[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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