[Taxacom] On Copyright

[Richard Zander]

I here forward a message from David Patterson on copyright.

-------
Richard H. Zander
Missouri Botanical Garden – 4344 Shaw Blvd. – St. Louis – Missouri – 63110 – USA
richard.zander at mobot.org<mailto:richard.zander at mobot.org>
Web sites: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm and http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/

From: David Patterson [mailto:patterson.david.joseph at gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2018 4:35 PM
To: Richard Zander
Cc: taxacom
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Copyright

Richard

Could I ask that you forward this to Taxacom. It comes from Willi Egloff. He is a copyright lawyer who has addressed issues of copyright as relate to taxonomy -  Egloff, et al. 2014. Open exchange of scientific knowledge and European copyright: The case of biodiversity information. ZooKeys 414:109-135. 10.3897/zookeys.414.7717


The copyright rules are quite clear in one point: Copyright protection in Europe, in the US and in many other countries lasts until 70 years after the death of the author. In some countries, it is limited to 50 years after the death of the author.
A work that was published in 1819 is free and has no copyright protection anymore. Everybody can use it as he or she wants to do it. It is not possible to renew a copyright protection that has run out. The digitisation of a free work can never lead to a new protection. It is therefore not true that there is a IP right in the digitised copy.

What Willi leaves out is that anyone, e.g. Google, can scan an out of copyright work, and can then try to monetize their effort.  They have every right to market the scanned material and to make it available under a license.  But anyone else (e.g. BHL) can digitize the content, and make it openly and freely available, and the e.g. Google will have no recourse.


Perhaps add the comments that bounced

Copyright rules are inconsistent - see  Egloff et al. 2014. Open exchange of scientific knowledge and European copyright: The case of biodiversity information. ZooKeys 414:109-135. 10.3897/zookeys.414.7717

Copyright rules are often misunderstood

Copyright rules are implemented inconsistently

And I doubt if this is truly an issue of copyright.

Willi Egloff is a good copyright lawyer who I have included in the recipients.

https://www.copyright.gov/ has limited application - i.e. it presents the point of view of a single and not all jurisdictions.


Paddy

David J. Patterson

On Sat, May 12, 2018 at 2:35 PM, Richard Zander <Richard.Zander at mobot.org<mailto:Richard.Zander at mobot.org>> wrote:
There is lots of information on copyright at
https://www.copyright.gov/



-------
Richard H. Zander
Missouri Botanical Garden – 4344 Shaw Blvd. – St. Louis – Missouri – 63110 – USA
richard.zander at mobot.org<mailto:richard.zander at mobot.org>
Web sites: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm and http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/


-----Original Message-----
From: Taxacom [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>] On Behalf Of David Campbell
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2018 11:28 AM
Cc: taxacom
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Copyright

I ran across a (not too current) reference to British copyright dating relating to the death of the author rather than the date of the publication; sorting out the vagaries of copyright regulation are a definite challenge.

On Fri, May 11, 2018 at 3:28 AM, Andreas Gminder <andreas at mollisia.de<mailto:andreas at mollisia.de>>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> as far as I know the copyright expells 70 years after the publication
> date, not after the author's death.
>
> best regards,
> Andreas
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- From: Francisco Welter-Schultes
> Sent: Friday, May 11, 2018 1:32 AM
> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto:taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
>
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Copyright
>
> In Germany copyright expells 70 years after the death of the author.
> For a publication from 1819 we should assume that the authors are
> slightly more than 70 years dead...
>
> Note that the 1819 work as such is free. This means only that anyone
> can digitise it. Anyone who digitises a work has the IP rights for the
> digitised copy. They do not need to provide free access to it. If
> Google digitises old works, they seem to check if BHL, archive.org<http://archive.org> or
> anyone provides a free digitised version. If so, then Google offers
> free access. My observation is that if not, Google does not provide
> free access to such old works.
>
> Cheers
> Francisco
>
> -----
> Francisco Welter-Schultes
>