> On Aug 19, 2015, at 11:37 PM, Fred Cisin <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 19 Aug 2015, Paul Koning wrote:
>> 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.
>
> The ORIGINAL is in the public domain, and he would have no rights to restrict
> anybody else from scanning and distributing the original.
> HOWEVER, even the flimsiest claims of enhancement could enable a copyright
> claim for a "derivative work", and protect copies of HIS scans.
Any sufficiently dishonest lawyer can make claims like that, and some do, but
that doesn't make it a valid claim, and ones like that are not. First of all,
a derivative work has to have a creative component; plain labor, even if time
consuming, is not relevant. Second, derivative work copyright for the new
author covers only the changes made by the new author; the part that is taken
from the original is covered by the original copyright (if any).
>
> Project Gutenberg ran into that in their early days. They thought that they
> could scan modern printings of public domain literature, and distribute those
> as images. But, although the WORDS are public domain, by dint of their
> typography, the modern printers have claim to those images.
They might pretend this, but they would be wrong.
paul
