I have had in my possession for some months now a Calculus textbook with a copyright date of 2011.
And I’ve just had my attention drawn to a new edition of a different textbook that will be available in January 2011—but the copyright date is 2012. (cite)
Why is the copyright date not the year the book is actually published? What does a book’s copyright date actually refer to, anyway?
The reason why they do it is pretty clear to me: the publisher is pretending that the book is more up-to-date than it really is. However, I don’t know what the legal effect is. I’d like to see a case where someone copied a work with copyright claimed in the future. I suspect it would be an infringement (because an unpublished work is still copyright), but you might have a case that statutory damages don’t apply (because the publisher has not yet claimed copyright).
Under current law, a mistake in a copyright notice does not make the copyright invalid (as it did prior to 1977). If the textbook has registered their copyright, the error in the notice doesn’t matter. Any infringement is still infringement as if the notice were correct.
Judging by the cite, it could also be an error on the web page with the book having a date of 2011.
Copyright is normally claimed as of the “publication date”, which for books and some periodicals is a rather arbitrary date, corresponding roughly to the on-sale date for release of a publication. A moment’s thought, however, will indicate that physical copies of the publication will usually exist prior to the official publication date – advance copies for review, etc., in addition to warehouse stocks being distributed in the days leading up to the on-sale date. The controversy about unauthorized revelations from advance copies of the last couple of Harry Potter books should help illustrate this.
But is it an error if it is deliberate policy, e.g., if the publisher consistently claims a copyright date in the future? In other words, if someone deliberately makes fraudulent or deceptive statements, can they claim in court that it was “a mistake”?
Well, not for a very long time. Current copyright expiration dates:
Therefore, no public domain claim can possibly be put onto the book until at least 2080.
And nobody can possibly put in a claim now, since copyright is automatic from the point of creation.
Since there is no need to put any date whatsoever on a book, it’s about as moot as a point can be whether the date is a few months off or not.
I have also noted this on books published as early as March carrying copyright years for the following year (and these are books available at B&N, Borders, etc). Many, though not all, are in the technical (topics such as digital photography, computer software guides, etc) area that as one previous poster noted might be advantageous for making buyers think the book is newer.
I also wonder, who chooses the copyright year - the publisher or can the author choose?
Whoever registers the copyright, which usually means the publisher.
In standard commercial publishing, the publisher takes care of copyright.
Again, putting a date on the copyright page doesn’t matter in the slightest. Print material is copyright from the moment of creation. Registration of copyright - which is what matters for lawsuits and is standard for all but the most amateur works - depends on filing with the Library of Congress and goes by the date put on the form.
When it comes to technical books (as pointed out in my previous post), I happen to be one of those people who checks the copyright date to make sure that I am getting the most up to date book. This post dating, therefore, appears to be a deceptive practice aimed at misinforming the buyer.
I do not have the ability (at least that I am aware of) to determine when the publisher submitted the “paperwork” to establish copyright protection!
So is there anything to prevent a publisher from submitting a copyright date of 2015, or 3000?
You can search for copyrights here.
Everything gets examined for correctness by the Copyright Office staff. Could it happen? I suppose in the same way a check dated 2015 or 3000 might get through. But you can’t count on deliberate misinformation making it through any normal supervisory process. I have to assume that mistakes happen any time millions of forms need processing, but I also have to assume that the distribution of mistakes is random across all possible errors. There is no indication that the system is gamed.
I can’t seem to be able to actually find a book either by title or 10-digit ISBN. Is there some secret to searching - I entered both the title (without articles) and ISBN number and got nothing.
If the book is very new it may not have gone through the process yet. The Copyright Office is way behind. They’re still doing 2008 applications that didn’t go through the electronic online file process and even online filing is not immediate. As I said above, someone still needs to check through all that data.
And what happens if someone infringes prior to the incorrect copyright date? They’ve just made it more difficult for themselves to establish their case.
How can you copyright a calculus book? They copy shamelessly from each other.
Who was the person who first invented the sliding ladder problem?
Any textbook is likely to have some original, creative expression. The subject, calculus, is not subject to copyright protection, but the words used to describe it are.
Submitted to whom—to the copyright office, or to the printer? If the former, then of course the copyright office is (barring a clerical oversight) going to reject or delay registration application. (Note that registering copyright is not necessary to establish copyright; copyright exists as soon as a work is created, and registration is an optional step which may grant additional rights in some jurisdictions, such as the right to sue copyright violators for damages as opposed to merely enjoining them from further infringement.) If the latter, then no, of course not, as we’ve seen in this thread. I’ve even seen some blatantly frivolous copyright notices of the forms you imagine: for example, I have a single by Beck which has a copyright year of 19666.