Copyright information not digitised? - Wikimedia-l - lists.wikimedia.org

List overview All Threads
Download

Copyright information not digitised?

Travel Site

Who invoked "principle of least...

Kim Bruning

23 Jun 2012 23 Jun '12

7:55 p.m.

According to: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120330/12402418305/why-missing-20th-cent… a lot of books have an uncertain copyright status, because the Copyright Office records have not been digitized yet. Is this true? Would offering to help digitize these records fit in our mission (especially wrt WikiSource) ? sincerely, Kim Bruning

Reply

Show replies by date

Kim Bruning

23 Jun 23 Jun

7:58 p.m.

According to: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120330/12402418305/why-missing-20th-cent… a lot of books have an uncertain copyright status, because the Copyright Office records have not been digitized yet. Is this true? Would offering to help digitize these records fit in our mission (especially wrt WikiSource) ?

Hmmm, http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120323/09045818223/public-domain-starves… http://blogs.loc.gov/copyrightdigitization/2012/03/a-virtual-copyright-card… Apparantly this is current, recent, and crowd-sourcing would help. OCR/Correcting a card catalogue is not very sexy though. <scratches head> sincerely, Kim Bruning

Reply

Federico Leva (Nemo)

9:07 p.m.

Kim Bruning, 23/06/2012 21:55:

According to: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120330/12402418305/why-missing-20th-cent… a lot of books have an uncertain copyright status, because the Copyright Office records have not been digitized yet.

This seems just a tiny part of the problem of uncertain copyright status...

Is this true? Would offering to help digitize these records fit in our mission (especially wrt WikiSource) ?

Surely not. On the other hand, it's comparable to the orphan works issue (you can't be forced to an unlimited effort/expense just to determine whether someone can ask you something), which is worth working on. Aren't ALA and so on active on this front, as their European equivalents are for the orphan works problem? Nemo

Reply

John Vandenberg

24 Jun 24 Jun

1:07 a.m.

There are scans of most of the relevant records, and the records for books are also transcribed by Project Gutenberg and searchable at a stanford uni website. See en.ws template PD-US-no-renewal. The scans need to be transcribed to increase accessibility. On Jun 24, 2012 3:50 AM, "Kim Bruning" <kim(a)bruning.xs4all.nl> wrote:

According to: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120330/12402418305/why-missing-20th-cent… a lot of books have an uncertain copyright status, because the Copyright Office records have not been digitized yet. Is this true? Would offering to help digitize these records fit in our mission (especially wrt WikiSource) ? sincerely, Kim Bruning _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

Reply

Eddie Erhart

6:22 a.m.

Whoa, in 1958/59, only *seven *percent of the books and *eleven *percent of the journals were renewed? This may be obvious, but clarifying the copyright status of these works would be a huge benefit to editors looking for public domain image to illustrate Wikipedia articles... and that's not including the benefits to the Commons and Wikisource. --Ed On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 8:07 PM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote:

There are scans of most of the relevant records, and the records for books are also transcribed by Project Gutenberg and searchable at a stanford uni website. See en.ws template PD-US-no-renewal. The scans need to be transcribed to increase accessibility. On Jun 24, 2012 3:50 AM, "Kim Bruning" <kim(a)bruning.xs4all.nl> wrote:

According to:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120330/12402418305/why-missing-20th-cent…

a lot of books have an uncertain copyright status, because the Copyright Office records have not been digitized yet. Is this true? Would offering to help digitize these records fit in our mission (especially wrt WikiSource) ? sincerely, Kim Bruning _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

_______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

Reply

Mark

9:15 a.m.

While I'm also interested in looking into this, for *images* in particular I think it's quite difficult. They're often used in books and journals by permission of the photographer, so the fact that the book/journal's copyright wasn't renewed doesn't necessarily mean the photographs in the book/journal are now public domain. You'd also have to check that the photographer didn't separately register/renew a copyright on the photo. And, since photos don't typically have convenient names or IDs to use for lookup, it can be pretty hard to check. -Mark On 6/24/12 8:22 AM, Eddie Erhart wrote:

Whoa, in 1958/59, only *seven *percent of the books and *eleven *percent of the journals were renewed? This may be obvious, but clarifying the copyright status of these works would be a huge benefit to editors looking for public domain image to illustrate Wikipedia articles... and that's not including the benefits to the Commons and Wikisource. --Ed On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 8:07 PM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote:

There are scans of most of the relevant records, and the records for books are also transcribed by Project Gutenberg and searchable at a stanford uni website. See en.ws template PD-US-no-renewal. The scans need to be transcribed to increase accessibility. On Jun 24, 2012 3:50 AM, "Kim Bruning" <kim(a)bruning.xs4all.nl> wrote:

According to:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120330/12402418305/why-missing-20th-cent…

a lot of books have an uncertain copyright status, because the Copyright Office records have not been digitized yet. Is this true? Would offering to help digitize these records fit in our mission (especially wrt WikiSource) ? sincerely, Kim Bruning _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

_______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

_______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

Reply

4348

days inactive

4349

days old

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

Manage subscription

5 comments

5 participants

tags (0)

participants (5)

Eddie Erhart
Federico Leva (Nemo)
John Vandenberg
Kim Bruning
Mark