Re: Copyright of previous public domain

[Pete Goldie <pg@lbin.com>]

As the publisher and copyright holder intellectual content containing
public domain material, specifically, The Darwin Multimedia CD-ROM 2nd
Edition, I would like to weigh in on this issue.  While almost all of the
core text used in the particular title is public domain, we incur
substantial costs with re-keying from hardcopy, proofreading, comparing
against various editions.  The core ASCII text is then code tagged to
SGML/XML, which, as metadata, constitutes the addition of considerable
unique value (and cost).  Once the SGML/XML code is in place, editorial
hypertext, hyperlinks between relevant passages, supplemental
illustrations, footnotes and links to associated external references are
added.  Finally, commentary is added by distinguished scholars.  Thus,
this CD-ROM title which contains the unaltered words of Charles Darwin is
protected by our copyright.  The opinion that electronic public domain
material merely had a "format" change can be inaccurate and misleading.

Pete Goldie, Ph.D.
Lightbinders
San Francisco
www.lbin.com


At 05:40 AM 8/23/2002 -0400, Lesley Ellen Harris wrote:
>There is no copyright in the format or layout of a work in the US or
>Canada -- I think this right exists in the UK copyright law.
>
>It's hard to know what the vendor is thinking and whether or not he does in
>fact have a right to claim at all, but aren't the same documents available
>from a government Web site?
>
>
>Lesley Ellen Harris, Barrisster & Solicitor
>Editor, The Copyright & New Media Law Newsletter
>libraries@copyrightlaws.com
>T: 202.255.2522
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Shirley Lambert <SLambert@scarecrowpress.com>
>To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
>Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 6:57 AM
>Subject: Re: Copyright of previous public domain
>
> > I think the issue here might be the copyright on the format of the
> > material rather than on the content itself. The vendor has spent the money
> > to digitize and presumably index the material, and the argument can be
> > made that such effort is protected.
> >
> > --
> > Shirley Lambert
> > Scarecrow Press