[cc-community] Licensing postcards, etc.
James E. LaBarre
jamesl at bestweb.net
Sun Oct 1 10:47:24 EDT 2006
I have a question regarding licenses on "historical" items (manuals,
postcards, etc.).
First example: I would like to put up a website of postcards &
brochures for an old botanical garden that closed in the early 1970's.
However, once I have gone through the trouble of scanning & posting
them, I'd like to "license" them so that no-one could turn around and
use them commercially, etc. The problem is, I don't know if they're
still under an existing copyright.
Second example: I have user manuals for an old Genius hand-scanner, and
have seen references to the manuals no longer being available. I looked
through the copies of the manuals I have, and found there are *no*
copyrights listed in any of them (a serious oversight on the part of the
manufacturer to be sure).
If I would like to make these available for p0ublic reference purposes,
is there some clause/exception I could include with the scans to say
they were licensed under Creative Commons *unless* a valid, pre-existing
license was still in effect? Basically, I'd like to respect someone's
prior claim to copyright, etc, but if one doesn't exist, then the item
should roll-over to a CC license (or at least my particular scanned
images would).
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