On 26 Sep 2006, at 18:00, geni wrote:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/36_FSupp2d_191.htm
Interesting that they applied "United Kingdom" law. In England we have English Law :-)
My understanding is that copyright law is there to make creativity worthwhile. Without intellectual property law, we would have much fewer books and inventions would be kept secret. Who knows now how to make a strad? The deal is that, in return for a temporary monopoly, IPR must be published and eventually made free.
So the question is whether the Royal Society should be encouraged to undertake the laborious task of scanning their precious books by giving them a temporary monopoly on the results of their work.
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.
I'd suggest the best course of action is to appeal their their ideals as: Registered Charity No 207043 The Royal Society - excellence in science
and find out: (a) how much they spent on the scanning (b) whether they could change their policy to release them as free.