[Foundation-l] copyright issues

[Wjhonson]

 Litigation under the rules of plagiarism....
Can you cite that law for me?

 


 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Robin McCain <robin at slmr.com>
To: foundation-l <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tue, Aug 16, 2011 7:43 pm
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues


On 8/16/2011 2:50 PM, Wjhonson wrote:
> The year of publication applies to published material.  The year you 
> make it public, to the public, for public consumption.
of course, that is the definition of publication

But look at http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/303.html

Unpublished works (in the United States at least) have copyright 
protection. If nothing else, the creator(s) has/have moral rights to the 
work. Usually they also have legal rights. (I'm no lawyer, but my 
entertainment attorney told me to assume everything has rights unless 
you find a specific exemption under the law)
> Unpublished material, if it enjoys copyright protection at all, would 
> be based on the year of creation.  That however might be a red herring 
> if it, in fact, does not enjoy any copyright protection.  Does 
> copyright protect material not published?
Yes it can. For example: Members of the Beatles recorded some material 
and did not publish it.  According to the layers of copyright, the 
creator(s) owned it from the moment it was recorded, the recording 
studio and producers (if any) also had rights dated back to that time. 
Since it wasn't published there were no publishers rights. Whoever was 
given a copy of the recording also had the tangible right of ownership 
of a copy.

Many years later it was published as part of Anthology 1. see 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles%27_recording_sessions for details.

For the US, also see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act>
> Plagiarism and copyright are seperate issues and should not be 
> conflated, as different approaches apply to each.
>
>
True. In the case cited below, the Manuscript Story would have had 
copyright protection under current US law but had no such protection 
under the 1790 law. It wasn't until the 1976 law that protection was 
extended to unpublished works. As such, the only litigation possible at 
that time would have been under the rules of plagiarism and such 
litigation was considered.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robin McCain <robin at slmr.com>
> To: foundation-l <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Tue, Aug 16, 2011 2:36 pm
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues
>
> On 8/16/2011 12:51 PM,wjhonson at aol.com  <mailto:wjhonson at aol.com>  wrote:
> >  I don't believe your claim that you can take something which is PD, make an
> exact image of it, slap it up in a new work of your own (enjoying copyright
> protection automatically) and then claim copyright over that PD image in your
> work.
> >
> >  Copyright applies to the presentation of your work, showing creativity.  An
> image that you reproduce faithfully shows no creativity and can enjoy no new
> copyright, no matter how hard you push your view.  That's it.  Period.
> >
> >  So I can freely copy any PD image, from any source, and not need to worry
> about copyright violation.  PD doesn't change simply because a PD item is
> republished.  The presentation of the item is copyright, not the item itself.
> I personally agree with that. However, it often costs more to prove your
> right to use something in court than to knuckle under if an aggressive
> rights owner comes after you. This is especially true when you are
> planning to distribute your own work worldwide - just getting a letter
> from the publisher telling you that they either give you the right to
> use an image or have no rights over that image is necessary before your
> work will be accepted by a publisher or distributor.
> >
> >  An additional minor quibble.  At least in the US a person does*not*  need 
to
> reapply for copyright each time they revise an item.  Copyright is an 
automatic
> process, merely by the fact of presenting something in a fixed media.  
You*can*
> file a copyright.  You do not*need*  to file a copyright, in order to enjoy
> copyright protection under the law.
> I also agree with you - except that the registered version has an
> ironclad protection you can protect in court while revised versions
> afterwards may not be so easy to protect unless they are also
> registered.  It becomes a kind of "chain of custody" issue. If I were to
> create something original and show it to no one else for 50 years until
> I published it and died 5 years later, which would apply to the
> copyright expiration date  - date of author's death, date of creation or
> date of publication?
>
>    In the real world there are many examples of published books and
> screenplays that could clearly be seen as derivative - even plagiarized
> works from one or more unpublished sources.  This is a big deal within
> the Writer's Guild and the reason for their online system of protecting
> manuscripts by registering before a work is shown to others.
>
> One of the most (in)famous books in American Religion is "The Book of
> Mormon", parts of the first edition of which were (alleged to be)
> plagiarized from the "Manuscript Story" and arguably violated the 1790
> Copyright Act.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Spalding  The work
> has been revised at least nine times (not counting translations) to make
> it "fit" the theology of the modern day church.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Mormon
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