[WikiEN-l] copyright on scanned copy?

Fri Nov 17 14:45:29 UTC 2006

On 11/17/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> Big media companies do this all the time.  For example, if you go
> to a bookstore and buy a recent printing of Alice's Adventures in
> Wonderland, I think you'll find that the publisher has claimed
> copyright on *their copy* of Tenniel's illustrations and/or
> Carroll's text.  (Dover, at least, is a happy exception.)
>

Under UK law they could claim copyright on the typesetting for 20
years. I don't know what the law in the US is about this though.

> (On the other hand, if the computer file truly is a precise
> reproduction of the original, you can convince yourself that
> using it is fine, since the alleged copyright holder can't prove
> you're using their scan.)
>
> This situation gets particularly interesting in the case of
> famous art.  Most museums disallow cameras; casual visitors
> are not allowed to photograph or otherwise make copies of
> the artwork within, even though it's long out of copyright.
> If you're a publisher and you want to make a copy for an art
> book you're printing, you have to pay the museum a -- sometimes
> hefty -- licensing fee.  Having paid this fee, you're not going
> to let people freeload on you, so you're going to slap your own
> copyright on your art book.  And the museum will back you up on
> this: they make money on those licensing fees; in fact part of
> their licensed-copy agreement is often (I think) a requirement
> that the licensed copies disallow reproduction.

In the museums will not back you up if you take it to court. The last
thing they want is a Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp type case
taken taken to a higher level which would remove any remaining grey
area.

>
> The upshot is that if copies are copyrightable, it can be
> effectively impossible to obtain your own free copy of a public
> domain work, if the original is inaccessible.
>

that would depend on the ethical system you are opperating under.

> I am not a copyright lawyer and I don't know if the practices
> I've described are defensible from a copyright law point of view.
> (*I'm* certainly not defending them.)  But I get the impression
> that they do happen all the time.  In other words, the claim that
> someone "deserves protection for all the work they did (or the
> fees they paid) tracking down the old map and making the scan"
> is apparently accepted in practice.
>

Not really. What is accepted is that you are free to try and claim
copyright on PD material.

-- 
geni