On 26/09/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
To what extent is this true under US law?
The claim to ownership of a scan from 1665 is odious. Perhaps it's just me.
Do remember, of course, that only a trivial proportion of these works are from 1665! Nothing published in the last seventy years is likely to be safely out of copyright (as new scientific material is rarely posthumous, and scientific journals don't tend to go in for reprints of old stuff), and you have to go back to about 1860-70 before you're safe assuming PD without checking the author's details.
(Before that, or for any where you can be sure as to when the author died - transcribe away, Macduff...)