Forum: Author Hangout

That would be plagiarism and a possible copyright violation.

SB was talking about an book with an expired copyright.

1. With an expired copyright, no copyright violation is possible.

2 Outside of academia, plagiarism has no consequences beyond public scorn.

Someone might claims to be defauded, but no.

Also anything with cameras that use cellophane film is likely too recent for an expired copyright.

Really old film was cellulose nitrate. George Eastman invented it in 1889. It was very flammable and degraded with time by oxidation. Kodak invented a substitute film using cellulose di-acetate and promoted it as 'Safety Film'. Everyone, Agfa, Ansco, Ilford, etc., switched away from nitrocellulose at about the same time. The switch over was 1909, almost a hundred twenty years ago. In the USA a copyright is valid for the life of the author plus 70 years.

In the USA a copyright is valid for the life of the author plus 70 years.

Actually, the 1909 copyright act had a term of 28 years, renewable once and once only for a total of 56 years, and you had to register to have a copyright at all.

1976 copyright act, changed it to life + 50 years, matching the Berne Convention. And that increase in the term was not retroactive.

In 1998, they extended it to life + 70 years and made it retroactive to all copyrights that were still live.

1998 - 58 = anything pre-1940 is public domain.

1998 - 58 = anything pre-1940 is public domain.

That applies in the US, does it apply in - for example - Canada? In any jurisdiction where the Bern Convention still applies, any work where the author died in/before 1976 would either be out of copyright already or at the end of this year.

I remember when VCR's first came out their competition was the Betamax. That one lasted a year or so.

The only thing that Betamax lost on was marketing & price. VHS was pushed heavily at a lower price. Beta had a better system, but... A friend had several Beta machines and literally 1000's of tapes as they recorded a finer picture. As I understand, the system was very similar to the systems used by TV stations.

longer recording times. Up to 6 hours (at lower quality, of course) on VHS

As well as many E240 (4hr) tapes I had a couple of E300 (5hr) tapes, so recording those at the lower quality half-speed would give 10hr recording - but, my recorder back then only handled standard speed. The 5hr tape was long enough to record an all-day sporting event while I was out, though.

Time to water down the market, I think.

Find every out-of-copyright story you can, publish them, $1 dollar each and the advertise as every dollar made is going to charity.