Are new editions of public domain works with minor edits copyrighted? Let's say I want to copy/use a book published 200 years ago. It's definitely in the public domain. Someone publishes a new version of the book (the original copyright holder, if that matters). The new edition is exactly the same but with some grammatical corrections. Can I use a copy of this new edition - or do the grammatical changes and updates make it a new copyrighted work? I know if I could obtain a copy of the old version it would be in the public domain.
The creator of the derivative work has copyright in the derivative work. The copyright would protect only the new elements of the derivative work. Wikipedia is a good place to start. In the case of a book with updated grammar, depending on the extent of the changes, it would probably be easier to copy the original directly than to eliminate the updates from a copy of the derivative work.
If the author died in 1946 then copyright in his works expired at the end of 2016. The work is in the public domain. The relevant section of the Copyright Designs &amp; Patents Act 1988 extends to the whole of the United Kingdom, but not Crown Dependencies or colonies. You need to be sure that the work is the author's own work. If someone else has contributed then the copyright endures until it expires 70 years after the death of the last of the authors. The same applies to art. If you want to reproduce artwork, say for a cover/sleeve design, that would also have the artist's copyright, which lasts for 70 years after that person's death. The typography of a book has copyright which lasts for 25 years from publication.
This would be considered a derivative work, which is not peritted without permission. Copyright duration varies by country but is at least the lifetime of the author plus 50 years. In France, it is 70 so Giraud's work becomes public domain in 2082. The second piece is public domain and therefore fine.
No It says right on the page you linked: These downloads are not public domain, as they are parts of content that has already been licensed and distributed. Although using these downloads may be permissible as long as the project itself falls under the rule of "Fair Use," it is ill-advised to use these downloads for any project intended for profitable gain or commercial advertisement, unless otherwise stated by Kyutwo.com.
Stack Exchange questions are not public domain, they are protected by copyright. Authors have granted a license under Subscriber Content, specifically content is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Overflow on a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive basis pursuant to Creative Commons licensing terms (CC BY-SA 4.0) As long as you comply with the terms of the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, you may copy user content.
Beethoven's Piano Sonata is public domain There will be copyright in the performance but as you are specifically hiring the musician to perform the piece for you to record, you would own the copyright in that as a work for hire provided this is stated in the contract.
Yes. This is infringement. This infringement might be excused by a &quot;fair use&quot; defense but it probably isn't. At a very small scale tailor to a very specific educational program, for example, for just members of a thirty person English class that they are currently taking, it might qualify as educational fair use. But I get the impression that the contemplated translation project is far more ambitious than that. The underlying content of the events reported in the news are not protected by copyright, but the language used to report those events and any translations of that language, is protected. The only reliable way to solve it is to get permission to do so from the holder of the copyright of the source of the new reports you are translating.
US copyright law does not distinguish &quot;personal use&quot; from &quot;non-personal use&quot;, though it does distinguish commercial from non-commercial, where stronger sanctions can arise from commercial infringement – which can include &quot;private financial gain&quot;. Copying a whole book which you own is copying which is what define infringement, and because of the extent of copying, it is unlikely to be found to be fair use. There is a special provision for software in 17 USC 117 that allows for making backup copies, which is not applicable to physical books. You are not a statutory archive, which is another escape hatch.