David Chan wrote:
> "Reproductions of material from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special
> Collections Library may be made only for use in the research, teaching, or
> private study of the recipient of the reproduction. They may not be made
> for or donated to other repositories by the recipient. They may not be
> further reproduced without permission."
>
> Obviously this clause makes the scans non-free. I don't know if they
> can enforce it for the public domain material which Mutopia would use.
> Copyright law wouldn't help them but maybe they could do us for trespass
> for accessing the material without agreeing to the licence, or something.
> Obviously if there's any shadow of a legal doubt then Mutopia must steer
> clear; we can't afford any legal challenges which aren't summarily
> dismissed.
>
> Can the FSF comment on the legality of such licence clauses for public
> domain material?
If they have made changes to the work that are not under "fair use", then
they can place a copyright of their own on the work. For example, If I took
a Mark Twain novel for which copyright has expired and has reverted to the
public domain, and modified it in non-trivial ways, I could copyright anew
under my own name.
If they have done this, then they can indeed make that non-free license. If
they haven't, then the license may be invalid.
Please let me know if you have additional questions. However, any more
detail on this information would probably have to go to our lawyer.
--
Bradley M. Kuhn, Assistant to Richard Stallman
Free Software Foundation | Phone: +1-617-542-5942
59 Temple Place, Suite 330 | Fax: +1-617-542-2652
Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA | Web: http://www.gnu.org
