Greg Bear, Others Cry Foul on Project Gutenberg Copyright Call 721
Nova Express writes "Recently a lot of science fiction stories from the 1950s and 60s (including work from still-living authors like Frederik Pohl and Jack Vance) have been showing up on Project Gutenberg as being in the public domain. However, according to science fiction writer Greg Bear and his wife Astrid Anderson Bear (daughter of Poul Anderson, some of whose works were among those put up), Project Gutenberg has made a mistake: 'After conducting legal research on the LEXIS database of legal cases, decisions, and precedents, we have demonstrated conclusively that PG was making incorrect determinations regarding public domain status in many, many works that originally appeared in magazine form ... In general, Project Gutenberg is doing a tremendous service by making available texts that have truly long since fallen out of copyright, but they are clearly overstepping their original mandate. They are not merely exploiting orphan works, but practicing a wholesale kidnapping of works that are under copyright protection.'"
Re:These works were written between 40 - 60 years (Score:4, Informative)
Particularly music is lost to the world. It is not as if one has an alternative and can go and buy the music or the novel. Try finding Jazz from the dawn of the twentieth century. If you are lucky enough to find it at all it is likely a crudely put up version that is almost useless. And I'm talking about scores not finished music.
Re:originally appeared in magazine form (Score:3, Informative)
Right now, copyright is 70 years past the author's death [wikipedia.org], but before the 70s there was renewal. If the work was published before 1964 and not renewed, it's PD. When exactly something becomes copyrighted can be a tricky concept, as publication has increasingly come to mean "made permanent."
Server location (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That long ago? (Score:3, Informative)
Copyright extends to the life of the author +70 years (assuming there was proper renewal etc.). Even if the authors immediately dropped dead after writing these stories they haven't entered the public domain yet.
tempest in a teacup (Score:4, Informative)
http://cand.pglaf.org/bear-response.txt
"The error occurred because we did not know that Brainwave was a
complete publication of the serial parts of The Escape. We did know
from the publication of The Escape in 1953 that it was the first part
of a serialization, but did not know that Brainwave, from 1954, was
the title of the complete serialization."
Re:That long ago? (Score:5, Informative)
United States Copyright extends to the life of the author +70 years (assuming there was proper renewal etc.). Even if the authors immediately dropped dead after writing these stories they haven't entered the public domain yet.
There, fixed that for you.
It's only life+50 years for member countries operating under the Berne Convention, although some works-for-hire have 120 years from creation or 95 years from publication.
Re:Server location (Score:5, Informative)
Since the works in question were first published in the US, by American citizens, the US terms would still apply even if the servers were in New Zealand or Australia. Those countries have copyright agreements with the USA.
Works published jointly in more than one country (jointly usually means within 30 days) usually get the "shortest term" of any of the countries involved, but that's only for works published in multiple counties. Works published (even on the Web) without the permission of the copyright owner do not get a reduced copyright.
In practice, you can often get away with republishing woks because it's too expensive to take legal action, and because you get into an area of law called Conflict of Laws, which is one of the hardest and most expensive areas of law. However, simply moving the servers to another Berne Convention country wouldn't actually help PG very much.
In the past, the US has not tended to honour the copyright agreeents of other counties, but of late that has been changing.
Canada (where I live) also has life + 50 years instead of life + 70 years; it's not actuallyhalf of the US term, though. If you publish a work when you're 20 and you live to be 100, the work gets (100 -20 + 70) = 150 years of protection in the US, and 130 years in Canada.
Personally (and I'm speakingas a published author here too) I'd like a return to 20 or 30 years after publication, with no renewals, But Im not a film or music distribution company, of course!
Re:originally appeared in magazine form (Score:5, Informative)
Correct. For works written before January 1, 1978, copyright extends for an initial term of 28 years and can be renewed for another 67 years. Copyrights that have not been renewed for all works published January 1, 1978 would be public domain. Furthermore, works published before January 1, 1978 had to registered for copyright protection status to be effective; this is not true for works written after January 1, 1978.
What is special about magazines is that many magazines did not register their copyrights for individual articles.
Re:That long ago? (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, the Berne Convention states that all works except photographic and cinematographic shall be copyrighted for at least 50 years after the author's death, but parties are free to provide longer terms
So 50 years is the minimum; US law goes above and beyond that to 70 years to "protect the poor families" of the deceased artist
Re:What a bunch of whiners (Score:5, Informative)
Except Project Gutenberg have retracted and admitted their mistake. But do go on, let's not bring facts into this.
Re:Help me out with this, please... (Score:5, Informative)
I think the point is that when you're talking about half century-old, out-of-print works, PGs approach *should* be the expected one. Luckily for PG, Google has already blazed this trail for them. If you recall, Google's settlement with the publishers is actually pretty similar to what PG is doing -- out-of-print works are made available unless someone objects. Google has placed some limitations which PG has not, but the concept is very similar.
Re:That long ago? (Score:2, Informative)
No. Copyright is not a "right" in the sense that freedom of speech is a right, or the right of self-defense; it is an arbitrary creation of government.
Re:What a bunch of whiners (Score:4, Informative)
No, actually Greg Newby of Project Gutenberg sent Greg Bear a letter acknowledging that they had made a mistake and took the book down.
http://cand.pglaf.org/bear-response.txt [pglaf.org]
My apologies for my long delay in responding. As promised in
September, I discussed the situation with one of Project Gutenberg's
copyright lawyers. This particular lawyer had previously been very
helpful in preparing and then providing legal advice and feedback on
our procedures for determining non-renewal status.
Our lawyer advised that our non-renewal determination for The Escape
was in error. Therefore, on October 1, I removed The Escape from the
Project Gutenberg collections and catalog and announced its removal
to our mailing list.
On behalf of Project Gutenberg, I apologize for the error.
Not on Brainwave - the copyright lapsed (Score:2, Informative)
For Brainwave (the novel from TFA) the original copyright was filed on 5/19/1954 and the renewal was filed on 12/16/1982, which is after the 28 year window. They were 7 months late in renewing the copyright. That novel is public domain.
Re:The sad state of copyright (Score:4, Informative)
Copyright is supposed to make sure authors get paid for their art for a limited time, to create incentive for them to create MORE art, not to let them live off one piece for life.
From the US Constitution:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Re:That long ago? (Score:5, Informative)
Berne Convention is only applicable to works that fall under the 1976 Copyright Act. Anything from before falls under the 1909 Copyright Act. If you didn't renew, the work became public domain. It's a Wonderful Life was a forgotten flop until someone figured out that it had fallen into the public domain through non-renewal. The UHF channels picked it up and started showing it since they wouldn't need to pay anyone. Now it's a Christmas classic. Go figure.
Re:Server location (Score:1, Informative)
Why don't they host their servers in a country with more reasonable copyright laws? Specifically with regard to copyright duration. Australia and New Zealand have much more reasonable copyright durations than the US. IIRC 50 years instead of almost double that.
There's a Project Gutenberg hosted in Canada, with Canadian copyright laws: http://www.gutenberg.ca/
And one hosted in Serbia, under EU copyright laws: http://pge.rastko.net
Re:That long ago? (Score:3, Informative)
Privilege, you mean. This is a very important mental distinction. Copyright is a government-granted temporary privilege, not a natural right. It's not life, liberty, and all that jazz. Where it should concern American law, it exists for a very specific purpose:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. -- Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution
With extension after extension, the "limited times" part is dead. Pretty much nothing ever falls into public domain anymore. Progress ceased to happen but to the wealthiest corporations; the People do not benefit. Copyright has become pure rent seeking, its sole purpose unfulfilled.
Therefore... fuck that shit. Stuff written half a century ago ought to be in public domain. If it wasn't for those insane extensions, it would be.
Re:tempest in a teacup (Score:3, Informative)
Mr Bear's Bibliography [wikipedia.org].
Non-plussed - A state of perplexity, confusion, or bewilderment.
Comments from PG (Score:5, Informative)
The Anderson/Bear folks posted this a couple of places, and it was picked up a few other places. Here is the text of the most recent substantial message I sent them on the topic: http://cand.pglaf.org/bear-response.txt [pglaf.org] . The group has not provided the author/title (or PG eBook number) of any title they think was wrongly determined to be non-renewed, other than those mentioned in the email. They seem to have some theories about what is eligible for renewal, or who can renew, but these are not contested by Project Gutenberg (in fact, our policy is to NOT to question whether renewals were fully compliant with the law, nor whether a person had the correct standing to renew).
The issue is whether a renewal was made. For The Escape, part 1 was republished with a different title, complete with part 2. Part 1 was not individually renewed, but the newly titled complete work was. We were unaware of the subsequent retitled republication, so did not find the renewal. For the purposes of copyright and renewal, a major outcome of the legal advice we received concerning The Escape is that serialized works are treated as single acts of authorship. Thus, renewal of a part may be considered to apply to the whole -- provided it happens within a reasonable timespan (we have been advised to use +/- four years).
The Project Gutenberg Copyright How-To has details on our procedures, although the Rule 6 how-to there (for non-renewals) is older than the version we used for the original Anderson/Escape non-renewal determination. We are working on a revision that will include additional research for serials, and a few other variations like republication with different titles. The how-to is here: www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_How-To
For those who aren't aware, Project Gutenberg is classified in the US as a 501(c)(3) charity, as a library. With over 35,000 published titles, and well over 50,000 unique instances of copyright research (thousands for our Rule 6), it's not surprising that we make occasional errors. To date (I've been doing this aspect of volunteer work for Project Gutenberg since around 1999), we've changed our stance on fewer than 1/2 dozen public domain determinations. Not perfect, but I believe we're doing a good job overall, and have some very solid procedures by copyright experts over the years.
I first initiated our Rule 6 nearly 10 years ago. This was because I saw that of all the books and serials published in the US from 1923-1963 (when renewal was required for copyright to still apply), 85--90% were never renewed. The US Library of Congress does annual reports on this. Statistically, that means there a million or so items from 1923-1964 whose copyright expired after a 28-year term. These items have been in the public domain in the US since 1992 or earlier (1964+28), and many are out of print. As a policy decision, Project Gutenberg decided it was worth the risk of occasionally missing a renewal, to be able to affirmatively identify the many items for which no renewal occurred. I still believe this decision was the right one.
For those who are paying attention to Project Gutenberg news today, there was a story in the Washington Post that, more or less, accused Amazon of abusing their customers by selling public domain Project Gutenberg works, with DRM added, for a fee. The article is here: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/11/amazon_charges_kindle_users_fo.html [washingtonpost.com] . (I exchanged several emails with the author.) It's a weird coincidence that within the same 24 hour period there is another story that basically accuses Project Gutenberg of stealing.
Enough for now. I'm going back to reading Marusek's "Mind over Ship" (sequel to the excellent "Counting Heads"), one of the hundreds of printed books I purchase every year. Maybe before I shut down for the evening I'll post Doctorow's "Makers"
Re:That long ago? (Score:4, Informative)