Quote:
Originally Posted by PandathePanda
one thing that bugs me a lot, is the disinterest shown by South Africans to "protect" out literary history. I got a nasty PM on FB after sharing the link to the book I uploaded yesterday, the lady told me how awful I am, since It's Piracy. But then a lot of people don't have a clue about copyright and how it works, not even our law know how it's made.
Out law states:
Chapter 1. (3)(2)(a)
literary or musical works or artistic works, other than photographs,
the life of the author and fifty years from the end of the year in
which the author dies.
Chapter 1. (3)(2)(f)
published editions, fifty years from the end of the year in which
the edition is first published.
so reading it (layman style) The book is copyrighted life +50 years or 50 years after the edition being printed which brings lots of grey areas in)
So an imaginary author who died in 1970's would still be in copyright under Chapter 1. (3)(2)(a), yet technically under Chapter 1. (3)(2)(f) his book that he published (first edition) in 1951 would be out of copyright. (and yes I've had this discussion with a copyright lawyer here and they want to redo the copyright law to get rid of this "grey area" )
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Pandathepanda:
Are you saying that the law doesn't state "the latter of" or "the earlier of," whichever comes later/sooner? At no spot? That seems exceedingly bizarre to me.
I mean...obviously in the case of the book you're discussing, it's PD, in either case, as it's after (either) 1973 or 1988, but "grey area" doesn't even come CLOSE to discussing what chaos could ensue on an author that lived in the middle of the last century and on a bit.
The lawyer said it doesn't have that clarification? Really? Wow.
Hitch