Posted by John Nichols on September 21, 2004 at 15:50:01 from 165.91.196.143 user Mcneacail.
In Reply to: Re: Copyright & Dick's Bird Book posted by Peter H on September 21, 2004 at 11:04:15:
I am horribly confused, not by the concept of copyright or the law so much but by the application of the law.
If we take an example
Buchan, John, 1875–1940.
TITLE: The thirty-nine steps, by John Buchan.
PUBLISHED: Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1915.
ISBN: 1-58734-003-8.
CITATION: Buchan, John. The Thirty-nine Steps. Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1915; Bartleby.com, 1999. www.bartleby.com/149/. [Date of Printout].
ON-LINE ED.: First published July 1996; published July 1999 by Bartleby.com; © Copyright Bartleby.com, Inc. (Terms of Use).
Buchan died in 1940ish. The fifty years would have been up in 1990, but according to the Copyright site in the USA
Works Originally Created and Published or Registered before January 1, 1978
Under the law in effect before 1978, copyright was secured either on the date a work was published with a copyright notice or on the date of registration if the work was registered in unpublished form. In either case, the copyright endured for a first term of 28 years from the date it was secured. During the last (28th) year of the first term, the copyright was eligible for renewal. The Copyright Act of 1976 extended the renewal term from 28 to 47 years for copyrights that were subsisting on January 1, 1978, or for pre-1978 copyrights restored under the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), making these works eligible for a total term of protection of 75 years. Public Law 105-298, enacted on October 27, 1998, further extended the renewal term of copyrights still subsisting on that date by an additional 20 years, providing for a renewal term of 67 years and a total term of protection of 95 years.
So now the Gutenberg Project has most of Buchans' works in the public domain. They did this in 1996, but now Bartleby.com have republished the electronic version in 1999 and placed a copyright on the book, but it is in the public domain and my guess is the Bartleby.com simply took the Gutenberg version, which would not be hard to check as there are a couple of typos in the Gutenberg version.
I know that Blackwoods the original publisher went out of business in 1980, so how the heck to you tell what is correct. Surely Buchan's children would have renewed the copyright as allowed by the 76 Act and how do you find that out.
My real question is "Does Dick's book fall under the same change in the copyright laws and it is now out of copyright?"
John