It's pretty clear that minor alterations to scanned material do not constitute a derivative work and do not transfer ownership of the text away from the public to the scanner.
Further, if someone believes they have created a new work of authorship, shouldn't they at least change the name of the text? Say Joe Smoe scans a commentary, then edits it so much that it qualifies for copyright -- shouldn't it now be "Shmoe's Commentary?" Monday, January 6, 2003, 5:50:14 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On Mon, 6 Jan 2003, Keith Ralston wrote: >> > Both of these guys seem to think they get a copyright for being first to >> > put these PD works into electronic form. >> >> I'm not sure, but I believe this works like translations of pd works. The >> _translation_ is copyrightable. Of course, you have to include the >> copyright notice in your work. > Copyright is granted for creative works (for the purpose of encouraging > the production of additional creative works). > Translations are copyrighted because they are creative works, requiring > lots of right-hemispheric cognitive work. > Electronic editions of PD works are still PD. Changing the format like > this does not require creativity, just good OCR or untiring fingers. > Adding markup is likewise not creative if it approximates that of the > original. Essentially the only way to make a PD work copyrightable by > making an electronic edition is to make changes to it that are creative > (i.e. to make a bad copy). In that situation, only the additions are > copyrighted and the underlying text remains PD (and may be retrieved by > rolling back alterations). > This is similar to works in a collection. If you collect a bunch of PD > texts and put them in a collection (in print, on CD, or whatever) you do > get a copyright for the collection--after all it took some creativity to > decide which texts should be included and how to order them. However, the > texts themselves remain PD. > For more info from the source, I would recommend reading through the US > Copyright Office circular 14, regarding derivative works, which is > available online at http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf . > --Chris - Brandon Staggs ___ Composed for [EMAIL PROTECTED] at 8:20:08 PM on Monday, January 06, 2003
