Topic Inquiry - Copyright

[jbullar1 at twcny.rr.com (Jim Bullard)]

Most responders felt that the copyright was invalid. Skippie believes that
it is valid for the "CD Version", so here's the next question. If it is
valid does that mean that for the life of their copyright no one else who
owns a hard copy of the 1850 book (which was never copyrighted in the first
place) can scan their copy and sell the scan files on a CD? If so, it seems
to me that amounts to obtaining copyright over material that is not of your
creation. I would think you'd have to add something (annotate it, combine
works as in an anthology, etc.) to have it become your intellectual
property. The mechanical process of scanning it a book in its entirety and
writing the files to CD don't seem like enough to claim it as your work.
After all this isn't another version, it is the exact same book presented on
different media, no different in content than if you made a photocopy. The
only added material on the CD (and in separate files) is a generic 1 KB text
file telling the buyer they need to install Acrobat Reader to view the book,
a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader (so you can install the program if you don't
have it), a catalog of the CDs they sell and a user license which says you
can't reproduce any of this (like they did with the Adobe install files). In
short, aside from the user license I see no original work on this CD except
the catalog.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ferguson, J. Mark" <Ferguson@CWF.org>
To: "AT List" <at-l@backcountry.net>
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 12:48 PM
Subject: RE: [at-l] Off Topic Inquiry - Copyright


What they can copyright is the form they present it in, ie: on CD in PDF
format.  The "original" long ago passed into the public domain.  This is
like someone creating a book of copies of 18th and 19th music scores and
publishing the same, or someone doing a facsimile reprint of a Charles
Dickens work.  Again, its the new form that is being copywritten.

Skippie..

-----Original Message-----
From: Ron Martino [mailto:yumitori@montana.com]
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 12:23 PM
Cc: AT List
Subject: Re: [at-l] Off Topic Inquiry - Copyright

> I just received some CDs which consist of scanned images of old family
> genealogies that have been put on CD as PDF documents. The genealogies
were
> originally written by someone else and published privately in 1850.
> Apparently what the seller has done is scan each page as an image file
then
> convert the images to PDF to make them cross platform compatible and put
it
> on CD. They did not OCR the work as it is not text searchable. What
puzzles
> me is that they then copyrighted the entire work. Can they do that?
> Copyright a 153 year old work by someone else just because they put it on
> CD?

Doubt it. If so, I've got a few hundred classics I'm going to be
putting on CD-ROM...

-- 

It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will
determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate
discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor
must preside at our assemblies.
William O. Douglas

yumitori(AT)montana(DOT)com
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