On 26 Sep 2006, at 18:00, geni wrote:
Interesting that they applied "United Kingdom" law.
In England we have English Law :-)
My understanding is that copyright law is there to
make creativity worthwhile. Without intellectual
property law, we would have much fewer books
and inventions would be kept secret. Who knows
now how to make a strad? The deal is that, in return
for a temporary monopoly, IPR must be published
and eventually made free.
So the question is whether the Royal Society should
be encouraged to undertake the laborious task of
scanning their precious books by giving them a
temporary monopoly on the results of their work.
The legal question is whether the scans have any
creative input. In the earlier case of maps, where
different pages must be aligned and scales brought
up to date, the answer is clearly "yes". In the case of
a simple photocopy, I'd say the answer was "no". If
the Royal Society has cleaned up the images, I'd
say they do have copyright.
I'd suggest the best course of action is to appeal
their their ideals as:
Registered Charity No 207043
The Royal Society - excellence in science
and find out:
(a) how much they spent on the scanning
(b) whether they could change their policy
to release them as free.