Re: Re: Authors Guild's Paul Aiken Opposes 'Turning Copyright Law Upside Down' -- Except When the Guild Is Helping Publishers Impose a 'License By Default'

On Tue, 4 Oct 2005, Mike Bradley wrote:

> An index is a derivative work (see Circular 14 from the Copyright
> Office, for instance).

Even if Circular 14 had any force of law, I wouldn't read it as saying that an index is a derivative work.

The only place I see where an index is mentioned is in how to fill out the form for registering a copyright in a work that is both a compilation and a derivative work, specifically the example of how to identify the new material in such a work. One example says:

   "Compilation of 19th Century Political Cartoons, new foreword and    index"

So all this really means is that if you have an original compilation with a new forward and new index, this is how you'd fill out the form. I don't see it saying that a new index is itself a derivative work.

I also think it's worth pointing out that, to the extent Circular 14 is discussing what constitutes a "derivative work" it's doing so in a section 102/103 context; not a section 106/501 context, and those two contexts don't always track each other very well. (Nor should they, IMHO.) Received on Thu Oct 06 2005 - 01:35:55 GMT