> On Aug 19, 2015, at 11:37 PM, Fred Cisin <ci...@xenosoft.com> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 19 Aug 2015, Paul Koning wrote:
>> Reminds me of a guy who sold US military aircraft flight manual scans, with 
>> his "copyright" notice on every page.  Never mind that such things are in 
>> the public domain by law.
> 
> The ORIGINAL is in the public domain, and he would have no rights to restrict 
> anybody else from scanning and distributing the original.
> HOWEVER, even the flimsiest claims of enhancement could enable a copyright 
> claim for a "derivative work", and protect copies of HIS scans.

Any sufficiently dishonest lawyer can make claims like that, and some do, but 
that doesn't make it a valid claim, and ones like that are not.  First of all, 
a derivative work has to have a creative component; plain labor, even if time 
consuming, is not relevant.  Second, derivative work copyright for the new 
author covers only the changes made by the new author; the part that is taken 
from the original is covered by the original copyright (if any).

> 
> Project Gutenberg ran into that in their early days.  They thought that they 
> could scan modern printings of public domain literature, and distribute those 
> as images.  But, although the WORDS are public domain, by dint of their 
> typography, the modern printers have claim to those images.

They might pretend this, but they would be wrong.

        paul

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