On Thu, 1 Jan 2009, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

Tio Pedro wrote:

Well, you are welcome to your opinion, but the copyrights
prior to a certain date in the 60s HAD to be renewed to be
still in effect. The copyright owner has admitted this, and
he has stated that a few manuals are no longer protected.

Those items were originally copyrighted in the 1930's and before.

Since Heath did not exist then, the first manuals copyrights dated
from the late 1940's, which have all now been retroactively extended
for at least 100 years from date of publication.

Either you're misreading the copyright laws, or people deeply involved
in it have misread it.

If you go to Project Gutenberg, you can find "Tom Corbett Space Cadet"
books there. They date from the fifties. You can also find H. Beam Piper
books, dating from about the same time. These are only two examples
that I've stumbled upon, but which stood out since they are indeed
relatively recent. My expectation was that all you'd find there would
be "classics" hundreds of years old.

LIke I pointed out earlier in the thread, these books have fallen out
of copyright because there was a brief period where books did not
stay in copyright unless specifically extended. And some did not bother
extending the copyrights, for whatevever reasons.

That's the premise of Project Gutenberg and those fifty year old books.
Since they'be been putting uncopyrighted books into electronic form
for almost forty years, one might expect them to know what they
were talking about. One might also expect them to get into trouble
if they had something there that is still in copyright, after all
they are fairly visible and have been for a long time.

As I pointed out Jeff Duntemann has pointed out the same thing, and
used the database to check on some books. Apparently Don Stoner's
SSB book published by CQ fifty years ago is amongst those books
no longer in copyright.

That site, I don't have the URL handy, that has old editions of the ARRL
Handbook and the Radiotron Designer's Handbook and plenty of other old
technical books, he's using the same premise. He's not some guy who's
merely posting things regardless of their copyright, he has done checks
to ensure the books are no longer in copyright. He may be mistaken about
specific titles, but he seems to know what he's talking about generally.

Michael VE2BVW

Anything copyrighted in the US since the release of the first full length
Disney movie (I think it is Snow White) is covered.

From what I remember (does anyone have an actual citation?) copyrights
until that time were 35 years and could be renewed for 35 more. Patents
were 18 with an 18 year renewal and that could be a source of confusion.

If it was indeed 35 years, and the first Heath manual was published in
1947, then its copyright protection would have expired in 1982, long after
the requirment for renewal was dropped and the term extended.

Outside of the US, e.g. Canada and the EU recognize both legal and moral
rights and IMHO it would be next to impossible to convince a judge that
the person who purchased the rights to the manuals from their owner did
not have a moral right to them as opposed to some guy with a website who
gave away free download privledges to other manuals in exchange for another
file he could give away.



I have no bone to pick in this beef, since I usually buy the
manuals for any equipment that I own. This has all been
hashed out in the Heathkit forum on the Yahoo! users's
group (public access for reading postings) between
the users and the new copyright owner.

He may not be correct. The current copyright regulations are quite new
and many people do not completely understand them. I am among those that
do not, it is possible that he is too.

Geoff.


--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM