Cc-uk mailing list

[Jonathan Mitchell <website3 AT jonathanmitchell.info>]

This is not really a question for this list , but here is a quick answer in
homage to GK Chesterton.

1. Publication in Spain is governed by Spanish copyright laws, not UK
copyright laws. Copyright law is to do with publication in a particular
country. It doesn't matter, for a Spanish publication, whether the work is
protected by copyright in the UK; what matters is whether it is protected by
Spanish copyright law. For this you need Spanish, not UK, legal advice.

2. However, the question of how the 1995 extension to the copyright period
under UK law affected works by authors such as Chesterton is dealt with at
this website: 
http://www.intellectual-property.gov.uk/std/faq/copyright/extended.htm .
>From this you will see that the general effect of the extension in the UK
was that works by Chesterton could be published as a matter of right, but
subject to a reasonable royalty being paid. I would love to know what is a
reasonable royalty on a work published free on the internet under a Creative
Commons license!

**Now how about some comments on this list on the current issues under the
UK proposed draft license? Is this 'back to the drawing board' or should we
work on the draft as it stands?**

Jonathan
--
Jonathan Mitchell QC

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Website: http://www.jonathanmitchell.info

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Home telephone: 0131 557 0854.

This message, and any attachments, may contain legally privileged material
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Please note that my clerk is Iain Murray; tel. 0131 260 5697; fax 0131 220
2654; e-mail murraystable AT advocates.org.uk . Instructions as counsel should
unless otherwise notified be channelled via him.
> From: Miquel Vidal <miquel AT barrapunto.com>
> Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 04:23:31 +0200
> To: Damian Tambin <damian.tambini AT csls.ox.ac.uk>, Prodromos Tsiavos
> <prodromos.tsiavos AT socio-legal-studies.oxford.ac.uk>
> Cc: cc-uk AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: [Cc-uk] About Chesterton and public domain
> 
> 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
> 
> -- 
> Miquel Vidal          :: Using Debian GNU/Linux
> BarraPunto SysAdmin   :: yonderboy AT barrapunto.com
> http://barrapunto.com :: http://barrapunto.com/~yonderboy/bitacora
> GnuPG public key available at http://sinetgy.org/~miquel
> 
> 
> 
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