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From: dgary@ecsvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sources
Subject: Re: copyright notice
Message-ID: <1114@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-Jan-86 15:29:31 EST
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.1114
Posted: Thu Jan 23 15:29:31 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Jan-86 08:28:08 EST
References: <5600@cca.UUCP> <> <5738@cca.UUCP>
Reply-To: dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady)
Distribution: net
Organization: Duke U Comp Ctr
Lines: 31
Summary: Copyrighting public domain works?  Nonsense!

In article <5738@cca.UUCP> dee@cca.UUCP (Donald Eastlake) writes:
>Do you think that the copyright notices in books of quoatations
>are invalid because these books are assemblages of public domain
>utterances?

What's under copyright there is the compilation.  You're quite free to
quote the individual quotations from (say) The Great Thoughts without
permission, but if you republish the whole book, or use it as the basis
of another collection of quotations, you're violating copyright.

>But, you object, what about single works that are not compilations?
>Well, why do publishers normally put current copyright notices into
>photographic reprints of old books whose copyrights have expired?

A reprint of a copyright work contains a copyright notice for several
reasons: (1) to protect new matter, such as notes or an introduction,
(2) to protect the right to a photograph of a specific edition's pages
(the case you cite), and (3) it doesn't hurt, so why not?

>...  if I took public domain software, added a copyright notice TO
>THE COPIES I DISTRIBUTED the law would uphold my right to restrict
>further copying of those particular copies in return for my work of
>distribution and my "creativity" in picking that particular material to
>distribute.

I rather doubt that, but I suspect it would take a lawsuit to decide.
-- 
D Gary Grady
Duke U Comp Center, Durham, NC  27706
(919) 684-3695
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