Hi All,
I'm wondering if anyone on the list can help me figure out some issues having to do with the copyright dates that apply to publications in the EU. Let's say that I've found an edition of a medieval text published in an EU member country in 1973, the author is alive, and I want to publish it on my website. How do I figure out if this is under copyright protection or in the public domain?
Referring to the 1993 EU copyright law (http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexapi!prod!CELEXnumdoc...) the critical points are:
Article 5
Critical and scientific publications
Member States may protect critical and scientific publications of works which have come into the public domain. The maximum term of protection of such rights shall be 30 years from the time when the publication was first lawfully published.
If this is the law, then any edition published before 1975 (even if the author is alive) is fair game.
However, Article 1, point 1 says this:
1. The rights of an author of a literary or artistic work within the meaning of Article 2 of the Berne Convention shall run for the life of the author and for 70 years after his death, irrespective of the date when the work is lawfully made available to the public.
(The Berne Convention defines literary or artistic work as "every production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain, whatever may be the mode or form of its expression" - which is pretty broad ( http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/2.html). Translations, adaptations, and arrangements count, as do encyclopedias & anthologies.)
So how do I decide if the edition in my hand falls under Article 1 or Article 5? Is it pretty straightforward (any edition of a public domain text falls under Article 5), or is there some ambiguity? I fear the question comes down to, exactly how much do you have to do to a public domain text (Article 5) before it becomes a new original text (Article 1)? What about critical apparatus? Editorial introductions? Is it possible for different parts of the same book to fall under different copyright protections (the edited text vs. the apparatus and introductions)?
Thanks, Dot
-- *************************************** Dot Porter, Program Coordinator Collaboratory for Research in Computing for Humanities University of Kentucky 351 William T. Young Library Lexington, KY 40506
dporter@uky.edu 859-257-9549 ***************************************