Heads Up: CCleaner Free and Calibre

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Nope, it's the Russians.

But better Red than Dead?

[Jaws]

A clarification on US copyright law, and why quoting that current missive from the Copyright Office has nothing to do with the deep, dark history of The Mouse House:

Before 1978 (when the US 1976 Act became effective), everything was different in the US and not compliant with international standards/law. Under the 1909 Act, no registration = no copyright. Under the 1976 Act (which, for this purpose, means only works first published in 1978 and later, with some possible exceptions back to 1973 that I won't try to explain because they're rare), no registration = there is a copyright, but you can't get into court to enforce it.

That's why the two Disney films I mentioned are the way they are: They're governed by the 1909 Act, meaning proper registration of the source works would have been required or there was no US copyright in effect.

The 1909 Act had lots and lots of other traps in it, like importing more than 50 bound copies of a book originating and printed abroad could damage or forfeit the copyright. That's what happened to the original text of The Lord of the Rings — the US publisher imported a couple hundred copies because there were printing delays, and that ended up in competing editions a few years later when another publisher just reprinted it, and meanwhile Tolkein did some "revisions" that were properly registered etc. in the US. Similarly, failure to properly mark (the word "copyright," or the abbreviation "Copr." with the correct capitalization and period, or the copyright symbol ©, then the year of registration or first publication, then the legal name of the registrant) led to loss of the registration. There was an entire set of rules in the Copyright Office's regulations for how the actual author/regstrant could reinstate the registration after a publisher mismarked a publication.

The main thing to remember is that historically, the US has been a bad copyright citizen as to "foreign" works all the way up to 1988. Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan) went on a barnstorming multicity tour of the US during the late 19th century because US music publishers pirated copies of several operettas. He spent hours in each city imploring local companies to only use the authorized editions — and got pretty much laughed out of town. I could spend hours on "Tarzan, Sam Spade, and how movies screwed up everything," but you wouldn't (and shouldn't) sit still for it.

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