Copyright expiration and public domain of books I have been looking that many books published with copyright notice like: Copyright © by [abc] publication. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright owner. Now I want to know: How long this copyright last or sustain? Can books used as in public domain after expiration of copyright? Also If a book doesn't have any copyright notice, then can it be used as if it were in the public domain? How do I check whether a book is copyrighted or not in case of no copyright notice? Note: my concern is for scanned versions of books. Excuse my poor knowledge in this area!
The duration of copyright varies according to different laws; however generally copyright lasts for 70 years after the death of the author(s), and you can check if the author died on Wikipedia or on the internet. Once copyright expires, books are considered public domain and you don't need permission to reproduce or copy etc. Books, as well other types of creative works listed at 17 USC §102, are automatically protected by copyright even without a copyright notice. You need the permission of the copyright owner to reproduce or transmit such works. On top of that is generally accepted to make a copy (often referred as backup copy) of a work protected by copyright for you own benefits. That means that if you bought a printed book and you want to read on your e-book reader, you could scan it and store on your device. However you must keep in mind these: It's meant for your personal use; You can't share it You'll be considered responsible if somebody else gets a copy of that book Furthermore in some countries, laws explicitly forbidden to scan the whole book without the permission of the copyright owner. It's worth to ask the publisher for permission to scan it if you want to read on you e-book reader for personal use. Some publishers offers digital copies of their book (either for free or for a very small charge) and you'll get a better copy than what you could scanning the book.
There is something wrong-sounding about that claim. Owning a thing (such as a book) means that you can dispose of it however you want. If it is a physical book, then unless this is a book of top secret classified information, the US government has no control over the item, nor does the copyright holder have any right to prevent you from giving away your copy. Electronic books, however, are another matter, since often you don't buy such books, you buy a license to use the book (like a software license). The license terms of an electronic book could be subject to various controls, and the license might be non-transferable. The underlying logic of this is that under the doctrine of first sale, you are allowed to do whatever you want with intellectual property that you buy, and therefore to restrict re-distribution of electronic IP, software especially is typically not itself sold, and just the permission to use it is. If this is an electronic book, the copyright holder would be able (though not necessarily willing) to permit you to transfer your copy to someone else. Of course you can't give a copy to two people unless you have two licenses.
But while some libraries allow unrestricted use of their Public Domain content, others do not and limit the use of their copies to Non-Commercial use. It is my understanding that NC only applies to the digital copy, not the work itself. Your understanding is correct. An ancient text, or one long out of copyright, does not get new protection by creating an image of the text. At most the image itself is protected, not the underlying text. In the US, and other jurisdictiosn that follow the rule of the 1999 Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp case there is no copyright protection on the image because it has no original content. Some EU courts have indicated that they will be following the logic of bridgeman. To the best of my knowledge no EU decision grants copyright protection to an otherwise out-of-copyright work because of its presence in a digital library or collection. However, if a person gained access to a digital library or collection subject to a TOS agreement which includes &quot;no commercial use&quot; terms and then published a text from it commercially, that person might be subject to a breech of contract or similar suit by the library. Such a suit would need to include proof of damages.
The (journal) publisher's interest is presumably to comply with conditions imposed by the copyright owner: CUP might demand of Elsevier that their reviewers delete electronic copies of books after the review is finished. In keeping and using the work (and perhaps freely distributing that copy), you have violated CUP's copyright (assume that CUP holds the copyright). Therefore you can be sued. Elsevier can also be sued. What is not clear is how many people can sue you (and whether you can sue anyone). It would depend on whether you were informed of the deletion requirement before you agreed to review the work. If you were led to believe either that you would get a paper copy of the work, or at least would be able to retain and use the electronic copy for your own use, the journal publisher does not have the option of rewriting the terms of that agreement after the fact. If you reasonably relied on them granting you permission to keep the work, they can't sue you. You might even be able to sue them, insofar as getting a free copy of an expensive book in exchange of writing a review is a standard academic business deal. On the other hand, if they told you in advance that you'd have to delete the review copy, then that is the end of the discussion. If you didn't read the agreement, that too is the end of the discussion. It is not clear what recourse the rights holder might have against you. You have no contractual relationship with the book publisher, and the journal publisher is not the agent of the book publisher so the book publisher is not bound by the errors of the journal publisher. Because you are expected to know that all IP requires permission of the rights holder to copy and since you know that the journal publisher is not the copyright holder, you are on thin ice in assuming that the copyright holder has granted you permission to copy the work. Indeed, even agreeing to review a work in electronic form is a dubious proposition, without suitable legal assurances that the rights holder has granted permission to make the required copies. If a journal buys a physical copy of a book, it can lend or give it to you to write a review, and no permission is required wrong the book publisher. To review an electronic copy, permission from the book publisher is required. You might try defending yourself against an infringement suit under the fair use doctrine, since the underlying purpose of "fair use" is precisely to allow book reviews. If the journal publisher was negligent in not informing you of the copyright conditions imposed on them (which they are supposed to impose on you), your infringement may be innocent, and you might only have a small liability. You could sue the journal in case the book publisher sues you – the journal publisher has a duty of care to you. Technically speaking, you're in trouble once you download the illegal copy, and technically speaking, you infringe copyright every time you read the work. Digital content is, or should be, distributed under some license (a contract between you and the rights holder), otherwise it is illegal to receive or use the work. Hence various public licenses grant permission to copy, subject to various limitations: the use may not be commercial; the work may not be redistributed; the work may not be altered; the work may not be redistributed in exchange for money, or some something of value... The teeth that digital licensing has is that if you copy and use a work contrary to the terms of the license, you do not have permission (the rights holder has granted conditional permission). Copyright law gives the rights holder the exclusive right to authorize making any copies, and in order to use a computer file, a number of copies are made (by various programs). The basic protection is that "the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords; (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work". Copies are statutorily defined as "material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. The term “copies” includes the material object, other than a phonorecord, in which the work is first fixed." One or more "derivative works" (with no added creative content) are created in getting from a pdf file to a computer screen. In §117, Congress created an exception to general copyright protection, whereby one can make "another copy or adaptation" of a computer program provided Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided: (1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or (2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful. This exception only covers computer programs, and not data files, and as the Copyright Office says You are not permitted under section 117 to make a backup copy of other material on a computer's hard drive, such as other copyrighted works that have been downloaded (e.g., music, films). It is also important to check the terms of sale or license agreement of the original copy of software in case any special conditions have been put in place by the copyright owner that might affect your ability or right under section 117 to make a backup copy. There is no other provision in the Copyright Act that specifically authorizes the making of backup copies of works other than computer programs even if those works are distributed as digital copies. I say that "technically", it is infringement if you open and process a digital file that you do not have permission to copy (via a license), because that is what the law says, and no court case has deemed that Congress intended something entirely different. It is notoriously difficult to establish legislative intent. Since Congress did articulate narrow exceptions in similar cases (computer programs, also secondary transmissions of performances and display of works, and did not include any exception for copies made by computer programs in the course of "using" a protected work, but could have, we can conclude that Congress did not intend to create such an exception. One might point to other facts to argue that Congress did intend that. At present, I believe that the Supreme Court would uphold the letter of the law, but there is really only one way to find out. That is, at any rate, the basis for the copyright holder pursuing an action against you (or, you and the journal). Even without any prior notification of a requirement to delete, they can still tell you that you must delete the work. They probably could not successfully force you to delete the work in a court of law, but there are many other things that they can do that boil down to the fact that you must delete that copy of the work. Blackballing, for example.
Words themselves are not protected by copyright. Curated lists of words, however, are (what's protected is the artful collection of words chosen for a purpose). Hence Hasbro owns the copyright in the list of playable words, though it is a matter for future possible litigation to see if the courts agree. If you have permission from the copyright holder, that permission (license) should state how you can use the list (it does not matter if there is a title). However, you may need to obtain the list from the copyright holder. The website operator presumably already has a license, the terms of which may allow them to prevent you from copying from the website. E.g. the author may have granted the website operator the right to use the list as long as they don't restrict redistribution; but that license may also require restricting redistribution. So you also have to study the website terms of use – or get a copy directly from the copyright holder (assuming that that is the original author).
"Educational use" does not get a free pass on the law against circumventing copy-protection. First, "educational use" is extremely broad and could include "to post on Stackexchange", or "so that I can learn something". The cited clause specifically limits this exception to "A nonprofit library, archives, or educational institution" – the library must be nonprofit, and the archive or educational institution may also need to be nonprofit (until the courts fix the ambiguity in the scope of "nonprofit"). Second, the circumvention has to be very limited: the purpose must be only to evaluate the work, to see if you want to legally acquire it. So a nonprofit library can peek into a work to see if they want to buy a copy, but you may not. The only thing the library can do is evaluate the work for legal acquisition, and they have to get rid of the pirated copy once they've made the decision. Additionally (other parts of the subsection say), they can't do this is there is an equivalent legal copy available (e.g. if there's a print book available, they can't hack into the e-book to "determine" whether they want the book), and w.r.t. libraries and archives they must be open to the public.
Copyright is automatic: when you write something original, it is thereby copyrighted. Thus there is no act of "copyrighting". The only important act is registering. All versions of a work are covered by copyright protection. When you revise a work, the existing copyright still exists, and you have created a derivative work. If copyright is held by a known person, the expiration date is author's death + 70 years. In a work made for hire (the company owns the copyright), it is the earlier of is 95 years from first publication or the shorter of 120 years from creation. A revision does not generally affect the duration of copyright: however, if a joint work is created, the copyright on the underlying work expires relative to the death of the original author and the copyright on later parts created by a second (added) author is relative to the second author's death. So if A writes ch. 1-4 of a book, then adds ch. 5-8 subsequently with a new co-author B, duration of copyright for ch. 5-8 is determined relative to the death of B. None of that matters for a company web page.
I want to use a couple of lines from "What is life?" by Erwin Schrödinger as quote on the front of my thesis. Would i need permission for that form publisher or would that be convered in fair use? There are close cases of fair use, but this is not one of them. This is unequivocally and clearly fair use. It is a brief excerpt of a much larger body of work, it is for non-commercial use by a student, and it is for educational and academic purposes (presumably to advance science). Also do i need to attribute the quote properly Yes. This is necessary both because of the moral rights of the author under E.U. copyright law (assuming that works by Erwin Schrödinger are still in copyright), and for reasons of academic ethical considerations. It is still in copyright, because he died on January 4, 1961, which is 58 years ago. So, in countries that protect copyrights for the life of the author plus 50 years (the minimum required by the Berne Convention) this is out of copyright, but in countries that protect copyrights for the life of the author plus 70 years (e.g. Germany), the copyright is still in force until January 4, 2031. Also, even if the work were out of copyright, as a matter of academic integrity, you would be required to attribute the quote in an academic thesis in any case. Quoting someone without attribution in academic work is considered plagiarism, and could result in your thesis being stricken and also in your degree being revoked in a serious case. Government ministers in the E.U. have been forced to resign over plagiarism in their academic work as students in recent years. This is taken much more seriously in Europe than it is in the U.S.