At 04:17 PM 3/4/00 -0500, Peter Hirtle wrote: >I am a non-lawyer interested in copyright. After sitting mostly silent on >this list for several months, I have come to the conclusion that next to >Disney and Microsoft, genealogists (and genealogical publishers) seem to be >the worst offenders in claiming a copyright where none exists. For >example, in a recent post to this list, Glenn Randers-Pehrson wrote in >response to a question about the copyright status of a resissued published >work that had fallen out of copyright and then is republished as books or CDs: > >>If the publisher has made images of the pages of the old material, the images >>are covered by a new copyright, so you can't reproduce the images (in >>excess of fair use) without permission for the next 95 years but you can >>freely transcribe the information from them. > >While many publishers will tell you differently, the only court case on >this matter of which I am aware (Bridgeman v. Corel) would seem to imply >that in most cases the act of copying a public domain two-dimensional work >does not in itself have enough creativity to warrant copyright >protection. It may require a lot of skill, and it may be hard work, but it >is not creative - and creativity is required for copyright >protection. I think I said I'm not a lawyer. But I have purchased photocopies of things from the Maryland State Archives and they stamp them with use restrictions. They don't stamp reproductions made with an office copier but they do stamp them if they make photocopies. Lately, S-K publications has been involved in making CD's of census records, which is work done for hire. They do not allow the customer to do anything other than view the CD. They do not permit any manipulation of the census images that they donate to USGENWEB. I had communicated to them about that when someone complained that WebTV reduces the images to illegibility, and I suggested that a way around that would be for USGENWEB to offer a separate set of the images, sliced in two pieces vertically, that *would* be viewable on WebTV, and offered to demonstrate that. S-K pubs said no, they would not permit that. I suppose we could ignore their proscription, but that might lead to an end to the donations... I myself have done scans of illustrations* from an old book for republication. This involved a lot of work and imaginative use of image processing software to restore the deteriorated images to what they probably looked like 120 years ago. The publisher of the new book claims copyright on the restored figures. Now, with regard to "new material" that a publisher adds to an old book when they republish it. What do you think of an argument that says that the new index is simply facts: these names appear in the book, and they have simply arranged them in alphabetical order. No creativity there, is there? *BTW If you are interested in those images (German history), see http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~glennrp/marchrev/ Glenn