copywrite laws

[bpc293]

how do i find out if its ok to post old books and stuff half of my hard drive is filled with old stuff. like mit guide is ok and new books are not. is there a site i can look it up by puting in the title of the book?

[Keyring]

In your country, and many others, copyright lasts 70 years from date of publication. The date of publication will almost always appear in the book.

[bpc293]

so anything before 1934. is it some authors ok the use of there stuff and how do you find this out.

[UWSDWF]

contact the publisher

[Shrub]

Dont go posting books on site, its as simple as that then you wont get it wrong by accident,

You will find that anything in the books you have (legally or not) is nothing new on here, you will find that if you search the stuff is covered much better and many times over, we dont need copied books.

[Raccoon]

It's copyright, not copywrite. They are the rights to copy, not the copying of writings.

As stated, copying and retransmitting books and publications that don't expressly authorize their copying or retransmitting, is simply illegal. However, you may learn information from a book and write your own words to convey that information.

You may reference material from a book, verbatim, but only in small quantities and you must detail exactly what book and page you are referencing. You should only do this when writing about the information in your own words, and include a reference to give your words authority.

Hope this helps.

[lockedin]

To tell you the truth BPC, I have no qualms about downloading software and movies when they come from wealthy corporations and movie studios that are not paragons of ethics themselves. But when it comes to locksmithing publications most of the authors are not the wealthiest men (I don't imagine Steve Hampton is part of a Country Club), and they have put a lot of work into the writing, plus it's the policy of the forum.

[greyman]

I wouldn't be posting any material from books that are more recent than about 1850. I seem to remember reading on the UK Intellectual property site that copyright in published works resides with the author for 70 years after his or her death. I could be wrong about this however. I believe there are also significant variations in copyright law from one country to the next so it's always best to check.

[jimb]

reading on the UK Intellectual property site that copyright in published works resides with the author for 70 years after his or her death.

I thought the US also had this law.

[Keyring]

Yeah. Apologies greyman you are right. It is the authors death, not the date of publication. And the US has basically the same. I think there is probably information on this at Project Gutenburg, among other places. I haven't been active in this area recently but I once wrote a program for reading books on Gameboys and Gameboy Advance, and studied copyright then.

From the point of view of locks this severely limits the point of doing this. But I used to enjoy old Jules Verne stories, and once made a Gameboy Advance cartridge with the complete Sherlock Holmes stories on, including all the illustrations.