[at-l] Off Topic Inquiry - Copyright

[jbryankramer at msn.com (J Bryan Kramer)]

First thing, you don't need to slap a copyright on anything, the instant
that you produce it it is copyrighted now by law.
Secondly: Their compilation can be copyrighted which means you cannot fire
up your CD-RW and burn a hundred copies and sell them (or give them away)
but you could copy the individual geneology data and us it as you will.
The way the copyright periods have been extended copyrights now are
essentially forever for anything that was produced after 1923.

Bryan

"Si vis pacem para bellum"

>
> 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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