On Oct 7, 8:03 pm, glenbadd wrote:
On Oct 8, 9:56 am, Andre Jute wrote:

RDH4 COPYRIGHT -- THE MASTER FACT FILE
by Andre Jute

COPYRIGHT AS PROPERTY
Copyright is property. Generally speaking, the author of a book
creates the copyright and owns it.

There are essentially 2 copyright regimes, the copyright of
literary expression (the words) and the copyright of the
presentation (the printing of the book). The author generally
owns the former, the publisher generally owns the latter.
An editor of a book (eg. F L-S) generally does not own
anything. The copyright can be freely assigned and
traded to other people and organisations. Its hard to say
who owns copyright of old books without contacting
the cited owner and following the trail of ownership
to the present day.

My 2c, Glenn.

Tres exactement!

However, in this case of the RDH4 each of the points you make is
resolved and important in its resolution.

The editor, Langford-Smith, and other contributing authors, are
important because under Australian law the *term* of a corporate
copyright is tied to their lifetimes, i.e. 70 calendar years from when
the last one dies.

In this case it is easy to determine who owns the copyright of this
important old book, the RDH4, because when Newnes brought out a
facsimile edition in 1997, they trumpeted their mother ship's
ownership fo the copyright to the skies by printing in every copy:
cReed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd 1997

Your point about the copyright and the setting being separate pieces
of property: that's significant, and the copyright thieves who make
PDFs to offer over the net perforce steal the setting too. An example
is the thieves Gregg, Tim Williams and Choky Prodanovic who offer a
stolen RDH4 from a Canadian netsite; they have cut away the title page
and the copyright notice in an effort to disguise which edition and
whose typesetting they stole. But there was ever only one typesetting
which the present copyright owner bought together with the copyright,
so the thieves shot themselves in the foot, because the deletion of
the title page and copyright page confirm their intention of stealing
the copyright.

By the way, the editor doesn't always own nothing, especially if he is
more accurately described as a compiler. In the middle nineties I
conceived and packaged a set of books for Batsford and acted as
general editor, and retained a third of the royalties even on those I
didn't write, because the overall concept and ideas for the books were
mine. Each case must be judged on its merits,

****

RDH4 COPYRIGHT -- THE MASTER FACT FILE
by Andre Jute

COPYRIGHT AS PROPERTY
Copyright is property. Generally speaking, the author of a book
creates the copyright and owns it. In most of the civilized world the
copyright is protected by national and international law for the
author's lifetime plus 70 years from the year after the year in which
he dies. The countries in which this true includes those in the EU,
America, and many in the Commonwealth, including Australia. Copyright
across borders is protected both by international agreement and by
mutual reciprocity arrangements between nations.

THE CREATION OF COPYRIGHT: AUTOMATIC AND PRESUMPTIVE
Copyright is automatic and presumptive. Automatic means the work does
not have to be registered, or even covered by a copyright notice and/
or symbol, because the copyright protection comes into being the
moment the work is created. Presumptive means the law assumes the
creator or his successors own it, and all pretenders must prove
otherwise.

RDH4: AUSTRALIAN ORIGIN AND FIRST OWNERSHIP
The Radio Designer's Handbook is an Australian book. The Fourth
Edition, an entirely new book compared to the Third Edition, was
published in 1953 and followed at later date(s) with substantially
revised and enlarged edition(s). It is the work of ten authors and
twenty-three collaborating engineers. The Editor was F. Langford-
Smith, an employee of Amagamated Wireless Valve of Sydney, Australia.
Under Australian law AWV became the first copyright holder. Note that
Australian law the term of such a corporately held copyright runs not
from publication but for the term of the *author's life* plus 70
calender years.

IS THE RDH4 IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN?
No, of course not. Assuming that all the authors were dead at
publication (clearly very unlikely as they made revisions and addenda
for years afterwards!), 70 calendar years from 1953 will be 2024. So
the question of the RDH4 entering the public domain cannot even arise
until the end of 2024. The material in the later revised and enlarged
edition will be protected even beyond that.

WHEN WILL THE RDH4 ENTER THE PUBLIC DOMAIN?
The RDH4 will enter the public domain 70 years after someone proves
that the last of the authors is dead. Since there are at least 33 of
them, plus possibly additional parties who wrote revisions and made
additions, some of them perhaps newly graduated engineers in the dozen
or so years after 1953, the likelihood is that several of them are
still alive. (I wish them much longer life!) The question cannot even
begin to be asked until sometime between 2024 and 2038.

AWV NO LONGER EXISTS. DID THE COPYRIGHT DIE WITH THE CORPORATION?
Copyright of the RDH4 is tied to the life of the author; it cannot be
exhausted before 70 years after the life of the author has passed.
Someone *always* owns it. The AWV copyright was acquired by Reed-
Elseviers, a major publishing group. In 1997 the Newnes scientific and
engineering imprint of Reed published a facsimile edition of the last,
revised and expanded RDH4. Newnes proudly printed the copyright
holder's name in every copy:
cReed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd 1997
Anyone who wants to exploit the RDH4 copyright requires a license from
Reed.

WHAT ABOUT THOSE WHO DISTRIBUTE THE RDH4 ON THE INTERNET?
Unless they have a license from the copyright holder, they're thieves.
One set of thieves in Canada, for instance, lie about Canadian
copyright law to make it appear to the ignorant as if the RDH is out
of copyright (it isn't!) and then they cut off the title page and
copyright notice from the copy they offer in an effort to make their
lie work. Both these activities (lying about copyright, cutting off
title and copyright pages) are criminal acts, quite aside from the
theft of the copyright. The expensive typesetting of the book is
another piece of property, another theft when they scan it to PDF.

BUT THEY SAY OTHERS HAVE GOT AWAY WITH IT, SOMETIMES FOR A LONG TIME
The fact that they have stolen property repeatedly doesn't make it
theirs. Even the fact that the rightful owner doesn't object doesn't
excuse their crime, or act as a defense in law. The presumptive nature
of copyright ownership implies that the owner needs do nothing, until
one day he chooses to make an example of some thief. There are no
squatters' rights in copyright.

WHAT ABOUT THE MIRRORS OF THE NETTHIEVES OF THE RDH4?
The operators of the mirrors, and their ISP's, are guilty of copyright
theft under the laws of their own countries, and complicit in the
criminal act of cutting away the title page and copyright notice; they
are also complicit in the seperate crime of theft of the typesetting.

WHAT ABOUT PEOPLE WHO REPRINT THE RDH4 ON CD ETC?
I imagine they have licences from Reed. That is standard practice for
respectable publishers. It is open to anyone to approach the copyright
holder with an offer to negotiate a license to publish the RDH4.

BUT THE LAW IN MY COUNTRY IS DIFFERENT
It may seem so. But usually, on deeper enquiry, you will discover a
reciprocity arrangement which, in the majority of cases, permit the
books of a foreign author or publisher to be treated in your country
as if the laws of the foreign country applies.

CAN COPYRIGHT LAW REALLY BE THIS SIMPLE AND STRAIGHFORWARD?
For honest people the answer, surprisingly, is yes! But it is true
that for the dishonest, who wriggle and turn and lie to try and claim
a book is out of copyright when it isn't, and of course for lawyers,
copyright can be subtle and sometimes tricky. Check out the bit above
where in Australia the term of a corporate copyright is the *author's
life plus 70 calendar years*; in America the corresponding term for a
corporate copyright is *95 years from publication*. In the global
village that sort of difference, and reciprocity agreements relating
to the treatment of such differences, can easily trip up the careless,
but only professionals really need to get in that deep.

I hope these notes help everyone understand why it is theft to give
away copies of the RDH4 on the internet.

Andre Jute
http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/
8 October 2007

© This text is copyright Andre Jute 2007. It is given as a public
service and may be freely reprinted in not-for-profit publications as
long as it is intact and this notice remains with it.