Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
Very good letter, but please Ray, don't end it the
way you do :)
It is kind of provocative, don't you think so ?
Don't you folks feel like we're getting more and more stuff like this
these days ?
Thanks for the compliment. I admit that I was a little sarcastic. I
have received further correspondence from the individual, and now that I
know that she is more than some random idiot who doesn't know what he is
talking about I can respond with a different tone.
In my previous comments there was a point to be made about take down
orders. Under US law there are a number of elements that must be
included in a take down order. I think that one of the most important
ones is the statement of legal standing. This protects people from wild
claims and demands from those really have no connection with the
copyrighted work. If a negotiated agreement were available it would not
be with them.
As things stand there are some peculiar problems with this situation.
Although Emily Dickinson died in 1886, it seems that 41 of her poems
were published posthumously for the first time by Harvard University in
1955. This would make the copyright still valid in the United States on
those poems until 2050.
The same material also appears at
http://www.emilydickinson.it/ but it
appears that this is quite acceptable under Italian law.
Dr. Tanter also raised the question of the 1847 photograph of Emily
Dickinson in the Wikipedia article, feeling that permission to include
the photograph should be had from Amherst College
I haven't noticed a lot of claims of potential copyright violation
Ec