[Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

Tue Oct 17 18:11:30 UTC 2006

On 17/10/06, Roger Luethi <collector at hellgate.ch> wrote:

> > ... or at least that's our position and we're sticking to it; theirs is
> > that they're the copyright holders, and, well, they're sticking to it too.
>
> I don't think that is their official position, because the idea that works
> written hundreds of years ago are still under copyright is entirely and
> obviously without merit (not counting special cases like Crown copyright).

Minor general quibble: retaining copyright on material published
hundreds of years ago is certainly likely to be legally dubious (the
oldest somewhat-legally-defensible claim I can think of is stuff
published ~150 years ago, and even then IIRC they lost). Material
*written* hundreds of years ago and not published, however - if a
collection of Elizabethan letters found in a country house, as
occasionally happens, are transcribed and printed, the
publisher/editor gets a copyright of twenty years or so in most
jurisdictions

(This is to encourage publishing new things, and is probably the
closest thing in existence to the original concept...)

It may be ethically dubious, but it's legally fine, and it's worth
always remembering the distinction between dates of publication and
dates of creation.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk