<<In a message dated 1/16/2009 11:33:15 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, carcharothwp@googlemail.com writes:

If you buy an expensive first edition public domain book (hundreds of years old and thousands of US dollars), what do you say to someone who turns up on your doorstep saying that the book is part of the collective heritage of humankind, and that they have a right to look at it and scan it, and that you have no right to keep the item locked up in a display cabinet for only you to look at?>>

Your particular item is not PD. It's the general item, the Socratian item, that is PD. Your specific item is not. No one can force you to let them view your item. If to take an extreme vase, the only versions of the item are privately held, and no one has ever photographed it, or if they have all the photographs are unpublished etc etc, then right, you can't get the item.

Will

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