|
Still another copyright question
Recently I purchased a retail epub of an old sci-fi novel of which I have the original 1948 paper reprint book edition. The text of the book was first published in 1920 in a sci-fi magazine. The retail epub has used 1948 images from the reprint book whose publisher is no longer in existence, and the retail epub publisher claims they have been unable to find the author's/illustrator's copyright heirs.
There are numerous OCR errors, split paragraphs, lack of italics, poor formatting, and other problems with the retail epub version - all of which offend me when I try to read it.
I would like to use the retail epub text (that saves me scanning the book and possibly damaging the spine), correct it with new formatting, omit any new original material such as cover image/book synopsis/author info etc, and combine this material with additional material from my paper book to produce my own epub copy that will include illustrations and dustcover text of the 1948 version.
The text of the legal epub is almost certainly PD because it was published in 1920. My new self-produced epub may violate copyrights of the 1948 edition although I suppose I could claim being unable to find copyright heirs as is claimed by the new publisher.
This new epub will be solely for my own use; does anyone know if it is likely to violate any copyrights of the newly published retail epub? Perhaps my new epub won't violate either the new epub or the 1948 book copyrights if the copyright heirs can't be located (?)
|