Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
Why is that obviously copyright book still there? It's the copyright corrected 1993 edition and added over 8 years ago. It's not the 1944 edition. They ignore anything other than direct legal action.
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Your specific example furthers the discussion. Thank you.
The Book of Knots is different from what I was thinking was typical Internet Archive (IA) because few people would be reading it in eInk, even though IA does have an EPUB lending option. The scans look, to me, blurier than what I think would be on paper, but not being a mariner I don't know how big of a negative transformation, from the original, that bluriness really is. (I'm using the word transformation because lack of same was cited by the judge, in the ruling linked in the OP, as a reason for IA having lost their case.)
The Book of Knots is in print (no eBook for sale, only the expensive hardcover) by Penguin Random House (PRH):
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/b...ifford-ashley/
In two places in the PRH web page, there is a date of publication mentioned -- June 21, 1944. Whether the in-print copy has the 1993 corrections, I don't know, but if so, the corrections were apparently so minor PRH doesn't see a need to brag about selling a second edition.
The book is old, but unambiguously within United States copyright period. That's where the Internet Archive is headquartered, and where the government entities that give IA a large portion of its funding are. Also, the author, who died in 1947, was American, and published first with an old American publisher (Doubleday). The fact that this book, or at least the June 1944 version, has been public domain by the Life + 70 standard for about five years, is minimally relevant.
Does anyone have the list of books that the big publishers included in their lawsuit? I'd be interested to see what books the publishers are presumably most worried about. My guess was that they would care more about newer fiction where IA has a EPUB with fewer than normal scan errors, but maybe I'm wrong.
Something tells me that
The Book of Knots is not the kind of copyright violation PRH and friends care about. And I don't think the IA hurts sales in this kind of situation. Instead, people serious about knots may find the IA copy just blurry enough to be a tease, and will, if they can afford it, buy a paper copy -- maybe even a new hardcover from PRH.
Small changes are made in a lot of books as the publisher fixes typos in subsequent printings, and nobody thinks that extends the generally (yes, I am simplifying) 95 year U.S. copyright.
The Book of Knots seems to be somewhere in-between just having minor fixes, and having a real new edition. I hope that borderline minor fixes don't generally result in a copyright extension. And I think
The Book of Knots is a good example of a borderline case where the IA is doing a service.