Quote:
Originally Posted by Mister Underhill
The appearance of a spammer on the thread caused me to read a few of the more recent posts. I am not a lawyer either, but I'm curious -- wouldn't this idea of "creating a substantially different work" by making alterations be ineffective? I mean, if you change a work enough to create a substantially different work, won't the original work still enter the public domain according to schedule anyway?
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Yes, you are absolutely correct. To give an another example - in Europe musical recordings are only copyrighted for 50 years from their initial release (although there is legislation pending to change this to 70 years). So any song released before 1959 is now public domain in Europe. Obviously all the rock bands that recorded music in the 1960s are now worried that their copyright is shortly going to expire!
It has been suggested that The Beatles, for example, could remix their albums to establish a
new version of each. However, this would not stop the
original mixes of their albums from entering the public domain during the next decade.
To give another example ... if I release a newly edited version of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" with extensive annotations then that new edition is copyright, but the copyright only applies to my additions and not to Shakespeare's original text.
Once
The Lord of the Rings enters the public domain the Tolkien Trust will no doubt create some super-duper "authorised edition" with loads of "new" and "exclusive" features that are still protected by copyright. However, anyone will be free to publish a bare-bones edition that just contains the original text.