Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
You cannot copyright a public domain work, unless you add content to it (eg an introduction, or footnotes) and, even if you claim copyright on those, the copyright only protects that extra content, not the original text.
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Which is why many spineless gits out there (sorry--as you may have noticed, this stuff irks me) put copyright notices for the public domain work, very close to a splendidly vague statement about corrections, footnotes, editing, et al.
Resulting in a situation where you have no guaranteed way of being able to extract the public domain content out of the full manuscript with any degree of certainty that you haven't left something copyrighted in there.
Another practice that should result in the ruin of a few prestigious and high-profile publishers and/or universities out there.
- Ahi