
Enclosing the public domain: The restriction of public domain books - walterbell
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4975/4089
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chrismcb
They make it sound like all copies of the public domain book are being
restricted. But reading the article it sounds like only the access to the
repository's copy is restricted. Just because something is in the public
domain doesn't mean I have to give it away for free.

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lylebarrere
Has there been a ruling on if the scanning creates a derivative work in New
Zealand? The crazy argument in the US has been that the digital scanned copy
is a new derivative work that gets copyright based on the scan date.

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chrismcb
Copyright is about creativity. There is no creativity in scanning a work,
therefore there can be no new copyright.

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VLM
The cousin of that argument is you can't copyright a media change. Otherwise
I'd own the copyright on a ripped CD/DVD. Or I'd own the copyright on anything
I have ever photocopied. Or for that matter, a printing press owner would own
the copyright of anything he ever printed, which is certainly not the case.

(edited to add, another good example, is if media changes could be
copyrighted, every academic paper with a quotation I've ever written would
mean I now own the primary quoted source, which creates a weird chicken and
egg for plagiarism where I don't need to cite myself as the source of my own
words, so I need not cite anything I quote because I'd own it as part of the
act of quoting it... so you can not have plagiarism if you can copyright media
changes)

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Dylan16807
First, you are ignoring that derivative works have copyright from both the
original author and the person making the creative alterations.

Second, plagiarism is an ethical standard that exists independent of law. It
does not need copyright to exist. If you didn't write it, you quote it. Even
if the original writer assigned copyright to you and you alone.

