Could I write a new Frankenstein book since it&#39;s public domain? I was largely just wondering about this as there are a number of very fun, interesting things that could be done with the character.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is indeed public domain so you are free to use that character. However, a lot of what we think of as "Frankenstein" is not Mary Shelly, for example, the iconic Frankenstein look dates from the 1931 film which may still be under copyright. You can use elements that are public domain, you can't use elements that aren't.
This sounds completely incorrect to me. First, subsequent research is not normally a "derivative work" for the purpose of copyright, since copyright doesn't protect your ideas but only the particular form in which you have expressed those ideas. Second, as the owner of the copyright, you can permit anyone to make any sort of copy or derivative work, or sell, assign, or license the ability to do so to other parties, without regard to whether the work has been published. The real reason that nonpublication of your work would stifle further research is that researchers will not have access to it.
There is no copyright in an idea. A retelling of a story could be a derivative work, and the making of it a violation of the author's rights to authorize the creation of derivative works (17 USC 106 in US law. article 2 of the Berne Copyright Convention). However, the originals of most &quot;fairy tales&quot; are long out of copyright, and new versions of them may be created and published in any form, for pay or not, by anyone who chooses to do so. Some &quot;fairy tales&quot; are in fact original creations recent enough to still be under copyright protection. (at most 95 years in the US for works published before 1978, 70 years after the death of the author in many countries). In those cases a new version would probably be a derivative work, and require permission from the copyright owner. In some cases a particular author added significant elements to the plot of a fairy tale or folk tale recently enough that the version which introduced those elements is still protected by copyright. In any such case, a new version or retelling that included the new (protected) plot element might well be found to be a derivative work, and so require permission. Basing any retelling only on versions clearly out of copyright will avoid this problem.
No, it's still copyright infringement. When you modify a copyrighted work in any way, you generate a derivative work which you are not allowed to distribute without the permission of the original copyright holder.
"The rights to this work reverted to the author in 1951" means that back in 1951 the publisher's contract to print the book ended, and the author resumed full rights. (This might have been done by the author, or the publisher, depending on their contract.) It does not mean that the copyright lapsed or that the work entered the public domain. "Ms. Margaret Wilson" was presumably the author or the author's agent, or perhaps the publishers representative back in 1951. She may or may not be alive, and the firm of "Duell, Sloan &amp; Pearce, Inc" may have been the new publisher (unless it was the old one, the question is not clear, and without the title I can't cross check). If DS&amp;P was the new publisher, the rights might now be held by E. P. Dutton, as they seem to have acquired the rights to the bulk of the DS&amp;P catalog. In any case, the copyright would (if it is in force) now be held by the author's heir, or whoever the author might have sold or given it to. Someone will be the legal owner. That it is not being marketed does not release the copyright or license the work for general use. If there was no other heir, it would have become government property. In the US, it would become the property of the state where the owner was a legal resident. If this was a work by a US author first published in the US, copyright needed to be renewed after 28 years, which would have been in 1959 (plus or minus one year, I believe). If the work required copyright renewal, and this was not done, then the work is in the public domain, and can be freely used by anyone. Records of copyright renewals, by year, are available for download from Project Gutenberg, or can be searched at the US Copyright Office. There is no way to be sure how the "scanning institution" determined that "No known copyright restrictions" apply, short of asking that institution. It is possible that they checked for a copyright renewal and did not find one. If you use content from this work, and the copyright is still in force, the copyright holder or an exclusive licensee could sue for copyright infringement. There is no way to tell if this would in fact happen. It may well be that the legal holder does not even know that s/he owns this copyright. Obviously, in that case, a suit is highly unlikely. But that would be entirely at the risk of anyone who used such content. Under US law, such use might or might not be considered "fair use". This would depend on several factors, and there is not enough information in the question to even guess. Fair use is an active defense, that an accused infringer may assert in court. It also does not apply in non-US cases. The odds are probably against any such suit being brought, but the amount at stake if one was brought could be large.
Yes, you can do that, assuming that the pictures are really in the public domain (i.e. due to their age, and not only claimed to be). But you probably shouldn't, but you'll probably want to add a label to the images anyway (what it depicts, who the original painter is, etc). So adding a &quot;public domain&quot; tag to each image shouldn't be a big issue. You can do that on a separate page as well, giving the source for each. Note that while using pd images does not create a copyright violation, even if you blatantly say that you created them yourself, it could still be considered plagiarism. When writing a science book or even a thesis, this could get you into trouble.
The article is public domain. The pictures aren’t If this was first published in the British Empire (as it then was), then The UK is the place of first publication. What follows is its status under UK law, other jurisdictions may have different results. The original article is public domain because H. C. P. Bell died in 1937 meaning copyright on everything he wrote expired 31 December 2007. If he’d lived until 1951 or later it would still be under copyright (in 2021). However, this isn’t the original article because: Text on this page extracted from an original copy of Annual Report. The photographs were taken when I visited the site in 1991, and again in November 1995. The bits that this unknown author added, including the photographs, are their copyright. Since they were clearly alive in 1995 (due to the well known pirate aphorism “dead men take no photos”) the copyright in those is still current.
You can do whatever you like with posts made after you change the rules - you have to leave the previous stuff alone. The contributors' have accepted the terms of the licence: They own the copyright or have permission from the copyright holder to post it (the promise) They agree that it can be edited altered or removed CC-BY-SA allows people to copy the stuff off the website and republish it - this is way outside what the contributors agreed to. These people have given permission for their work to be altered but not copied.