Re: OT: Can a book published in 1908 still be under copyright?

Tristan Alexander McLeay skrev:
> On 17/07/06, Chris Peters <beta_leonis@...> wrote, quoting Benct:
>
>> >Can a book published in 1908 still be under copyright, or
>> >more precisely, can those who have made a recent reprint
>> >claim copyright, except for any material they may have added?
>> >FYI the author died in  1939, so by my calculations copyright
>> >should have expired in 1990.
>
>
> Given the author died in 1939 and most major jurisdictions now have
> 70-years-after-death copyright terms, I think it's safe to say that
> actually the work is *still* under copyright. If Benct lives in one
> that retains 50-year copyrights, then he may be lucky (tho as Sweden's
> in the EU, I think that means that they have to eventually enact
> 70-year terms, so the work could be recopyrighted). If it was
> published (only/first?) in America, that's a different matter; its
> copyright will have expired long ago.
Yes, I found that Sweden now has a 70-year limit, but the
book was published in Boston (I know there is at least one
Boston in the U.K., but I think that's irrelevant here...)
The question is which country's law applies: the country
where the work was published, the country where reproduction
is made/stored, or both.  As it happens the servers where
my 'reproduction'(1) is going to be stored are located in
the US.

> As for the relationship between recent reprints and the original, I'm
> pretty sure the typesetting/formatting will still have copyright, so
I didn't think of the typesetting/formatting aspect, but it
is not relevant here, since those things will change.

BTW how do things stand when the whole work in question
actually is a compilation of citations from earlier
works, which themselves are actually citations from
ancient sources?  It is a scholarly work, but hardly
original research, but a textbook citing various
articles, monographies, text editions, grammars etc.,
most of which was 'common knowledge' at least among
scholars even then, since as in most textbooks care
is taken not to be controversial.

(1) actually very extensive quoting, since it is a scholarly
work, but it's style and mode of presentation are somewhat
outdated, especially for online presentation.  Thus I'm also
not going to scan/OCR, except for some portions (paradigms
and lists of affixes).

--


/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

    a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot

                                 (Max Weinreich)

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