I discussed this matter at some length with User:Danny a while back. He was, of course, the point man in JSTOR's fight with the foundation over [[JSTOR]], so his perspective might've been skewed, but we never could come to an agreement as to whether JSTOR was doing this or not. The user agreement contains some delightfully vague language which I believe acknowledges that you can do whatever you want with public domain documents in a fashion that prevents you from acccidentically gleaning this.
How much, and in what fashion, they'd object to taking documents off there that are PD, I don't know, but I suspect the only way to find out would be to just do it and see.
Cheers Brian
On Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 2:39 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
<<In a message dated 12/26/2008 11:33:04 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, mbimmler@gmail.com writes:
"I believe if you look into JSTOR's pre-1928 documents, you will immediately find that they are assessing dubious copyright" and "Could you elaborate on this and supply a specific example?" could be formed in much nicer words>>
Although if you look at the history of this thread, you will see that I did ask for a specific example. Now that we know of this non-issue let's explore it a bit more. IF I take a photograph, or even "digitize" (scan) a print document, I own the copyright to what *I* have done. That does *not* give me an automatic copyright to the underlying work *of someone else* and this is the key point here.
If I take a picture of the Declaration of Independence under glass at the National Archives, I gain a copyright to my image. That does NOT give me a copyright to the actual underlying document that I've imaged. If I take a picture of the Lincoln Memorial, I gain a copyright to my image. Not to the item imaged.
My copyright to my image whether paper or digital, whether glossy, flat, or airbrushed. Any derivative work based substantially on my image, in such a way as to deprive me of income from my image, etc etc etc.
This, as I'm sure we're all aware, does not, in any way, prevent anyone from taking SAID image (even), extracting all the text from it, and then presenting it as the original PD document (in plain text not as an image).
SHOULD you not be so lazy as to actually get your own copy of said original PD document, I'm sure you'll sleep much sounder. I however won't be limited by that level of silliness.
Now can we move on?
Will Johnson
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