Don’t bother with searching around or spending money doing this. It’s almost certainly public domain, you’re using it for educational purposes (fair use might apply) and probably not commercially, and the odds of getting sued by some woodwork copyright holder who notices your infringement, in Japan, are astronomical.
It’s public domain.
But the people who were behind the Copyright Term Extension Act certainly did:
So he didn’t quite get what he wanted. There’s always next time… and next time… and next time…
In other words, you neither know nor care, and you’re advising the OP to take a chance on breaking the law based on the odds on getting caught?
From the full quote that you truncated:
Again, if you want to debate the rightness or wrongness of a copyright term, go do that in the proper forum. But as long as we are sticking to facts, there’s nothing here to debate.
JpnDude, please ignore every post after #7 in this thread, except #15.
–Cliffy
Thank you, Cliffy.
I was beginning to think I was invisible.
I have not had a publisher do it, but I have had a couple museums make false claims of copyright on public domain works, both artistic and written (even medieval manuscripts). One went so far as to say they were going to sue me (and win). Just FYI.
Did they threaten to get medieval on your ass?
Also, various compilations of public domain materials carry copyright notices, for example a collection of the complete works of Shakespeare I own happens to have one. The copyright only applies to the artwork and paratext (that is, the stuff they added), but they go to no lengths to inform the unwary of that fact. Since there is no sweat of the brow copyright* in this country, there is no way anyone can possibly hold an American copyright on anything written by Shakespeare (or, apparently, Angela M. Keyes).
*(Sweat of the brow copyright is getting a copyright by doing something laborious but not transformative to a public domain work. The prime example now would be scanning it into a computer and hosting it on the Internet. This is not recognized under American law.)
No, I know when the copyright extensions took effect, and I am quite familiar with copyright law. I am also familiar with the Berne convention and international copyright treaties. Oh and you know the part where people type IANAL? Well, I don’t have to do that, which wipes out your “neither know nor care” claim.
Furthermore, violating copyright isn’t “breaking the law”. It’s a tort/civil cause of action. There’s no reason to do a search because it’s not worth the expense to try and find the one in literally a million works that are the exception to the rule, and even if it was somehow still copyrighted in the U.S., it won’t be in Japan, because Japan’s copyright terms are shorter than ours were. Even more problematic is the fact that damages are going to be nonexistent, and there’s a possible fair use defense, and then we can get even more certain by the OP mentioning it was listed as public domain in a bunch of other anthologies, none of which appear to have been reduced to a smoking hole in the ground by a wrathful publisher.
So yes, given that it’s nearly impossible to prove a negative, that is, that the work in not copyrighted, my professional advice would indeed be to just go ahead with it, because being 99.9999999999% sure that it’s no longer copyrighted is good enough for anyone in the business, and it would take an incredibly risk-averse and simplistic view to believe there is some sort of dangerous legal minefield here.
So you know full well that the copyright extensions, “fair use”, and whether or not the works are public domain in America are only relevant within the US. Good.
Oh, you got me. Shot down in flames. Boy, do I feel foolish.
Except, of course (as I’m sure you know) Japan’s copyright terms run from the death of the author rather than the date of publication. In this case, 50 years plus 3,794 days. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suppose that an author published in 1910 may have survived until 1950 or later.
I’m not for one minute suggesting a lengthy, exhaustive and expensive search of US copyright. Because that would be utterly irrelevant to publication in Japan. I’m suggesting finding out when the author died, which doesn’t seem unreasonably onerous.
Okay, I’ll take your word about the damages. But does the fact that the penalty for getting it wrong is small really mean the OP shouldn’t make any effort to get it right?
Also, while Japan does seem to allow some latitude for “educational purposes”, JpnDude appears to be talking about a publishing company producing materials for a number of schools, which has a certain “for profit” whiff about it, and certainly seems to me to be some way beyond a teacher photocopying a couple of pages for class.
And, yet again, the fact that a work is in the public domain in the USA has no relevance in another country.
And, broadly speaking, I’d agree. Except that I happen to think the best way to be 99.9999999999% sure is to apply the rules of the country you’re in, rather than those of another country.
I didn’t realize this thread would grow like this. Hehehe. It’s interesting to read the different views here. It seems like no matter what the status for Keyes’s works is in the U.S., we’ll have to find out what the laws allow in Japan.
Thanks WotNot and Cliffy. The Japanese publisher is waiting for the legal department to deliver its findings. However, the head of the panel seems to be leaning towards dumping the stories to avoid any hassle over possible copyright infringement.
Gee, and here I thought that a real IAAL would be familiar with Title 17, Chapter 5, Section 506 of the Copyright Law, helpfully titled Criminal offenses.
Or you could go to justice.gov for their overview of the criminal copyright laws.
Or we could take everything you say on an equal amount of faith.
:rolleyes: Yes, criminal copyright infringement exists. For people who willfully infringe to make money. Those are what we call “pirates”.
This is, by definition, not going to be criminal infringement, since the OP is asking if it’s public domain.
And, of course, every single person in this thread has already said that if the works are in the public domain there is no problem.
But what if the answer is no? That they’re not in the public domain in Japan?
You’re making dogmatic statements without apparently understanding the issue. The issue is what current Copyright Law is in Japan and whether this particular author’s works are freely available in Japan.
Yes, the odds are good that they are. But your answers are not helpful in settling that. In particular, your general statement that “Japan’s copyright terms are shorter than ours were” is irrelevant in this case, if this particular author lived past 1950. You also have no idea whether “damages are going to be nonexistent” because you know nothing about the author or the author’s estate.
There are people giving good advice that the OP is heeding. You’re not one of them.
[moderating]
A quick reminder here for JpnDude and other interested parties: We do have a rule against soliciting legal advice here. Although several people have stepped forward in this thread saying, effectively, “I really am a lawyer and this really is legal advice,” please remember that (a) they are just names on a message board, and unless you actually solicit them offline and pay for legal advice, the opinions stated in this thread have no legal standing whatsoever and (b) in no case is the Straight Dope or any affiliated organization providing you with legal advice or taking any responsibility for advice you may receive here.
Thanks. Just needed to say that.
[/moderating]
I realize that you consider yourself some sort of IP law expert. You’re not. There have been multiple past threads where you gave incorrect and misleading information, and you have continued that trend here.
First, your pedantic “correction” about criminal liability is completely irrelevant to the point, and was an attempt to be snarky, but all it did was illustrate your confusion about the difference between torts and criminal actions, and the people who have a cause of action under the statute. Criminal penalties are absolutely irrelevant, and describing infringement as asked about the OP as illegal is incorrect.
Secondly, your assumption about Japanese IP law is incorrect. The period of copyrighted works is not death +50. It can be a variety of terms from death + 30, death + 38, death + 33, or death + 50, and that’s just in the case of known authors. Given that Ms. Keynes was presenting her published works in 1910, and was a teacher at that time, I’m going to estimate she wasn’t much younger than 20. The odds are pretty good she was older, and if it’s incredibly important, it shouldn’t be hard to find her date of death, but if she lived less than about 70 years, several of her books are in the public domain, even giving her the most favorable scheme (because, as you would be aware of had you not just typed “japan copyright” into wikipedia, the law changed in 1970, and furthermore, there were several cases that seem to hold that in Japan, extensions aren’t and can’t be retroactive, so subtract another 20 years or 12 years).
So your statement that the issue is current copyright law in Japan is wrong. The issue includes the old copyright scheme from 1877, the Berne convention, and Japanese caselaw.
All that, of course, assumes that she had copyright in Japan in the first place, which is pretty unlikely in 1910 because the old law had several somewhat onerous registration and notice requirements, and there were very few trans-Atlantic publishing houses.
Of course, you’re still wrong about the issue being Japanese copyright law. Because if an American publisher still has a copyright, they can certainly sue a foreign publisher in American courts, and it’s not hard to get those judgments enforced between most first world nations. So U.S. law is important too, and is likely going to be the most relevant given that the author was American, the book is in English, and was originally published here, and given that the Berne convention doesn’t allow a foreign licensee to hold copyright in a work after the author’s right expires, and Japanese law (which hews closer to the Berne conv. than we do) also grants droits d’auteur.
Even worse, you obviously don’t understand how damages work in copyright. You need to show actual damages, and given the wide availability of the work in a public domain format in English in the United States and the existence of things like Amazon.com, that will be very difficult, since by definition competing with something free is sort of a futile exercise.
Finally, Japan and most other Berne signatories have fair use schemes for educational purposes, which might apply to this book since it’s supposed to be for teaching.
The “advice” you are giving is misguided and overcautious and extremely pedantic, and is based on an incredibly shallow exploration of the various issues and the fact pattern. So when I gloss things by saying “generally Japanese copyrights are shorter”, I’m giving a perfectly accurate summation of the general case, which is about all the work that needs or should be done on a message board where the OP is sort of asking for legal advice.
All business carries a risk, and given that the question of being in the public domain is almost never a bright line rule, then you need to analyze the amount of risk. In this case, the risk is infinitestimal, for a multitude of reasons that are based in real-world practice and understanding of the interplay of various court systems and treaties, and not in googling and wikipedia.
And if you’re actually giving advice, then you’re practicing law without a license. Presumably the publishers in the OP have an attorney who is perfectly capable of doing the research and necessary fact finding, and that’s who they should listen to instead of a bunch of armchair internet lawyers, and in fact the OP has stated something of the like.
So, I think that it is incumbent on you to retract your poor summation of both the issue at stake and of my participation in this thread.
And JpnDude, just so you are absolutely aware, I am not your lawyer, and you should consult with and listen to the counselors that your company has hired, because they are going to be much more informed of the facts than anyone here.
Oh, and that applies to WotNot too, whose analysis has the same failings.
In the 1910 U.S. Census, there is one Angela Keyes. She was single and 29 years old on the census date of March 15 (so, born in 1880 or 1881). She lived in Brooklyn, New York, and was a public school teacher. She was born in Ireland and immigrated to the U.S. in 1885.
There were two in the 1920 U.S. Census:
• Angela Keyes, 54 (so, born in 1865 or 1866), single, a dressmaker, born in Ireland, immigrated to the U.S. in 1870. She lived in Brooklyn, New York.
• Angela R. Keyes, single, 38 (so, born in 1881 or 1882). She was born in Ireland. She lived in Brooklyn, New York, and was a school principal.
New York Times, April 7, 1936, p. 25:
A paid death notice on the same page said that she died suddenly, and will be interred at Holy Cross Cemetery.
A probate notice on Nov. 10, 1936, p. 50, said that she left an estate valued at $24,094, the bulk of which she left to her sister Katherine.
The basic copyright term in Japan is for the life of the author plus 50 years. Works created by nationals of the Allied Powers in World War II that were under copyright before or during the war, are given copyright extensions. For Americans, that extension is for 3,794 days (10.3 years), the length of time the U.S. was officially at war with Japan (1941–1952).
1936 + 50 + 10.3 = 1996
I don’t know where you are getting that year 1949 from. There are thousands of works published as late as 1963 which have lapsed into the U.S. public domain because their copyright owners neglected to renew them. To give you an example, the copyright renewal rate for books in 1958–1959 (for books published and registered with the U.S. Copyright Office in 1930–1931) was only 7%. When you consider that many books never had their copyrights registered for their first term, the percentage is even smaller.
No, you do not. Under U.S. copyright law, the plaintiff can elect to sue for actual damages and profits, or statutory damages (“a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 as the court considers just”). The law. In a famous recent case, J.K. Rowling and her publisher sued the publisher of a Harry Potter encyclopedia for copyright infringement. The encyclopedia had not yet been published, so no actual damages had occurred. The court awarded the plaintiffs $750 for each of the Harry Potter books that were infringed.