[1] From: "Espen S. Ore" <Espen.Ore@hd.uib.no> (17)
Subject: Re: 11.0422 copyright expiry?
[2] From: Margaret Lantry <mlantry@imbolc.ucc.ie> (42)
Subject: Re: 11.0422 copyright expiry?
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Nov 1997 09:18:33 +0100
From: "Espen S. Ore" <Espen.Ore@hd.uib.no>
Subject: Re: 11.0422 copyright expiry?
At 21:50 +0000 26-11-97, Bob Evans wrote:
> How old does a text have to be before it can be posted to the WWW?
>In other words, at what point does copyright no longer apply? It looks as
>if texts from the ninteenth century and before are exempt (at least from
>the number of them posted), but are texts from the early years of this
>century also now exempt?
(All the necessary caveats, I don't even play a lawyer on TV, but I work
with digital resources.)
In principle this varies from country to country, but the different
countries are to a certain degree standardizing.
Not all texts are protected by copyright, they have to be the result of a
certain level of intellectual work - but this limitation usually doesn't
have many practical conseqences (you could probably reprint the text on a
modern bus ticket withoutv getting sued).
In Norway the copyright now extends for 70 years after the death of the
author, and I think the same applies in most other Western European
countries.
espen
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 27 Nov 1997 11:24:04 +0000 (GMT)
From: Margaret Lantry <mlantry@imbolc.ucc.ie>
Subject: Re: 11.0422 copyright expiry?
>
> How old does a text have to be before it can be posted to the WWW?
> In other words, at what point does copyright no longer apply? It looks as
> if texts from the ninteenth century and before are exempt (at least from
> the number of them posted), but are texts from the early years of this
> century also now exempt?
> Thanks for any advice.
>
Depending on which country you are in, it differs. (But then again, the
people accessing your text may be living under a different legal system ...)
Under EU law (see Council Directive 93/98/EEC of 29 October 1993
harmonizing the term protection of copyright and certain related rights,
Official Journal of the European Communities L290/9 (24/11/93)), the
basic term of copyright is author's life + 70 years.
If there are multiple authors, then term is last surviving author + 70 years.
See also Intellectual Property by W.R. Cornish (London: Sweet & Maxwell
1996) for explanation of copyright.
The Council Directive is fairly straightforward. However, there is one
point that I would like clarified and which is not discussed in any of
the legal textbooks I've seen. This is to do with Article 5 dealing with
Critical and Scientific publications. The term for these is 30 years
after the publication has been published. I can find nowhere a definition
of a critical publication. In discussions of author's life + 70 years,
edited works are discussed so I guess they come under that particular term.
But what is a critical work: can anyone help here?
Also does the EU directive make laws to do with copyright in member
states redundant? I would have thought so but reading a legal article
(which in Ireland's case refers to the 1963 and 1987 Copyright Acts) has
made me think again. Anyone know about this?
As for database copyright, there is also an EU Directive (Directive
96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on
the legal protection of databases, Official Journal of the European
Communities L77/20 (27/3/96). This doesn't come into effect until 1/1/98.
Again I don't know how sweeping this is.
Margaret
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Managing Editor +353-21-902736
Corpus of Electronic Texts http://www.ucc.ie/celt/
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