Folks, I may be able to help with this discussion a little bit. First, thank you R Mitchel for asking your question. We've chewed on it before as a group, but I think it is a very legitimate question and it's very appropriate for you to ask it. Second, in answer to Bob's question: as the author of an article published in Herbertia, I can tell you with 100% certainty that I never signed any sort of copyright transfer to the organization. I just sent them the article and they published it. I'm not saying they did not have the right to publish that article; I submitted it, so that obviously gave them permission. But I didn't give them any ownership of the reprint rights. I would be very surprised if the process worked differently for anyone writing for any of the IBS journals. So, we then have several questions to answer: 1. Does the International Bulb Society still exist? The answer is no, it was terminated in 2019, according to the California Franchise Tax Board. 2. What happened to the copyrights held by the IBS? The National Council of Nonprofits can help with that: "Federal law requires a tax-exempt charitable nonprofit that is dissolving to distribute its remaining assets ONLY to another tax-exempt organization or to the federal government or a state or local government for a public purpose." https://councilofnonprofits.org/running-nonprofit/… dissolving-nonprofit-corporation That means the copyrights could not be controlled by former officers of the IBS or any other individuals. If any person claims that they have a personal right to the IBS's content, or that they "held onto" the rights hoping to restart the society, they are confused. 3. Even if the IBS still existed, did it control the copyrights on the articles it published? I doubt it, since the authors did not sign those rights over to the organization. Maybe, as Jane noted, the IBS held the copyright on the elements of the journal that were wrapped around the articles (table of contents, editor's notes), but that's all it owned. 4. I think all of the above probably means that the copyrights on the articles are actually held by the authors of the articles. Unfortunately, many of those authors are dead, so we can't ask them what they wanted. But speaking as a surviving author, I think all of us wrote the articles wanting to share them. It was a labor of love, and the last thing I want is someone limiting the distribution of information that I chose to freely share. 5. So that all brings me back to something a wise old lawyer once said to me: "who's going to sue you?" In other words, you can argue all day about the technicalities, but in the end, if no one's going to sue you, then you shouldn't worry about it. I think that's the situation we're in with the publications of the IBS: --The IBS itself, being a dead organization, has absolutely no further rights. Same thing for its former officers. --The authors of the articles, having written them with the intent of sharing them broadly, will want them to be shared. --In the extremely unlikely event that an author objects, we could always remove their particular article. So go ahead and post the darned things with confidence. Mike _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> PBS Forum https://…