pbs Digest, Vol 85, Issue 8
Jane McGary via pbs (Sun, 17 Mar 2024 11:12:16 PDT)
Sorry, the permission statement James Shao quoted probably would not
cover reproduction on a public Internet site. The wording was developed
to protect those, particularly at universities, who wanted to photocopy
journal articles or excerpts from books to hand out in class for the
convenience of their students, rather than requiring them to read the
material in the library's reserve room. On the other hand, since the IBS
no longer exists, only its designated successor (in the nature of an
heir) would probably have the right to stop this reproduction legally.
The actual statement of copyright in each issue would be "Copyright
[year of publication] International Bulb Society." It is unclear whether
this covers all the content in any form, or only the compilation (the
physical format of the publication); when I edited a similar journal,
authors received a contract specifying that the publisher, a plant
society, copyrighted the compilation, but the authors retained
copyright-level control of their text and illustrations, so they could
publish these elsewhere without our permission. I don't know whether IBS
had a similar practice. I'm an editor, not a lawyer, so I don't know
whether what PBS has done is an infringement of a copyright on the
compilation (assuming that's what IBS filed). Likely the contributors
can still claim copyright on their work, but not in the format in which
IBS published it. I don't know if there is law covering documents when a
copyright was claimed (but possibly not officially filed) by an entity
that has become extinct without successors.
I once received a letter from a lawyer alleging that a book I had
compiled on behalf of an old Alaska Native couple constituted an
infringement of the "aboriginal patent on the birchbark basket." My then
boyfriend, a lawyer himself, fell on the floor laughing.
Eventually you see it all, and I still hope to see Fritillaria davidii.
Jane McGary, Portland, Oregon, USA
On 3/16/2024 7:13 PM, Robert Lauf via pbs wrote:
As James points out the content may be freely reproduced for our purposes. So that clears it up and perhaps the members should have been informed of that at the beginning and a lot of this back-and-forth could've been avoided. We clearly have advance permission to do what we're doing.
BTW, my use of the term "obscure" pertains to the negligible commercial value of the copyright, given the niche market of potential readers, not to the readability of the content itself. Conflicts only get serious when there is money to be made by someone. Lawyers don't work for free.
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