(Right out of the gate I’d like to be sure to tell everyone not to forget to read my previous post from today. It apparently went over quite well as a bit of fun, and it would be a shame if people missed it simply because I blogged twice today…)
I’m trying to work out just exactly what the status is of the public domain for written works. Not too long ago, I wound up getting two books by Webster Edgerly (he who created my obsession with pseudo scientific religions) off of eBay. Having realized that these books are, in fact, quite old, I decided to start looking into public domain issues this evening.
The rules, as clearly as I can make out, are as follows:
A) Any text published prior to 1923 is public domain. B) If the author has been dead for 70 years it is likely public domain. C) Anything published between 1923 and sometime in the seventies needed a copyright renewal after 28 years or else they too slipped into the public domain.
The situation with Edgerly is unclear.
- He died in 1926, so there’s no problem with point ‘B.’
- Most, if not all, of his books were first published in around 1907 or before (the two books that I now have list ‘previous copyright dates’ of 1904/1924 and 1899/1924); so it would seem that, by terms of ‘initial copyright,’ all of his works would be in the public domain thanks to point ‘A.’
- Even if the copyright was somehow fudged in reprinting, it seems highly unlikely that these books would’ve had their copyrights renewed in the 50s or 60s. I can only find evidence of two or three publications between 1955 and 2003. And all of the recent publications may well be proof that his works are public domain. (Of course, the recent publications could also be one last hurrah before public domain is established…)
This leads me to the important question. What happens when an edition is listed as ‘revised’? The two books which I purchased have a copyright page which reads “Copyright 1934 by the Ralson Company; copyrights prior to revision 1904 and 1924.” Now, seeing as how the ‘revision date’ is eight years after his death, could there possibly be anything in the revision that actually counts towards copyright alteration? Or is the revision simply a resetting of typeface and repair of typos? Does public domain only apply to the individual printings that were before 1923, or does it apply to every printing of a work first published before 1923?
So, what I’m really asking is, does the copyright page of these books really mean that I have to wait 23 more years (barring further copyright extensions) before these are public domain, and yet if I’d purchased an earlier edition that those would be freely distributable?
That seems ridiculous to me. (Example, if it were true that a new edition nullified public domain in this way, that would also mean that ripping a dvd of “The Last Man on Earth” would still be a breach of copyright because you’re stealing the specific encoding made by a company recently, despite the fact that the film has been public domain since its release. In this way, public domain would be the purview solely of publishers and seemingly have nothing to do with the author or the actual intellectual property in question.)
I would really like to scan these books and put them online as pdfs, hopefully encouraging others to do the same and build up a database of these books (and other turn of the century works just like them) so that I could have access to them for research without tracking down and buying them all from antique dealers.
Am I really running the risk of a lawsuit from the estate of a man now 80 years dead who wrote crackpot nonsense 100 years ago?
I’ve used the following links, but none of them seem to mention the ‘revision’ issue:
UPenn’s article on Copyright renewal
This nice flowchart on the public domain
I’ve also looked through the Copyright renewal listings for the years 1960-1962, which would be the years of renewal for a 1934 copyright. Neither Edgerly nor Shaftesbury appears.
So by any stretch of logic that I can work out, these books should all be public domain regardless of the 1934 ’revision’ date. But I’m not entirely certain of this (since public domain law doesn’t seem to operate under the rules of logic).
Any help would be appreciated.
I suspect that the main issue is with the typesetting and design of these books. The protection would be for the work/property of the publishing firm rather than the work fo the author. A such Scanning PDFs and putting them online run he risk that Google Book Search currently run and so are forced to use the snippet view.
The workaround if the text itself is in the clear is to scan the text using OCR technology, edit it for accuracy etc. and publish a version of the text much like Project Gutenberg!
But yes sometimes the system is exceptionally confusing!
Eoin
I think eoinpurcell is on the track here. If you really want to do this I would say your best bet would be to contact the folks at either Project Gutenburg or The Internet Sacred Texts Archive. I’m sure either one would be glad to have the books if you wanted to scan them and they would probably be able to help you sort out the copyright issue as well.
Thanks for the help.
I have thought of the OCR / Gutenberg method as an alternative, but with the word “revised” included, I’m simply not sure if I’m in the clear in either case.
I suppose just about all that I can logically do is compare the text to the older versions and see if it’s actually any different. In that case, however, I may as well simply scan the clearly public domain editions.
Oh well. Perhaps I can still do under-the-table file swapping with other owners… Too bad said owners are so difficult to find.
Damn Mickey Mouse extensions…ruining the great and good plans of mice and men. (Well, not mice, apparently…)
Sorry, Chris. I wasn’t even aware you had posted a response when I made my response. I had to check my email to see the ‘please moderate comment’ thingy.
Yes, it is probably best to just work through Gutenberg or Sacred Texts. I had hoped to ‘go it alone’ so as to have a particular face on the issue. After all, it’s tough to influence people to scan and include their own copies in the database if the database involved is something as large and impersonal as Gutenberg.
I was hoping to provoke a private collection of files all based around my specific research, then provide copies of them to one of the bigger sites as an extension.
But that may not be feasible.
An addendum of sorts.
Google Book Search does have the Harvard Library copy of the 1888 printing of “Lessons in the Mechanics of Personal Magnetism” up for free download.
Strangely enough, it is actually published under the name Webster Edgerly. In later years all his books would use the pseudonym Edmund Shaftesbury. That’s a pretty interesting historical footnote all its own.
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Addendum to the addendum.
Via Google Book Search, I have also found early editions of “The Cultivation of the Chest” (under the name Edmund Shaftesbury) and “The Ralston Brain Regime” (under the name Everett Ralston).
Additionally, I’ve found a block of 20 or so issues of the “The Metaphysical Magazine,” which may have some value to research.
All hail Google Book Search.
It’s only a pity they aren’t all up there.
It sure is!
Of course it requires some work on your part and perhaps a little cost!
Gutenberg has very flexible usage terms so if they already have the works in question you can download the text, strip out the Gutenberg references and do with it what you will. Even page is nicely and make a PDF with it if you like. This will (if correctly paged [But you can get away with a nicely designed word version]) act as a rather nice ebook.
I am fairly sure that aside from the editing issue of scanning/ocr work you could do that for a few books if you wanted! We publish some public domain works and find the toughest part to be editing OCR scans, but such is life!
Eoin
Oh and it has just occurred to me that you might find said books in Google Book Search and they may even offer a free download, though they do carry that scanned by google watermark!
Eoin