Talk:The Variable Man

1957 compilation copyright only protects that compilation as a whole, not the individual parts of the story collection

Copyright for the 1957 compilation The Variable Man and other stories (The Variable Man (collection)) was renewed under Registration Number RE0000280528. This protects the compilation as a whole but the individual components are copyrighted or in the public domain depending on their individual copyright status. This could be a little confusing for people who do a search title search and find a copyright renewal for "The Variable Man and other stories". I can explain that in the footnotes if it is necessary. If anyone thinks it is necessary, let me know or take care of it yourself. Perhaps a direction to see the talk page would be adequate and not clutter up the footnote section too much. Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 15:08, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Copyright status section

I created a copyright status section for increased prominence. Project Gutenberg and some other sites are apparently being "harvested" to sell freely available public domain works at an online ebook retailer with no disclosure of this information. This is legal but I think people should have knowledge before buying what is in public domain and available for free.

Additionally and more importantly, I think prominently including copyright status information on works in the public domain and how to verify it may encourage people who own copies of public domain works to scan and appropriately share them, preserving works that may otherwise disappear and making them publically available during the lifetimes of the majority of people who will actually be interested in reading or viewing them. Anyone who thinks this is inappropriately pushing agendas (e.g., encouraging freedom of speech, encouraging freedom of the press, encouraging preservation of information, encouraging informed consumer decisions, discouraging copyright misuse, discouraging discouraging copyfraud or discouraging anti-competitive practices) on Wikipedia should feel free to discuss this. So far I've been doing this mostly for works by my favorite author because those are articles I'm most interested in editing but Copyright Catalog searchs of magazines show there are many works published in the same magazines which are by notable authors or inherently notable for other reasons and I intend to do the same with many of those works in appropriate articles, if other editors don't. Also I have author specific bibliographies which enable me to be certain of first publications and other information allowing certainty that no works by that author were in their second term of copyright protection prior to 1978 which means I don't need to search for Copyright Catalog Entries that aren't listed in the Copyright Office's online catalog. If there is a legitemate problem with this I'm sure some rule I've overlooked can be cited or there is someplace for neutral parties to resolve differences of opinions. Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 10:45, 2 March 2010 (UTC)