[pd-discuss] Copyright on unpublished or recently-published works from long-dead authors

Thu Jan 21 15:44:58 UTC 2016

A very belated thank you to all who've shared your knowledge/thoughts on
this. It certainly is a complicated one! And I share the frustration some
of you have expressed.

It seems a lot hinges on whether the UK publishers in 1939 (who first
published the manuscript) themselves obtained permission. I am trying
currently to find this out, though doubt I'll get a definitive answer.
Assuming that there is no evidence either way, where does this leave things?

If there is no evidence either way (they could have obtained permission, or
they could not have, no way of telling), which side would copyright law
come down on (if indeed, it would "come down" at all!). Is there some kind
of burden of proof at play here?

I guess another question is, does it matter? If I publish this poem, who
will file a copyright claim? The 1939 publishers (who are still existent)
would have no interest (because if they did give permission, copyright
would have expired in 1990; and if they didn't then they wouldn't have had
copyright in the first place). And I can't find any evidence of any estate
of this author. Am I right in thinking legal action would need to come from
someone who themselves claimed the copyright?

A huge thanks again to you all for your input on this!

All the best,

Adam.

--

Adam Green

Editor-in-Chief, The Public Domain Review <http://publicdomainreview.org/>

@PublicDomainRev <https://twitter.com/PublicDomainRev>

On 16 December 2015 at 16:34, James Cummings <James.Cummings at it.ox.ac.uk>
wrote:

>
> 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
>
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