On 8/16/2011 2:50 PM, Wjhonson wrote:
The year of publication applies to published material.
The year you
make it public, to the public, for public consumption.
of course, that is the
definition of publication
But look at
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/303.html
Unpublished works (in the United States at least) have copyright
protection. If nothing else, the creator(s) has/have moral rights to the
work. Usually they also have legal rights. (I'm no lawyer, but my
entertainment attorney told me to assume everything has rights unless
you find a specific exemption under the law)
Unpublished material, if it enjoys copyright
protection at all, would
be based on the year of creation. That however might be a red herring
if it, in fact, does not enjoy any copyright protection. Does
copyright protect material not published?
Yes it can. For example: Members of the
Beatles recorded some material
and did not publish it. According to the layers of copyright, the
creator(s) owned it from the moment it was recorded, the recording
studio and producers (if any) also had rights dated back to that time.
Since it wasn't published there were no publishers rights. Whoever was
given a copy of the recording also had the tangible right of ownership
of a copy.
Many years later it was published as part of Anthology 1. see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles%27_recording_sessions for details.
For the US, also see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act>
Plagiarism and copyright are seperate issues and
should not be
conflated, as different approaches apply to each.
True. In the case cited below, the Manuscript Story would have had
copyright protection under current US law but had no such protection
under the 1790 law. It wasn't until the 1976 law that protection was
extended to unpublished works. As such, the only litigation possible at
that time would have been under the rules of plagiarism and such
litigation was considered.
-----Original Message-----
From: Robin McCain <robin(a)slmr.com>
To: foundation-l <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tue, Aug 16, 2011 2:36 pm
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues
On 8/16/2011 12:51 PM,wjhonson(a)aol.com <mailto:wjhonson@aol.com> wrote:
I don't believe your claim that you can take
something which is PD, make an
exact image of it, slap it up in a new work of your
own (enjoying copyright
protection automatically) and then claim copyright over that PD image in your
work.
Copyright applies to the presentation of your work, showing creativity. An
image
that you reproduce faithfully shows no creativity and can enjoy no new
copyright, no matter how hard you push your view. That's it. Period.
So I can freely copy any PD image, from any source, and not need to worry
about
copyright violation. PD doesn't change simply because a PD item is
republished. The presentation of the item is copyright, not the item itself.
I personally agree with that. However, it often costs more to prove your
right to use something in court than to knuckle under if an aggressive
rights owner comes after you. This is especially true when you are
planning to distribute your own work worldwide - just getting a letter
from the publisher telling you that they either give you the right to
use an image or have no rights over that image is necessary before your
work will be accepted by a publisher or distributor.
An additional minor quibble. At least in the US a person does*not* need to
reapply for copyright each time they revise an item. Copyright is an automatic
process, merely by the fact of presenting something in a fixed media. You*can*
file a copyright. You do not*need* to file a copyright, in order to enjoy
copyright protection under the law.
I also agree with you - except that the registered version has an
ironclad protection you can protect in court while revised versions
afterwards may not be so easy to protect unless they are also
registered. It becomes a kind of "chain of custody" issue. If I were to
create something original and show it to no one else for 50 years until
I published it and died 5 years later, which would apply to the
copyright expiration date - date of author's death, date of creation or
date of publication?
In the real world there are many examples of published books and
screenplays that could clearly be seen as derivative - even plagiarized
works from one or more unpublished sources. This is a big deal within
the Writer's Guild and the reason for their online system of protecting
manuscripts by registering before a work is shown to others.
One of the most (in)famous books in American Religion is "The Book of
Mormon", parts of the first edition of which were (alleged to be)
plagiarized from the "Manuscript Story" and arguably violated the 1790
Copyright
Act.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Spalding The work
has been revised at least nine times (not counting translations) to make
it "fit" the theology of the modern day church.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Mormon
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Unsubscribe:https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l