[pd-discuss] Public Domain Calculator - James Bond books

Wed Dec 21 16:16:14 UTC 2011

Dear Becky,

Thanks for your feedback – we appreciate all information that would help improve the calculators!

I tried reproducing your experience in the UK calculator and I’m not sure I follow. If you answer “no” to the question “Is the work a literary, dramatic or musical work, an engraving or a photograph whose author died before 1 January 1969 and which remained unpublished until the 1 August 1989?” you are led to the following series of questions:

“Is the work a literary, dramatic or musical work, an engraving or a photograph published before 1 August 1989?”

Yes.

“Did the author die more than 20 years before publication?”

No.

“Has the work been lawfully published or communicated to the public?”

Yes.

“Was the work first published at the latest 70 years after the death of the last surviving author?”

Yes.

“Did the last surviving author die more than 70 years ago?”

No.

Result: “The work is still protected. Please contact the right-holder before using it.”

This should be correct. Is there something I’m missing here?

Hope this helps!

Best wishes,

Christina Angelopoulos

________________________________________
From: pd-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org [pd-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org] on behalf of Becky Hogge [becky.hogge at gmail.com]
Sent: 21 December 2011 11:50
To: Public Domain discuss list
Subject: [pd-discuss] Public Domain Calculator - James Bond books

Hi

I'm writing to this list because I think it is where the people behind
public domain calculator project
(http://outofcopyright.eu/calculator.html) hang out. Please let me
know if there's a better place to write to.

Firstly, I think the public domain calculator is a great project.
Thanks for building it :)

I thought I'd use it to work out the copyright status of Ian Fleming's
James Bond books. The question I really had problems with was this
one:

Is the work a literary, dramatic or musical work, an engraving or a
photograph whose author died before 1 January 1969 and which remained
unpublished until the 1 August 1989?

I found this hard to parse. Ian Fleming died before 1969, but the work
was published before 1989, so I answered "no" the first time, and this
returned a result that the work is in the public domain (or rather
"The examined rights have expired"), which I don't think can be true
(Ian Fleming died in 1964, which is only 47 years ago. Under the terms
of the 1995 Copyright regulations, which according to Wikipedia
granted extended copyright terms to all authors who died after 1925,
Fleming enjoys life plus seventy). When I answered "yes" the second
time I tried, I got the result I expected - that the work was still
protected.

Can anyone help me understand what's going on? Am I simply
understanding the question wrong?

Also, as a usability side note, I found the way the yes/no buttons
switched around really confusing.

Thanks in advance, warm wishes

Becky

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