Quote:
Originally Posted by Jellby
My opinion (and therefore not a lawyer's): Are they still Shakespeare poems? Then they don't get a new copyright. Your changes may be significant, useful, appropriate, they may have a good deal of thought, imagination and research behind, but if you can still call them Shakespeare poems, they are Shakespeare's, not yours.
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Clearly you don't understand the law, then. From what you're saying, everything that countless scholars have been working on for many decades now with regard to coming up with definitive, authoritative versions of the writings of Henry David Thoreau are still in the public domain.
And yet, nobody is saying that. Publishers don't say that, Thoreau scholars don't say that, nobody at all says that. Anyone interested in Thoreau's writings understands that those Princeton scholars retain copyright for their efforts.
Similarly, I can retain copyright for my efforts as well. If you don't understand that -- even if you want to be an "anarchist" and not accept that -- it still doesn't change the fact that I deserve credit for what I have put effort into and accomplished.
How can that whole concept be any more simple and obvious? I mean, really. Seriously? Does this need to be rationalized more than the ridiculously obvious? :/