Thanks Nathan,
No, I don't really know about copright laws as I have never had to deal with them. Sounds rather complicated though. I was just amazed all of this material was available.
Rutherford's Rainbow
by choosing life 17 Replies latest jw friends
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kwr
The copyright on those old publications have expired. The copyright stops after 75 years.
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Nathan Natas
No, kwr, you are mistaken. The original term of copyrights was 28 years. Then the idea of renewing copyright was introduced, which doubled that. Then Sonny Bono and the american recording industry pushed for even longer copyright terms, so that now it is 95 years. I can back this up with references from the US copyright office. What reference did you use?
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nicolaou
Thanks for the clarification Nathan.
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Nathan Natas
One example of public domain work would be Shakespeare. Anyone can use his works, but if you take a book of Shakespeare's collected works and run off a bunch of copies to sell, you will probably be spending some time talking to the attorneys that represent the book publishing company.
Another example: a person goes out and buys a bunch of original Golden Age magazines. He can then scan those copies of Golden Age and republish them in hard copy or in digital media. He has a copyright on his work, but not on the content of the original GAs. (Interesting fact: The Golden Age was never covered by copyright, because the law at that time required that a copyright notice be printed on anything claiming copyright. Look on any GA - no notice!)
Dubs don't understand copyright law because ancient Israel didn't have any such concept.
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VM44
Hi Nathan,
"Look on any GA - no notice"
Look also at the paper on which the GA was printed. The cheapest of the the cheap! And the printing was very inferior as well.
Obviously the Watch Tower did not consider what was published in The Golden Age important enough to even Copyright!
The GA even noted once that some health magazines were publishing articles that originally had been published in The Golden Age!
--VM44
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Nathan Natas
Hi VM44,
I always figured that the lousy paper was partly due to the fact that the country was coming out of WWI and then working it's way thru the depression. Certainly the paper they used was nowhere like today's archival quality, acid-free paper. The paper used in today's laser printers and copy machines is expected to last 300 years! The GA paper is barely a notch above raw pulp.
I didn't know about the plagarism of GA articles; that must have been MAD magazine.
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babystar_jr
Hi all..
I refer to wcl.wikia. Does wcl.wikia understand U.S. Copyright Law?