Seriel numbers / dates document based on Pierce Piano Atlas

[David Boyce]

This is an interesting area of copyright law.  (The UK and US Copyright Acts 
are broadly very similar).

Copyright is not a thing that you DO, you don't "copyright" a work. 
Copyright is a set of rights that the law *automatically* gives you over any 
*work* that you produce.  (Similarly, you do not have to register to not be 
mugged or burgled - the law automatically gives you those rights as a 
citizen).

Now, in the case of a set of train times, or football match fixtures, or 
piano numbers, the "work" that you "produce" is not the train times or the 
match dates or the piano numbers. That information already exists. What you 
make or produce, is a TYPOGRAPHICAL ARRANGEMENT of already-existing 
information.  What you have rights over, in such a case, is your 
typographical arrangement. The information itself is not a "work", but the 
styling by you of it into a list is.

Thus, with the Piano Atlas, if someone sat and laboriously copied out all 
the dates and numbers in a new typographical arrangement, and then had it 
published, either in printed form or on the web, that really would not 
constitute an infringement of copyright.law. On the other hand, if someone 
simply scanned the pages of Pierce Piano Atlas, and  reproduced them on the 
web, or in  their own printed edition, that WOULD be copyright infringement. 
In that case, the "work" - the typographical arrangement - has been copied.

The publisher of Pierce does not "own" the information that a Splodget and 
Sons piano numbered 5003 was made in 1935. What he does own, is the 
arrangemernt of the information as a style of type in a position on a page 
in a particular composition.

Where the contents of a book are, in and of themselves, the product on the 
author's mind, in tangible form, the situation is different. In a book of 
poems written by you, you own the poems themselves and have rights over 
their reproduction (and performance).

Copright in general lasts for seventy years after the end of the year in 
which the author dies. If he leaves no will, his next-of-kin inherit the 
copyright. If he has a will, he can bequathe copright like anything else 
that he owns.


Best,

David.



"Publishing the contents of a copyrighted book is both illegal and 
unethical. Participating in the benefits of this revelation of material and 
subsequent copying of it puts all parties at risk. Be warned. The publisher 
Larry Ashley is now in pursuit of this highly unprofessional, disgusting 
practice so many of you seem to take lightly. I challenge the PTG members in 
charge of this list to forthwith make statements and effect practices to 
stop this behavior now and prevent the inevitable law suit.

For shame on this body of miscreants.

Joseph Alkana RPT"