[Sca-librarians] copyright on scribal artworks

[Carlson, Marc]

That's insane.  I don't doubt you, but that makes less sense than most SCA legal decisions.  Manuscripts pre-1890 (call it 1850 if you want to be paranoid) is public domain pretty much every where in the world.  There are two exceptions that I know of, the first being an obscure EU law stating that the first person to publish a previously unpublished manuscript can claim copyright IN SOME countries for 25 years.  Australia appears to not have a public domain upper limit, and I believe no fair use, so the 10% use thing is garbage.

I'm pretty conservative on my copyright interpretation for my job, but that's just silly.

Marc/Diarmaid

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 3, 2012, at 12:23 AM, "Johnna Holloway" <johnnae at mac.com<mailto:johnnae at mac.com>> wrote:

I think what you are going to find is that there is US and international copyright law and then there is how the SCA
wants to enforce it. And the SCA approach can be much stricter than what is necessary under US law.

(Right now, for instance, one cannot publish a survey article of period quotations because the rules in place count every quotation
as being copyrighted. One is limited to a rule of 10% of the article for the quotations, even if the quotations are original quotations and date from before 1700 or even 1600.
One cannot for instance do a survey of how a recipe changes over time or variants of recipes because you can no longer quote the original material. One cannot describe a historical event using quotations from pre 1600 books because you will exceed the 10% rule. We scream for authenticity but then we choke it back.)

I think you'll have to start by looking at the Chroniclers' Handbook for instructions
on how the SCA wants it done these days and consult your Kingdom Chronicler's Office for their ok.

There are also people who advise the SCA on copyright and the Corporate Office should be able to put you in touch
with them on questions relating to how the SCA wants it done.

Johnnae

On Jun 2, 2012, at 11:45 PM, FV/Rafaella wrote:

Greetings all,

I do this at work everyday but I'd like input from the SCAdian community on this issue.

I'm the "scribal archives" deputy for AnTir. I manage our LibraryThing account (http://www.librarything.com/home/AnTirCOS) and now I'm tackling inventory/preservation/digitization of our photograph and slide collections. (my copyright credentials include training from Laura Gassaway and being a fan of Kenneth Crews and Lawrence Lessig.)

Here's the big question: If we digitize the photos/slides, can we put them up on the web (without getting anything signed? no one collected any sort of permissions in the past, either from scribes or photographers.)

My inclination is "no" but before I tell that to my superior (and take the time to digitize) I'd like to get my justification in order. I may end up digitizing for preservation (and make sure to include "goes into public domain" notes in the metadata) but maybe it's time to start a "hunt for the scribes and get clearances" project.

The visual arts dillemma of photographer vs. artist-of-the-artifact is what causes me confusion in these situations.

I was speaking with my Laurel (who has her OL in C&I) and she said "but we did these for Kingdom, isn't that like work?" and I said that volunteer art wasn't Work For Hire, but it is an interesting line of thought.

I've roamed through VRA (visual resources assoc) and ARLIS/NA (art libraries) websites, without much luck. The new ARL fair use guidelines* apply to teaching in higher ed, not so much for volunteer educational organizations. :-)

Input appreciated.

--Rafaella

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