> On Aug 19, 2015, at 7:47 PM, Tothwolf <tothw...@concentric.net> wrote:
>
> ...
> Second, those that threaten others when they find a PDF manual online which
> competes with their offerings. Some of them will file bogus DMCA takedowns
> even though they are not the copyright holder. Some of these "dealers" try to
> assert that because they scanned a manual (...or claim to have scanned it),
> that /they/ then hold the exclusive copyright to the PDF version of that
> manual.
Reminds me of a guy who sold US military aircraft flight manual scans, with his
"copyright" notice on every page. Never mind that such things are in the
public domain by law.
> Copyright just doesn't work like that though...the original copyright holder
> /still/ holds the copyright, no matter if someone scans it to a PDF or makes
> a xerox copy. Under US copyright law, they cannot even make a "sweat of the
> brow" argument as that is not an accepted legal argument under US copyright
> law.
Correct, that was settled decades ago. There is also the possibility that the
original document may be in the public domain, either because no claim of
copyright was made originally and publication was before copyright became
automatic (1978) or because copyright applied originally but was not renewed
when it came up for renewal. For example, I have a Linotype typecasting
handbook from around 1940; it's in the public domain because its copyright was
due for renewal in 1958 and a search of the records shows that no renewal was
done.
Wikipedia has a lot of information on this because they are quite picky about
copyright, so they have an excellent database of all the relevant rules (not
just US ones but other countries as well).
paul
