[pd-discuss] Copyright on unpublished or recently-published works from long-dead authors

Wed Dec 16 16:34:45 UTC 2015

Since someone had asked about UK regulations, you might be 
interested in a clarification in this recent copyright notice 
from the UK Intellectual Property Office. This isn't entirely 
germane to the discussion since it is about images, but they 
added a clarification "Are digitised copies of older images 
protected by copyright?". In the UK it has often been argued that 
this is a case and our institutions often put copyright notices 
on digitised images of earlier works, or license them in one way 
or another.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/481194/c-notice-201401.pdf

If the reading of the Communia Association is correct, and I'm 
not saying it is, this means that works once in the public domain 
(e.g. pre-copyright) remain in the public domain even if they are 
then digitized.

http://www.communia-association.org/2015/12/04/1761/

If that indeed is accurate then there are a lot of images of 
previous images (and other works) which have copyright licenses 
on them (including CC licences) which really should be considered 
public domain.

-James

-- 
Dr James Cummings, James.Cummings at it.ox.ac.uk Academic IT 
Services, University of Oxford