How do I know if something is in the public domain?

Factual Questions
1

Background: for a class project, I have to annotate a fairy tale. Well, I could do a term paper, but either one has to be online with back and forth links between text, annotations and citations, and I’ve done enough term papers that I can’t take one this semester.

That said, the fairy tale has to be in the public domain so I can use it and post it online. The problem is, I have no idea how to determine whether it is or isn’t and the last thing I want to do is violate copyright.
Yeah, some aspects of the librarian thing still escape me. :wink:

2

IANAL but I can give you something to think about while we’re waiting for one to come along. Most fairy tales–the characters and plot–are in the public domain, but it’s the specific publication of one that is copyrighted. My kids have two different versions of The Emperor’s New Clothes, and three of The Three Little Pigs, but they’re all copyrighted. I think that even the stories of Cinderella and Snow White are public domain even though everyone thinks of the Disney versions. That said, it will be easy to find a public domain fairy tale, but if you get the story out of any published book you will annotating a copyrighted work.

BTW, who said that the fairy tale has to be in the public domain? Is is a project requirement, or are you simply assuming it? I do not believe it is a violation of copyright law to annotate a copyrighted work if the annotations create a substantive change (derivative work). I’m pretty shaky on what’s allowed though; just food for thought.

3

Yes, the fairy tale does have to be in the public domain if Lsura is going to post it in its entirety on the web. The fact that annotations may be added matters not.

That said, googling on Grimm’s fairy tales will bring up lots of English translations that were made before 1923, which puts even the translations into the public domain.

Here’s one such: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/grimm/index2.html

4

Virtually all of the best known fairy tales are in the public domain.
“Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Puss in Boots,” “Lttle Red Riding Hood” and several others were first published by Charles Perrault in 1697. The Brothers Grimm were collecting and publishing stories such as “Snow White” in the early 1800s, but in all cases the stories were far older.

In the beginning of US copyright law, an original work could be copyrighted for 25 years. It would then pass into the public domain unless the copyright was renewed for another 25 years, making a 50 year max. Collected works, works rewritten with new illustrations, etc. could be copyrighted, too. (Again fifty year max.) So by 1950, anything copyrighted in 1900 or before went into the public domain.

Now, thanks mostly to Disney, copyrights last longer. It gets tricky giving a cut-off date and saying anything published before XXXX is now in the public domain. However, anything that has passed into the public domain may be reproduced freely.
To be on the safe side, copy out of a book printed in 1900 or earlier.

IANAL, though

5

In principle it’s very difficult to know. In practice, it’s possible to find texts that are in the public domain, which you can use.

I am not a lawyer, and copyright law is very complex. As a general rule, in the USA, if something was published before 1923, and was first published in the USA, it is out of copyright. Note that for translations it is the date of translation not the date of publication that counts. Works published after that date will probably but not always be copyrighted (under older law, copyright had to be renewed, so the owners may not have done that).

See the US govt website at http://www.copyright.gov/

To find public domain texts, you can look at the texts in Project Gutenberg. Although they don’t guarantee that the texts are out of copyright, the vast majority are. They have a number of fairytale books, including Andrew Lang’s numerous fairy books - The Crimson Fairy Book, The Green Fairy Book, The Blue Fairy Book, etc (plus Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz books). Lang died in 1912, and his works are out of copyright.

6

I’ve posted on this so many times on this site that I have a link very handy for what is and isn’t in Public Domain:

http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/training/Hirtle_Public_Domain.htm

The SDMB really ought to consider putting this in the FAQ.

7

Please note that almost everything VernWinterbottom says is wrong or misleading.

Use Anthacite’s chart instead for easy reference.

8

Another good guide is Project Gutenburg. The folks there reproduce stuff that’s in the public domain, and they are experts at figuring out what is and what isn’t. So if you can find something on PG, you can be pretty certain it’s in the public domain.

9

I was about to point out the same thing. The old copyright law (passed in the 1910s) gave works a 17 year term, with renewal for another 17 years.

In 1977, the term was changed to the author’s life + 50. Disney wasn’t involved, but plenty of living authors cheered the change.

In the 90s, the term was changed to life + 70. The impetus for this was due to a change in the Berne Convention, in part due to the wish of the Bavarian government to keep Mein Kampf under copyright to prevent its spread. Disney didn’t mind the change, but it was Hitler who brought it on.

10

Please note that RealityChuck’s years and numbers are all wrong.

11

Thanks, y’all. It looks like I should probably start with Project Gutenburg and then do some further checking to make sure what I choose is in the public domain, just to be safe!

12

Buena Vista Entertainment/The Third Reich. What’s the difference? :smiley:

13

Sorry I’m such a lamebrain. What I was trying to get across is that just because a published book has a copyright notice, does not mean that all of the individual parts of the book are copyrighted.

Example:In 1956, Dover Publications published Sailing Around the World Alone by Captain Joshua Slocum. This book was originally published by The Century Company in 1900. Dover’s edition was a facsimile of the original. The only thing Dover added was a new introduction. Although this particular book is copyrighted, the words written by Slocum, originally published serially in 1899-1900, were and still are in the public domain.

Today someone could publish Sailing Around the World Alone by Joshua Slocum with original illustrations, a collection of vintage photos, computer generated maps, and copyright that book. The words written by Slocum would still be in the public domain.

The chart Anthracite provided is great. But the date a book was copyrighted doesn’t necessarily mean the stuff inside isn’t in the public domain.

14

In the Slocum case, the proper way to handle it would be with a copyright notice that said: introduction copyright 1956. To just copyright the whole book would be a sloppy way of handling it, and I would be surprised that a specialty reprinter like Dover would do it that way.

I found on my shelves a 1960 Dover edition of The Fourth Dimension Simply Explained and the notice reads:

No copyright is given at all.

On the other hand, my copy of The Origin of Species, a facsimile edition put out by the British firm of Senate, says:

In the U.S. you can extend copyright to display - the fonts and art direction of pages – so that no one can just photocopy your pages and put it out as their own work, but this is a facsimile so I don’t see how copyright would be applied to it. Maybe UK law is different.

VernWinterbottom’s point that public domain works do not come back into copyright just because they are republished or included in a compilation is completely correct. Once in the public domain always in the public domain.

(Except that when the UK extended its copyright by 20 years it brought back some works into p.d. The U.S. law handled it differently so that no works were so affected.)

But what I thought was misleading about his original post was his giving the orignal publication dates for the fairy tales. For non-English works, the date of first publication doesn’t matter unless you are using the original French or German or whatever. It’s the date of the English translation that counts when reprinting a fairy tale in English.

And works before 1923 are in the p.d., a big difference from pre-1900.

I should get the correct numbers in here someplace, too. Copyright was originally for 14 years plus a 14 year renewal, then went to 28 + 14, then to 28 + 28 before the Copyright Law of 1976 did away with renewals entirely.

Just to be completely even-handed, I’ll also nitpick myself. While the Copyright Law of 1998 explicitly references the Berne Convention, in practice the 20 year extension was tacked on to match what the European Union (and the UK) had already done, since the vast bulk of exports and imports of books are to those countries.

15

Not so fast! As in all things, it depends. In this case it depends on WHICH Project Gutenberg you are using AND the laws of the country in which it is based. For instance, Project Gutenberg of Australia follows, obviously, Australian copyright law which extends the copyright only to fifty years after the author’s death. therefore you can get books there that, if Disney’s lawyers have their way, will NEVER fall into the public domain in the US.

16

From Sailing Around the World Alone by Captain Joshua Slocum:

Thanks Exapno for partially redeeming me. Besides mentioning IANAL, I should have added IRJAI, “I’m Really Just An Idiot.”

17

I didn’t mean to doubt you. But this is a sloppy way to handle it and I am surprised at Dover. They should know better. Even retroactively in 1956.