On 26/09/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater(a)mac.com> wrote:
On 26 Sep 2006, at 18:00, geni wrote:
Interesting that they applied "United Kingdom" law.
In England we have English Law :-)
UK law is pretty consistent on some issues, and I believe IP law is
generally among them - remember that copyright law, in its first
modern incarnation, dates from *after* the Acts of Union. So talking
of UK law here is pretty reasonable.
The legal question is whether the scans have any
creative input. In the earlier case of maps, where
different pages must be aligned and scales brought
up to date, the answer is clearly "yes". In the case of
a simple photocopy, I'd say the answer was "no". If
the Royal Society has cleaned up the images, I'd
say they do have copyright.
There's an open question as to whether skill and effort in the
scanning *process* comes into it - scanning a printed volume from the
17th century is a very different beast from photocopying a current
journal, and making comparisons to photographic skill is not entirely
unwarranted.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk