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.
- d.
On 26/09/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Hurst, Phil" Phil.Hurst@royalsoc.ac.uk To: jwales@wikia.com Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 11:34:56 +0100 Subject: Royal Society Digital Journal Archive
Dear Jimmy
It has come to our attention that there is some confusion regarding the copyright status of the Royal Society's digital journal archive.
The entire digital archive is covered by copyright. This mean that systematic downloading and hosting by third parties is prohibited.
Thank you for your attention.
Regards
Phil Hurst Publisher tel +44 (0)20 7451 2630 fax +44 (0)20 7976 1837 web http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk The Royal Society 6-9 Carlton House Terrace London SW1Y 5AG Registered Charity No 207043 The Royal Society - excellence in science
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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...)
On 9/26/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
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.
We could go back to 1800 and there would still be a fair bit of stuff which is what we are interested in.
Andrew Gray wrote:
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...)
... so are we allowed to upload them to Commons while we're waiting?
On 9/26/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
... so are we allowed to upload them to Commons while we're waiting?
wikisource would be more logical for the most part. You should be sure something is public domain where you are and in theUS before uploading though and in the UK currently caselaw that I know about says it isn't.
Possible all issues of this [1] magazine are in PD. Or not? o.0
[1] Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1776-1886) http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/(jsvx5u45yc5wc42ndessfljn)/app/home/journ...http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/%28jsvx5u45yc5wc42ndessfljn%29/app/home/journal.asp?referrer=parent&backto=linkingpublicationresults,1:120135,1
On 9/26/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/26/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
... so are we allowed to upload them to Commons while we're waiting?
wikisource would be more logical for the most part. You should be sure something is public domain where you are and in theUS before uploading though and in the UK currently caselaw that I know about says it isn't.
-- geni _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 9/26/06, Luiz Augusto lugusto@gmail.com wrote:
Possible all issues of this [1] magazine are in PD. Or not? o.0
[1] Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1776-1886)
Some of the newer stuff may not be.
Hum.. sure.
Anyway, now I'm trying to download with HTTrack the most oldest magazines and most oldest issues to my personal computer. But I don't have conditions to share this backup copy to someone, this is a personal computer in a ISP that don't allow running of server softwares.
On 9/26/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/26/06, Luiz Augusto lugusto@gmail.com wrote:
Possible all issues of this [1] magazine are in PD. Or not? o.0
[1] Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London
(1776-1886)
Some of the newer stuff may not be.
geni _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
geni wrote:
On 9/26/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
... so are we allowed to upload them to Commons while we're waiting?
wikisource would be more logical for the most part. You should be sure something is public domain where you are and in theUS before uploading though and in the UK currently caselaw that I know about says it isn't.
Yes, Wikisource is the more appropriate place for the /transcribed/ journals; my question was whether we could upload the PDFs to Commons since they're media files.
However I'm hesitant to act without clarification about the copyright status; is a scan of a journal article written in 1665 eligible for copyright? Several things come to mind here:
1. Who was the copyright holder, the author or the journal? 2. If it's the author, they're all long dead so {{PD-old}} applies 3. Per Bridgeman v. Corel, a "slavish copy" of a work in the public domain creates no new copyright. 4. Bridgeman made a big fuss out of the fact that under UK law, the reproductions /would/ be protected. The court's response was:
"While the Court's conclusion as to the law governing copyrightability renders the point moot, the Court is persuaded that plaintiff's copyright claim would fail even if the governing law were that of the United Kingdom."
5. I'm in Australia, downloading something from the United Kingdom, and uploading it to a server in the United States. Since there are conflicting copyright laws at work here, which one applies?
2006/9/27, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com:
- I'm in Australia, downloading something from the United Kingdom, and
uploading it to a server in the United States. Since there are conflicting copyright laws at work here, which one applies?
In my opinion, both Australian and United States law apply. Australian law restricts your right to upload the material to a public or semi-public place, and US law restricts the right to spread them from the server over the world. UK law could only restrict your downloading, however it could still be of importance because the original copyright of the material is in the United Kingdom, and national copyright law sometimes refers to the laws of the country of original publication to decide whether something is still under copyright. That might even be mandatory in the Berne Convention, but I'm not sure about that.
Andre Engels wrote:
2006/9/27, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com:
- I'm in Australia, downloading something from the United Kingdom, and
uploading it to a server in the United States. Since there are conflicting copyright laws at work here, which one applies?
In my opinion, both Australian and United States law apply. Australian law restricts your right to upload the material to a public or semi-public place, and US law restricts the right to spread them from the server over the world. UK law could only restrict your downloading, however it could still be of importance because the original copyright of the material is in the United Kingdom, and national copyright law sometimes refers to the laws of the country of original publication to decide whether something is still under copyright. That might even be mandatory in the Berne Convention, but I'm not sure about that.
UK law would determine whether something is copyright in the first place and how long that copyright would remain valid. Generally though one's own domestic laws will not operate to protect a longer copyright than if the work had been published where you live. The courts of a country which still has a Berne convention life + 50 law will not protect works during the extended period of the longer life + 70 period. Australia recently went to life + 70, but did not do so retroactively.
Which country could prosecute mostly depends on where the offense took place. The United States differs from many other places in that it regards the offence as taking place where the server is located. Others (including UK and Australia) consider the offence as taking place where the material is downloaded. This could have the effect of your being subject to the law of a country other than the three that were mentioned. Nevertheless, some degree of practicality needs to apply. The costs of prosecuting you in a foreign jurisdiction could be very high; the prospects of a conviction would also be uncertain. When you weigh that against the possible results of a conviction your offence would need to be very serious before any foreign jurisdiction would go after you.
Ec
On 9/26/06, 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.
- d.
On 26/09/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Hurst, Phil" Phil.Hurst@royalsoc.ac.uk To: jwales@wikia.com Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 11:34:56 +0100 Subject: Royal Society Digital Journal Archive
Dear Jimmy
It has come to our attention that there is some confusion regarding the copyright status of the Royal Society's digital journal archive.
The entire digital archive is covered by copyright. This mean that systematic downloading and hosting by third parties is prohibited.
Thank you for your attention.
Regards
Phil Hurst Publisher
I've not followed the Wikimedia-UK discussion, but bear in mind that the archives, which were just completed and released, are only freely available to the community until November 2006. After that, they will be included with the Royal Society's journal packages, which are not cheap (though more reasonable than many equivalent publishers): http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/index.cfm?page=1365
So I can understand the publisher being upset if there is systematic downloading occuring; they've put a great deal of time, energy and money into producing this archive which they hope to market to libraries and thus keep their publishing business alive. This is less feasible if all these issues are on Wikipedia. IANAL, but I expect if someone *else* (you or me) wanted to go and do the work of scanning and indexing themselves, the Society would have a more difficult time claiming copyright, as the text itself is probably in the public domain. The intellectual property comes with the work of arrangement, cataloging and transferring to a new medium. As far as I know, this is the case (or claimed case, anyway) with many digital archives of old material in the U.S.
-- Phoebe
On 27/09/06, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
The intellectual property comes with the work of arrangement, cataloging and transferring to a new medium. As far as I know, this is the case (or claimed case, anyway) with many digital archives of old material in the U.S.
Turns out it isn't, largely; or it'd be *quite* a stretch to claim someone couldn't reproduce a scan because you'd arranged and catalogued it along with the slavish copying that explicitly doesn't create a new copyright. In any case, Commons would promptly reorganise it.
- d.
On 9/27/06, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
I've not followed the Wikimedia-UK discussion,
If you had you would have run across this link:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/36_FSupp2d_191.htm
Which will give you some idea what people are talking about.
but bear in mind that the archives, which were just completed and released, are only freely available to the community until November 2006. After that, they will be included with the Royal Society's journal packages, which are not cheap (though more reasonable than many equivalent publishers):
We have enough uni students that we could likely still get our hands on them if we needed to.
So I can understand the publisher being upset if there is systematic downloading occuring; they've put a great deal of time, energy and money into producing this archive which they hope to market to libraries and thus keep their publishing business alive.
University libraries are already pretty much forced to buy their product. I suspect this is aimed at a different audience.
This is less feasible if all these issues are on Wikipedia. IANAL, but I expect if someone *else* (you or me) wanted to go and do the work of scanning and indexing themselves, the Society would have a more difficult time claiming copyright, as the text itself is probably in the public domain.
"Hi we are wikipedians we would like to scan all your old texts. No we have no experience of scanning or preservation. Odd they hung up." In any case I adressed the isses of textual content through suggesting OCR scans. Although that leaves pictures such as what appears to be a case of cyclopia in a colt in one of the early journals.
The intellectual property comes with the work of arrangement, cataloging and transferring to a new medium. As far as I know, this is the case (or claimed case, anyway) with many digital archives of old material in the U.S.
see the link at the top and this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp.
On 9/27/06, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
So I can understand the publisher being upset if there is systematic downloading occuring; they've put a great deal of time, energy and money into producing this archive which they hope to market to libraries and thus keep their publishing business alive.
It was probably a bit silly to make it all freely available then.
On 9/28/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/27/06, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
but bear in mind that the archives, which were just completed and released, are only freely available to the community until November 2006. After that, they will be included with the Royal Society's journal packages, which are not cheap (though more reasonable than many equivalent publishers):
We have enough uni students that we could likely still get our hands on them if we needed to.
There was a discussion on a similar issue on the OTRS list recently. Even if there is no copyright in the material from the archives, the Society may have contractual rights against people who access the material from subscription services.
I would want to read the terms of use for the subscription very closely before I started uploading things accessed through a subscription.
Quote below first posted to <wikimediauk-l.Wikimedia.org>
Below are two extracts from an article from the THES (Times Higher Education Supplement) Friday 22nd September 2006.
If this is a research, then fine. But I am told that Wikipedia is not in the business of original research.
Also, Wikipedia is non commercial, but derivatives, such as Answers.com are not, thanks to the GFDL.
"This is not what Wikipedia is about."
Gordo
***
Ambiguous copyright law catches out scholars
Publishers and galleries are charging unnecessarily. Jessica Shepherd reports
Academics are being incorrectly told to hand over thousands of pounds to use works of art, literature and music in their research, a report has revealed. The study by the British Academy criticises those copyright holders who wrongly charge scholars in the name of the law. Many publishers and art galleries have failed to grasp that copyright law does not apply when material is to be used for private study, criticism, review or non-commercial research, the report points out. It argues that the demands of copyright owners hinder scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. The British Academy hopes to lobby the Government to make copyright law clearer for publishers and academics with the publication of its study Copyright and Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
[...]
Stephen Navin, chief executive of the Music Publishers' Association, said: "Our members are not trying to mislead academics. Copyright law is complicated...."
[...]
phoebe ayers wrote:
So I can understand the publisher being upset if there is systematic downloading occuring; they've put a great deal of time, energy and money into producing this archive which they hope to market to libraries and thus
Is this a new part of copyright law that I haven't heard of, where not only sweat-of-the-brow but also tear-in-the-eye is sufficient to prohibit copying of century old texts?
wanted to go and do the work of scanning and indexing themselves, the Society would have a more difficult time claiming copyright, as the text itself is probably in the public domain.
*Claiming* copyright (where none is due) is never difficult. Scammers, publishers and libraries do it all the time. Truthful people call this copy*fraud*, because it just isn't *right*.
The intellectual property comes with the work of arrangement, cataloging and transferring to a new medium.
Not at all! With cataloging come database rights[1] that expire after 15 years. But this is not copyright. And the transfer to a new medium is not an intellectual effort.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_rights
On 9/28/06, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
Is this a new part of copyright law that I haven't heard of, where not only sweat-of-the-brow but also tear-in-the-eye is sufficient to prohibit copying of century old texts?
Well UK law does have the moral rights bit but that is unlikely to appy in this case.
*Claiming* copyright (where none is due) is never difficult. Scammers, publishers and libraries do it all the time. Truthful people call this copy*fraud*, because it just isn't *right*.
In this case there is an argument to be made that under english and welsh law the scans are covered by copyright so the message at the start of this thread is reasonable.
Not at all! With cataloging come database rights[1] that expire after 15 years. But this is not copyright. And the transfer to a new medium is not an intellectual effort.
Under UK law you can probably also pick up 20 years for rearrangement of text you do any of that (under typographical arrangements).
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