Cross-posted from the MEDTEXTL (medieval texts) list, with permission.
The inquirer is not a member of cni-copyright, so any replies should
be sent directly to els010[_at_]bangor.ac.uk as well, perhaps, as to the
list. UK law is the most directly relevant.
Paul Schaffner | pfs@umich.edu |
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pfs/
- message forwarded by Paul F. Schaffner <pfs[_at_]umich.edu> ----------
>
> From: P.J.C.Field <els010[_at_]bangor.ac.uk>
> To: MEDTEXTL[_at_]POSTOFFICE.CSO.UIUC.EDU
> Subject: Copyright in early texts
>
> On Tue, 22 Feb 2000, Murray McGillivray wrote, of Cotton Nero A.x:
> >
> > We are presuming the Gollancz facsimile images to be out of
> > copyright for this kind of partial Web publication.
>
> Copyright can affect any scholarly editor, and I'd like to appeal to
> the list for advice on one aspect of it. I recognise of course that
> the law may differ from country to country.
>
> One of my pupils is putting together what I think will be an
> important book with some imaginative argument built on visual
> images from early text, both print and manuscript. She makes some
> points using small images of whole pages, alone or juxtaposed,
> others from mixes of close-up images of parts of pages. These
> images are much more vivid and authoritative, and usually much
> more compact than verbal description could be. For what it's
> worth, she uses very few whole pages at anything like readable
> magnification.
>
> The legal situation may be complicated by the fact that most
> of her images are taken from published facsimile editions of the
> texts in question. I presume the situation would be the same in
> law for someone who used microfilm or fiche.
>
> My pupil was advised by a senior literary professor (who, like
> me, is not a lawyer) that she should ask permission of the owners
> of the original texts and of the publishers of the facsimiles to
> use their texts, and being a well-brought-up young woman, was
> inclined to do so. I have advised her not to do so, on the grounds
> that there will be no copyright in these texts, but that the owners
> and publishers may say that there is, and demand money from her.
>
> Lest this seem overimaginative, I will mention a friend who
> some years ago misguidedly asked a major and long-established
> British academic publisher for retrospective permission to use
> their big multi-volume complete works of a second-rank
> sixteenth-century poet as the basis of a small edition of a
> selection of the man's poems. In that case, she had used the
> big edition as a body of evidence -- not her only evidence, --
> from which she drew conclusions that sometimes produced words,
> spelling, and punctuation identical with those in the big edition
> and sometimes produced different ones. She did not reproduce any
> of their pages, or any of their editor's wording. She thought
> her request was a mere matter of courtesy, and was surprised
> when the publisher demanded a fee for their permission. She felt
> her request had conceded that they had the right to refuse
> permission, which would prevent her from publishing, which would
> be professional death (you all know that scenario). I conclude
> from this that publishers can be ignorant or dishonest and in
> either case ruthless about copyright law. I don't want this
> later potential victim to suffer from those things.
>
> My understanding of U.K. copyright law is that there is no
> copyright in any work published before the first copyright law
> was enacted in the early eighteenth century, and no copyright
> in any work by an author who has been dead for more than fifty
> years. Since, before printing established itself as the regular
> way to disseminate texts, producing a work in manuscript WAS
> publication, that should mean that on both these grounds, there
> is no copyright in the wording of any mediaeval text.
>
> British law, however, under the prompting of publishers, has
> in recent years evolved a second form of copyright: copyright
> in layout. I believe that was intended to prevent (say) schools
> from buying one copy of _Hamlet_ and photocopying ten years
> supply for classes on the grounds that all the words had appeared
> in print before. (Most people would probably think that putting
> an end to that sort of mass photocopying was fair, but the issue
> here is not fairness but law.) Copyright in layout, however,
> presumably depends on a new layout having been created: the new
> edition of _Hamlet_ has a different fount or page numbers in a
> different place or something. A facsimile edition is meant to
> have as little new layout as possible: that's the point. So, if
> this new kind of copyright in layout were retrospective to an
> extent that overrode the two limiting factors I've mentioned, the
> Scolar Press's photographic facsimile of the Caxton _Morte Darthur_
> will not have created a new copyright, because it reproduces
> Caxton's layout exactly. If there were any copyright in Caxton's
> layout, it would belong to the heirs of William Caxton. The
> Scolar Press might in fact be vulnerable to a lawsuit from
> Caxton's heirs, if they could be discovered.
>
> Perhaps I should say that there is no question of my pupil
> having signed any contract with the owners of the texts in
> question agreeing to ask permission or make payment or anything
> else in return for access to these texts. That I take to be a
> wholly different situation in law.
>
> Perhaps I should also add, in the interests of fairness rather
> than law, that in my opinion, insofar as the book in question has
> any effect on the sales of the facsimiles that provided its
> illustrations, it will tend to increase rather than decrease them.
>
> P.J.C. Field
> University of Wales
> Bangor
> Gwynedd LL57 2DG
> Great Britain
> <els010[_at_]bangor.ac.uk>
Received on Fri Feb 25 2000 - 15:33:37 GMT