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When you rewrite a book like this, does it reset the copyright? Matilda was set to become public domain in 2060 (70 years after Dahl's death). With the books no
by whoopdedo 4y ago
When you rewrite a book like this, does it reset the copyright? Matilda was set to become public domain in 2060 (70 years after Dahl's death). With the books now owned by a corporation and essentially recreated by them, the copyright extends another fifty years.
- undersuit 4y agoYes, their version of Matilda is a new work.
- josephcsible 4y agoThe rewritten version gets a fresh copyright timer of its own, but the original's copyright still expires the same time it was always going to.
- detrites 4y agoSo, if the publisher changes a single word in a new copyright, and the old one expires, can the publisher sue someone who shared the old version? It'd only be one word off, so they could argue it's effectively infringement...
- josephcsible 4y agoNo. If that trick worked, you'd have seen it happen to at least one extremely popular public domain work (e.g., the King James Bible) by now.
- bentley 4y agoThe King James Bible is actually under perpetual Crown Copyright in the UK.
- bentley 4y agoThey could make that argument, but wouldn’t succeed (speaking from the US legal viewpoint, anyway). The only copyright held by the publisher would cover the additions and changes; the original work would no longer be copyrightable.
- inglor_cz 4y agoYou can always sue, but the court may laugh at you.
- imetatroll 4y agoSo ironically the forbidden versions will be released freely first. Hilarious.
- kmeisthax 4y agoYes, but the new copyright only applies to the creative aspects of the changes. And that's an extremely thin copyright. So once the originals enter the public domain, the only thing they would be able to sue over is "you bowdlerized the book in exactly the same way I did".
- webmaven 4y agoI suspect that, upon the expiration of the original copyright, there will be new bowdlerized versions made, but that those will bear little resemblance to the versions now being released, except that some of the same things will have been changed, though not changed in the same way.