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[Miquel Vidal <miquel AT barrapunto.com>]

Dear friends at Creative Commons,

We are participating in the project Creative Commons Spain and we have
recently published a novel by G.K. Chesterton, "The Flying Inn" (1914,
"La taberna errante" in Spanish) with a Creative Commons (1) licence and
a free download version on the internet (2).

While we were preparing the book, we got some information about the
copyright situation in the case of Chesterton. Some friends at other
publishing houses who had done books by him told us Chesterton was
already public domain: he died in 1936, and since he was British, had
become public domain in 1986, i.e. 50 years after his death.

Therefore, when the European "harmonization" of copyright took place in
1995 (3), Chesterton had been in the public domain for nine years and we
understand he was not affected by the aforementioned harmonization in
the UK.

We understand that the extension from 50 to 70 years as a consequence of
the EU harmonization on 1 January 1996 ONLY affects those works that on
31 December 1995 were under copyright or whose copyright was about to
expire. That is not the case with Chesterton, whose copyright expired in
1986 according to the British legislation.

The book has already been issued. It is selling well and we have just
published a second edition. This provides more evidence that putting the
whole book up on the web for free does not damage its sales, quite the
opposite. But a literary agent in Barcelona
maintains she's the agent for the copyright of Chesterton in Spanish and
says that Chesterton's copyright was indeed revived. In a very nasty
way, she demands some money. Of course, that agent has done
absolutely nothing for Chesterton's work: she just gets money from
whoever publishes a book by Chesterton, acting like a parasite for any
independent publishing initiative.

We have consulted different sources but we get contradictory
interpretations of the law. Some people say the law has no retroactive
effect in order to avoid unfair competition between those who published
Chesterton between 1986 and 1995 and those who did it after the
harmonization; but ohters say the copyright was extended and works whose
copyright had expired are brought back into copyright. We know Creative
Commons has a detailed analysis of public domain and we would like your
advice on the subject.

We would like your opinion on the following:

1) What legislation is applied to a British writer dead in 1936? Does
the British "revived copyright" of 1995 apply? Is it
retroactive?

2) Can a Spanish literary agent exploit the copyright of a British
writer dead in 1936 **after** the British harmonization of 1995?

3) Is there any jurisprudence, ruling or legal precedents about the
"revived copyright"  for English writers who were in the public domain
in 1995?

This is not just an economic issue but the point is these agents claim
the right to decide if a writer's work can or can not be published. In
our opinion, what is at stake here is the "common goods, that's why we
need your support and we think you might be interested too as it is an
English writer. Also, if eventually
there's the need to organize a public campaign, we will need to have all
the details about the British legislation on it.

Yours,

Miquel Vidal
Amador Fernández-Savater


Notes

(1)
http://sindominio.net/biblioweb/literatura/flyinginn-es/node30.html

(2) http://sindominio.net/biblioweb/literatura/flyinginn-es/

(3)
http://www.intellectual-property.gov.uk/std/faq/copyright/extended.htm

-- 
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