Can a public domain military manual be "copyrighted" by a private person?

Even thinking that asking for free legal advice on Usenet is a good idea proves you are not ready to enter into ANY sort of business.

I already am in a "business". It works out okay too. I think that I can tell whether the author knows what he is talking about. I am fully prepared to hear one or a few ignorant opinions.

i

Disclaimer: IANAL. Barratries Not Included.

They can claim (c) on original content they created. This might, for example, include extensive hyper-text cross linking inside and between all the manual PDFs. Since they don't tout that in the listing copy, odds are they did no such thing. I would at least expect a pop-up with their copyrighted logo.

Translation: we have no leg stand on in preventing exactly what you have in mind.

They may, however, have watermarked every page.

Doubtful, since that contract vanishes as soon as you resell the original item.

I'm wondering why these aren't already available, for free, as fully searchable text, on Google.

rjn

Legal advice given on Usenet is worth every penny you paid for it.

I don't have a clue about the legality of my suggestion but here goes. It would be a bit of work but since this information is already in the Public Domain PRINT all the information out and do a new scan of all the documents you printed out. Then you would not be distributing information that might be NEW (the digital copying by the previous party). It would probably be less hassle to consult an attorney specializing in Copyright Law.

DL

Am I talking to one person, or two, (LegalEagle) snipped-for-privacy@Arent.com and J.G. Wentworth) snipped-for-privacy@now.com ?

Consult an actual copyright atty.

I believe that in general, the public domain source material CAN NOT be "re-copyrighted" by a third party. What I believe they can copyright is their scan / republication of that source material. So if you can get the source material from an original public domain source, they can not claim copyright to your version of that material and you may distribute your version of that material any way you see fit, including releasing your version as public domain.

A rough parallel to this would be in the music world where music may be long out of copyright and anyone can produce their own rendition without paying royalties to the original composer, but those individual new renditions are copyright by the person/company that produced the new rendition.

An additional thought:

Given that your goal is to host a public domain library of out of copyright manuals, and given the apparent false copyright claims of the CD pushers, it may be worthwhile to spend a modest amount to consult with a copyright atty. and get a letter from them citing the relevant copyright law and their position on it's applicability to your manual library, so you have that letter to forward to any sites that try to delete your posts, ban you, etc. based on false accusations from one of the CD purveyors.

I don't have enough knowledge about this to give useful legal advice, but I believe there is also such a thing as a "Compilation Copyright." It can cover a collection of works by others. I think it protects the final collection and the format of the collection, but not the individual works. You might want to look into this and see hoe it might affect what you want to do.

WayneJ

What Pete said. In essence, they've copyrighted the pdfs in which the uncopyrighted material has been put.

Look at it this way: The moon is not copyrighted. Yet if I fill a book with pictures of the moon I can copyright _those pictures_. You then cannot copy my book and sell it, but there's nothing preventing you from taking your _own_ pictures of the moon and selling _that_.

They're doing the same thing, they're just taking pictures of stuff that's less interesting to the general populace, and more interesting to you.

Looks like you are living up to your self-given name, and you are talking to yourself!

Re: Can a public domain military manual be "copyrighted" by a private person?

Of course not. Are you just being obtuse to make some kind of point here?

You can only copyright something that you've personally created, and you automatically own the copyright simply by virtue of the fact that you're the creator of the document.

But "copyright" something that's already in the public domain? Can I have a hit off that thing before you roach it out?

Cheers! Rich

Pete, the relevant law is called "copyright in compilations". You can search google on this and find many pages that talk about it. Example is here:

In other words, possibly, compilation and arrangement may be protected. So, if I tried to sell copies of his DVDs, I may potentially be exposed to at least some possibility of being liable.

However, the items in the compilation, which are public domain US government works, are not copyrighted.

This is how I understand it.

i

The above link did not work.

I agree with that. I am hoping that I can write some perl scripts to throw out those things.

i

Wayne, you are absolutely correct and, indeed, the compilation law is what applies here.

i

On that last part about removing the CD/DVD sellers tags, be cautious about the actual source of the document. If you copy and remove attribution to scans of original Army manuals that the seller has created, that would be copyright infringement. If the original PDF was produced by the Army, then that source would be public domain. This could be an issue for old Army manuals where there is no Army produced PDF version and legally you would need to obtain one of the hardcopy manuals and scan it yourself to have legal copyright to the scan.

My recollection of the copyright law is that what is copyrighted is the collection of things, and not the things themselves. The original case law was about things like dictionaries and lists of synonyms and antonyms. The words cannot be copyrighted, but organized collections of those same words can be copyrighted.

The legal theory is that if one could not copyright such things, there would be no way to make money on such things, so nobody would go to the considerable effort to make such things.

The pdfs may themselves be copyrightable, as repayment for the effort to make them, even if the things scanned to make the pdfs are themselves not copyrighted.

It does not matter if the pdfs are sold or given away, as in either case the copyright holder is harmed.

Before you spend much effort on this, I would talk to a real lawyer.

But read this first: . It appears to be exactly on target.

Joe Gwinn

Yes, they should have some copyrights for their original work selecting and transcribing the material Here is a good explanation (I would still consult a lawyer)

We went through this sort of thing. My partner published a book on sideshow banners. All the banners featured at the time of publication were the property of the authors and one of the authors was a direct descendent of one of the original banner artists.

People have been scanning the images out of the book and printing them out as posters, tee shirts etc. They all assumed that because the banners were so old that they were in the public domain, but the photographs of them in the book were in fact copyrighted.

Paul K. Dickman

See Feist vs. Rural Telephone 499 U.S. 340 (1991)