Fred Bauder wrote:
At 09:48 PM 7/23/02 +0200, jens wrote:
Hello,
how do we treat the Catholic Encyclopedia? (
www.newadvent.org)
The articles are from a 1912 encyclopedia and should therefore be free,
but the website does claim a 1999 copyright for the online edition.
As it might be in many cases difficult to prove that someone copied from
newadvent.org, it is rather obvious if typos are preserved.
Can we use such an article as basis for copyediting?
I looked at this. I think the information on this page might be helpful:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/00002a.htm
Bottom line is I would not copy the source code but I would say the text
can be copied without substantial risk. I don't think typos count anyway.
Fred Bauder
I've looked at the site which Fred referenced, and it includes the
following: "Knight chose the 1913 15-volume set because the later
editions are still under copyright protection." Clearly Knight was
aware of the copyright issues when he was making his effort. Copyright
depends on contributing some measure of original work. Leaving scanning
bugs or even intentional bugs to trick the unwary is not original work,
nor is cleaning them up.
The frames and other environment written and supplied by New Advent are
of course copyrightable, Simply putting a blanket copyright notice on
something means to me nothing more than "Copyright to the extent that it
can be copyright". No person uploading such a page can be reasonably
expected to detail which parts of a page are copyright and which are
not. For the reader, he has to use his own common sense in making his
determination.
Eclecticology