Book People Archive

Re: Abandonment

Eric Eldred wrote:
> The U.S. Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 does have a provision
> allowing libraries to copy works, in the last year of copyright term,
> if the work has no commercial value.  Check the law for details;
> the provision is complicated, perhaps self-contradictory.

It's the last 20 years, actually.  As of 2001, this would cover
works copyrighted in 1923, 1924, or 1925, all of which have less than
20 years remaining in their newly extended copyright term.  I describe
this provision briefly at

  http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/okbooks.html#exempt

And actually, I have been listing some books from this time period
on The On-Line Books Page.  I haven't kept close track of which ones
in my listings fall into this category, but if a qualifying US site
has a work on-line from 1923-1925, the work appears to be getting
no regular commercial use at this point (i.e. it's long out of print,
not readily available from used bookdealers at prices comparable
to an in-print book, and no derivative works seem to be sold), and
no notice from the copyright holder has been filed with the Copyright
Office, I've been considering the work to be listable.

The copyright act doesn't seem to
give a legal definition of library or archive, so I've generally
assumed that any nonprofit site that can reasonably be treated as
an archive qualifies.  (In my opinion, this would include Eldritch
Press, for instance.)

As far as I know, there isn't yet case law that explicitly tests
my interpretation of this Bono provision (which may be more liberal
than other people's).  But I think the risks involved are fairly
low, since any rightsholder who *doesn't* want their works to go on-line
under this provision simply has to file a notice of commercial
exploitation with the Copyright Office, and thereby immediately require
any on-line copies to come down. Since the works in question haven't
been marketed for years, I don't think there's much chance of any
significant damages being claimable for the work being on-line *before*
such a notice was filed.  

Michael Hart adds:

> Of course, this wasn't even slightly true before the WIPO types
> started rewriting copyright laws after the Internet got started.
> Before that, if you failed to renew your copyright, it WAS legal
> abandonment, and it was legally in the public domain. . . 

In effect, that's what it was, yes.  Renewal requirements were
very useful for reclaiming "abandoned" works before too much time passed;
unfortunately, US law, and international copyright treaties, have
moved towards abolishing renewal requirements.  But there still
are a lot of copyrights from 1923-1963 that have expired due to
nonrenewal.  (A Library of Congress study in the 1960s estimated
that about 85% of registered copyrights had not been renewed, though
the figures varied significantly for different types of works.)
So this time period can be another useful source of public domain works.

The Library of Congress has recent copyright registration and renewal
records on-line.  Some of us are working on getting
the older renewal records on-line, so that people can more easily
find works that have fallen in the public domain due to nonrenewal.
See

   http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/cce/
             
for what's available so far.  (Note that some images from 1950
may be temporarily unavailable for the next few days,
due to a recent reclamation of a personal workstation I'd unwisely assumed
would stay on-line after I left CMU.  I'm slowly restoring these
images now from backups kept by Philip Harper-- many thanks to him!)
If anyone's interested in scanning more images, making transcriptions,
or providing storage for these records, I'd be very interested in
hearing from you.

Thanks,

  John