Quote:
Originally Posted by arjaybe
One should be free to write something and not let it be published, but apparently that right expires with the writer? I honestly don't know how this common law copyright works.
rjb
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Let me explain. I'll use as a example
RSE Was A Stupid Old Git. (My diary.) I keep it private, and nobody but me sees it. From a copyright standpoint, no statuatory copyright exists. At least under current interpretations of copyright. (Under Berne it gets murky. Once I create it it may fall under statutory copyright. Or it may not. I'll leave the Berne "automatic copyright" confusion to the side.)
As long as it sits in my desk drawer, it's under common-law copyright. My will gives it to my niece. She throws it in her desk drawer. And so on, and so on, down through the years. Now as long as nobody makes and distrubutes a copy of it, it's under common-law copyright. Clear so far?
Now if anybody makes a copy of it and distributes that copy, the common-law copyright is superceded by a statutory copyright, with whatever the terms of statutory copyright at the time (currently life +70, or whatever posthumus copyright rules hold at that time).
Just to make it more confusing, if my niece reads it on a radio show, that is not a copy. It is a performance. Yes, there is now a performance copyright started on her reading, but the original has not been copied, and put back in her desk. The copy of
RSE Was A Stupid Old Git is still under that common-law copyright, and won't be under stautory copyright unless copies have been made and distributed.
The great unknown on this is what happens if somebody did a transcript of
RSE Was A Stupid Old Git from my niece's reading and publishes it? That violated the common-law copyright, certainly, but did it trigger the statutory copyright change and timer. There may be case law out there that addresses this issue, but I don't know about any...
Did this make the situation any clearer, arjaybe?