Re: copyright in the digitized object?

On Tue, 29 Feb 2000, Roland J. Cole <cole[_at_]spi.org> wrote:
>
> We at SPI do thousands of pages of OCR on public domain documents.
> We know all the careful and sometimes very creative work that goes
> into choosing how to OCR, what to OCR, how to represent in text what
> was a picture, etc. I have no question that you have a copyright in
> the electronic version as a derivative work. Of course they could
> get the words from someone else, but your protection stems from the
> selection, arrangement, and presentation of those words. The
> counter-argument is a Feist style one -- that no matter how hard
> you worked, your selection and arrangement was as trivial as pure
> alphabetical order. I know in our cases that we consider we have
> done far more than that, and I assume you have as well.

I don't believe that this is entirely correct. The public domain words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, sections, chapters, texts, and volumes in any medium and form always remain public domain and cannot be re-copyrighted by anyone. If I see the public domain text of any size in your web page, nothing is going to stop me from copying the public domain text (except by the restrictive licenses as slyly crafted by selfish and possessive people). What I cannot copy is the exact or substantially similar selection and arrangement as yours (unless the selection is wholesale and the arrangement is in the alphabetical, numerical, chronological, or random/meaningless order).

After a new work is put through a sieve to take out the public domain and noncopyrightable expressions, the creator can claim copyright only in the remnants, not the whole work.

> Yes, I think the publisher should have asked, and perhaps offered
> some payment for your efforts in producing something that will
> save him countless hours and dollars.

The publisher should not have asked for permission. But, as a courtesy, the publisher should write a thank-you card or letter with a gift from profit, if any, as generated from the sale of the books.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com>

Number of days left until 1-1-2019 when all knowledge of 1923 in the land of the U.S.A. will be freed from their copyright owners' prisons: 6,879. Received on Wed Mar 01 2000 - 18:09:39 GMT