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. > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net > https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… > Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> > PBS Forum https://… _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> PBS Forum https://…