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

Wed Dec 21 22:49:32 UTC 2011

Hi Becky,

Thanks for the clarification. The reason we include that question is because we have to ascertain whether the work was published for the first time after the expiry of copyright, in which case under EU law the “honest finder” who made it available to the public is awarded with an additional 20 years of protection starting from publication. 

I can certainly see how the current wording can be confusing. We’ve already amended the question from the even more misleading “Was the work first published within 70 years from the death of the last surviving author?” At this stage it is perhaps a bit late to safely make further changes, but we will consider further rephrasing. Perhaps something like “Was the work first published during the author’s lifetime or within 70 years from the death of the last surviving author?” might be clearer.

Btw, I also wanted to note that we are aware of the confusion caused by the inconsistency in the positioning of the yes/no buttons... This isn’t my area of expertise, however, Maarten Zeinstra, who is in charge of all software related questions concerning the calculators, has explained that with the current software it would unfortunately be very difficult and time-consuming to fix the problem. So I'm not sure we can do anything about that...

Thanks very much for your feedback and I’m glad you find the calculators useful!

Best wishes,

Christina

________________________________________
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 18:30
To: Public Domain discuss list
Subject: Re: [pd-discuss] Public Domain Calculator - James Bond books

Hi Christina

Thanks so much for this response, it's cleared things up for me. I
think where it all went wrong for me was not in the question I
initially highlighted, but in this one:

On 21 December 2011 16:16, Angelopoulos, C.J. <C.J.Angelopoulos at uva.nl> wrote:

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

I had trouble parsing this one, and answered "no", not yes. Here was
my logic - Ian Fleming was still alive when the work was first
published, so "no" felt like the right answer to this question. I
guess I parsed it like this "Was the work first published after the
death of the last surviving author, if so, how long after the author's
death (</>70years)?".

I now see that from the point of view of this question "at the latest
70 years after the death..." includes all the time the author was
alive as well.

I'm very glad to hear this information is useful, thanks again for
your excellent project

Warm wishes

Becky

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