Quote:
Originally Posted by ficbot
I am looking to save some shelf space and by far the biggest space hogs are my old Norton Anthology books from university. Some of it is modern stuff you probably can't get on-line, but much of it---the first volume, certainly---is all PD stuff. I am thinking of making a digital version and am wondering if, should I do so, it's legal to share.
I don't care about the introductory notes, footnotes or anything like that, just the content, all of which would be stuff that's public domain. But I am wondering if I could get in trouble for copying the order---is such a thing even copyrightable? For example, let's say the book is 100 poems long, and the first poem is Such and Such, the second is So and So etc. I know the poems themselves cannot be copyrighted by the Norton people as they are PD, but is 'this set of poems arranged in that order' something they could have 'rights' on and I would get in trouble for copying and sharing?
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Yes, the order can be copyrighted in the US. But that's shouldn't be a problem, order them differently...
Then put your own notes in, and copyright it yourself
Just release it in creative commons, and everybody's happy....
(Of course, I release my stuff in PD, but I'm a cranky old dinosaur....)