Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
My question is whether a modern scan of that magazine is also automatically in the public domain.
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The current US case law seems pretty clear. Here's a quick recent summary with good links:
http://theartlawblog.blogspot.com/20...n-v-corel.html
However, this is only a district court ruling. It it not binding on any other court. However, it's also worth noting that it wasn't appealed and no similar lawsuit has been filed in the US. IMO all the institutions are worried that any such case might eventually result in a binding Supreme Court decision against them.
The UK law is less clear. But I think that if any such case was brought it would eventually lose. The Museums Copyrigth Grouo have an interesting page on this situation:
http://www.museumscopyright.org.uk/bridge.htm
Essentially, they're asserting that they do have copyright (in UK) of images of out-of-copyright works, and that in any case, they now have contracts surrounding released images that would prevent reproduction even if they didn't have copyright.
I very much hope that eventually they annoy someone with big pockets enough that there's a test case.