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1907 and 1911 books and copyright.

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N

Nintendo

Guest
What is the name of your state? Oregon (Books are USA books.)

I got access to two different Encyclopedias, 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica content from a web site, and a religion one from 1907 with the content from a DVD and a web site, and would like to put them up on one of my own web sites. One says....
Copyright © 1907 by *** Company
Online Edition Copyright © 2003 by ***
while the other one, the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica one that has a legal notice that looks like a scare tactic says...
5. Use on Other Web Sites. The Contents are licensed only for the personal, household, educational use by a single individual. Reproducing Content on another site or redistributing Content is forbidden. Taking Content from this site and editing it and posting it on another site is also forbidden. You may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce, create new works from, distribute, perform, display, or in any way exploit, any of the Content or the Service (including software) in whole or in part. Framing of this site is forbidden.

Taking Contents from this site and editing it and posting it on another site is forbidden and will result in swift legal action. You may not copy, modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce, create new works from, distribute, perform, display, or in any way exploit, any of the Contents of this site in whole or in part. This site and its contents are © 2002-2003 by ******, Corp. Click here for Privacy Policy.
Can they even do that, keep other people from using it? Cause if they could, then I could easily go to gutenberg.net, download all 12,000 public domain books, put them on a site, place a legal notice like that one up, and then go around and sue every web site on the internet that had just one of the books! Last time I checked, everything published before 1923 is in the public domain, and everything from then to 1963 that wasn't renewed is in the public domain.
 


J

J. Michael

Guest
Unless the "presentation" contains what the Copyright Office and/or a U.S. court would consider "substantial" new material, such a claim of copyright is INVALID and if done knowingly to deceive, ILLEGAL. (Section 506.) See for example, Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service, 499 U.S. 340 (1991) p119 and BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY, LTD. v. COREL CORP., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (SDNY 1999). It is possible that your use may be restricted by license. Of course if you got the material without agreeing to a license, you can do anything you want with the public domain parts. BelizeBreeze is wrong as usual on this topic.
 
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BelizeBreeze

Senior Member
Please. Go ahead and use this information any way you see fit. J. Doesn't care that you don't have the 100's of thousands of dollars it will take to defend yourself in a copyright lawsuit for which you don't stand a chance.

Of couse, you could always move in with this idiot after you lose everything.

Your choice.
 
J

J. Michael

Guest
"Taking Contents from this site and editing it and posting it on another site is forbidden and will result in swift legal action."

Give us the URL. Let's see. If they mean simply copying public domain text or scanned pics, they won't win and would be stupid to even attempt it. Copying their HTML might give them an angle to sue on so just don't copy it. (if automatically generated it probably wouldn't) They have to find you anyway to even have a chance of proving that you couldn't have scanned/OCR'd the material yourself. I'd ask for summary judgement.

"Of couse, you could always move in with this idiot after you lose everything."
Yeah right. Why are you always so rude? Either you are really a 12-year-old boy, or you are off your meds again. Can you not disagree or offer another viewpoint without calling someone an idiot? I guess not. Anyway, my wife would object to boarders.
 
J

J. Michael

Guest
A license agreement is just a sort of contract and does not necessarily imply any copyright. In general, licenses that are in your face such as click-wrap and shrink-wrap styles are probably enforceable. But if I can click through from a Google search directly to the material I want, there is no contract.

1. Nature of Information. LoveToKnow Corp. has reformatted, published and in many cases, edited, updated and added to entries from a 1911 edition of an encyclopedia.

They cannot claim copyright to the public domain parts even if edited for printing errors. And the license agreement may or may not be enforceable in whole or in part. But how do you know what the additions are?

Even if you can use the information and scans, you obviously cannot just mirror the site in any case. The html, scripts, hyperlinks might be enough for a court to rule as sufficiently original. I'm not going to browse the site. Find a facsimile or visit a library yourself. This is not legal advice and you won't find anyone to advise you to copy the material.
 

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