[meteorite-list] copyright questions - newspaper articles & correspondence

[mmartin at meteoritetreasures.com]

Hi Arnaud,

I've got some experience with US copyright law and will outline it the  
best I can:

1.  Works published before 1978 remain protected under copyright law  
for 75 years from the date of their original publication.  Works  
published on or after January 1, 1978 as protected by copyright laws  
until 50 years after the death of the author.

2.  As for the newspaper no longer existing, I believe the above rule  
applies.  If the newspaper company owned the copyright (i.e. the  
article was written by a staff member) then the copyright will expire  
based on it's publication date as described above.  If it was reader  
contributed or written by a person who was not employed by the  
newspaper, then the author owns the copyright, and not the newspaper  
and the date of death would apply.

3.  Your intended use for educational, non-commercial value would most  
likely be viewed as fair use based on the mission of your  
organization, however given the very public nature of the web and your  
desire to be as clean as possible legally, I would suggest that you  
spend a little money for advice from an attorney who specializes in  
copyright law.  A few hundred dollars now could be well worth the  
savings if a disgruntled person saw their information published on a  
public website without their permission.

4.  I am not familiar with copyrights laws and how they apply to  
personal correspondence.  Surely documents that you have written are  
yours freely to use, however the ones written by others may be a  
different story.  I'm not going to say any more on this because I  
simply don't know.

There are lots of restrictions of fair use too...so be mindful that  
just because a person intends to use a published work for educational  
purposes that you can use another person's work in its entirety.   
Restrictions are in place that limit how much of a work can be used,  
even for educational purposes.  There are also time limits in some  
instances, in instances known as 'spontaneous' copies.  An example of  
this would be if a story was just published and waiting to obtain  
copyright permission for educational use would cause the loss of  
educational value, then fair use comes into play.  Even then there are  
still restrictions on the amount of the source that may be copied and  
the amount of images that may be copies as well.  In my opinion, it's  
worth getting an informed decision by someone qualified.

Mind you, I am not an attorney, but simply a teacher who has done  
research on this in the past.

Aloha,


Matthew Martin
Meteorite Treasures
P.O. Box 164, Kaaawa, HI 96730
www.meteoritetreasures.com






On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 10:18 AM, The Tricottet Collection  
<tricottetcoll at live.com> wrote:


     Dear list members,

     I'd like to give access on my website to transcripts of my  
newspaper articles and original correspondence related to meteorites  
(and minerals & fossils...):

     http://www.thetricottetcollection.com/library_met_newspapers.html
     http://www.thetricottetcollection.com/library_met_manuscripts.html

     However I haven't done it until now because I don't know the laws  
regarding copyrights.

     Would someone know if diffusing a transcript instead of a scan is legal?
     Should articles be more than 30 years old for instance?
     If the newspaper does not exist anymore, is there still a copyright?
     What is the situation for correspondence letters that I own, from  
living or deceased individuals?

     I'm especially looking for information related to US law, but  
also to the Italian one. I'd like to give access to a high resolution  
digital copy of the famous Walter Molino drawing of Holbrook in the  
1946 newspaper La Domenica del Corriere, based on a copy I own.


     Thank you for your help,

     Arnaud


     The Tricottet Collection
     (Historic Minerals, Fossils & Meteorites)
     http://www.thetricottetcollection.com/
     http://www.facebook.com/TheTricottetCollection
     http://twitter.com/TricottetColl#