query about copyright

Tue May 23 19:22:18 UTC 2006

Dear Janice,

This was very professional non-advice.  Maybe you missed you calling. 
Perhaps you should have gone to law school.

How is your summer going?  It's been very pleasant here (excepting, of 
course, the media firestorm surrounding our lacrosse team); the weather is 
beautiful and the campus is quiet.

I spent the week before last in Rio de Janeiro.  This is the second time 
I've gone down there to consult with lawyers on the Stolichnaya vodka 
trademark litigation.  Unfortunately, the weather was bad--it rained every 
day, and I spent most of my time either in the hotel or in lawyers' 
offices.  Though I was staying in Ipanema, it could have been almost 
anywhere.

Hope all is well with you.

Best wishes,
Michael

--On Tuesday, May 23, 2006 1:15 PM -0500 Janice Pilch <pilch at UIUC.EDU> 
wrote:

> Dear Natalie,
>
> Public domain status is based on the law of the country where
> the work is being used. A work can be protected in one
> country and in the public domain in another, and determining
> this involves a number of factors. Do you intend to make use
> of the works in the U.S. or in Canada?
>
> If there is an identifiable author, that author holds the
> initial rights, but the individual may transfer those rights
> to any other party, for example, to a publisher, or to an
> heir or other assignee, at any time. If an eligible work is
> anonymous, it still qualifies for copyright protection, and
> that copyright term is usually based on the date of creation
> or publication.
>
> If lubki or lubki-type works are reproduced in books, and the
> original works are protected, the individual authors (or
> their assignees or hers, etc.) hold the copyright. In
> addition to this, there may be a copyright in the book as a
> whole, as a compilation. In this case, the original author
> (or assignee, heir, etc.) holds the copyright to the original
> images, and the editor or compiler holds the copyright to the
> compilation, as a derivative work. If the original works are
> not protected, the compiler still holds the rights to the
> compilation.
>
> In the case of folk works, there are additional
> considerations. Folk works are a gray area in copyright law
> today, not all the issues have been resolved. Some nations
> treat folk works differently from ?normal? works, by
> stipulating in their copyright law that folk works are
> protected, or the opposite-- that they are not. General
> characteristic of folk works are that they have no
> identifiable authors or dates of creation, they are
> unpublished, and in the case of oral works, they are not
> fixed in material form.
>
> So if any of the lubki or lubki-type prints you wish to use
> have identifiable authors or dates of creation, they should
> be treated as ?normal? works and not as folk works, and the
> provisions of U.S. or Canadian law will apply if you intend
> to use them in either country. If the lubki are truly
> anonymous and don?t have dates of creation, they can more
> likely be considered true folk works, and lucky for you:
>
> The Russian Federation (where I assume all the lubki you want
> to use originated) does not extend copyright protection to
> folk works, and the USSR did not at any time provide
> protection to works of folk expression. The U.S. does extend
> copyright protection to expressions of folklore as original
> works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression.
> In Canada the scope of copyright protection for works of
> folklore is grayer.  However, because the lubok tradition
> ended in the early 20th century, lubki would not have
> received protection in the U.S. or Canada under the Universal
> Copyright Convention because the USSR joined that convention
> in 1973. And they would not have had their copyright restored
> under the Berne Convention in the U.S. or Canada because they
> were not protected in the RF on January 1, 1996. So, all this
> leads to the answer: real lubki are not protected today in
> the RF, U.S. or Canada.
>
> Compilations of lubki may be protected as derivative works,
> depending on when and where they were first published. If a
> compilation is still protected, you are not authorized to
> reproduce the selection or arrangement in whole or large part
> without permissions, i.e. you cannot reprint a published
> collection of lubki if it is still copyrighted. But the
> individual prints would not be protected.
>
> The key thing for you is to make sure that you are dealing
> with real lubki as folk works and not lubki-style prints that
> can be attributed to an author or that have a defined date of
> creation. And it is important to distinguish between original
> works of folklore and compilations of folklore, which may
> qualify as derivative works, in order to make the appropriate
> assessments on copyright protection.
>
> Finally, I am offering this advice as chair of the AAASS
> Bibliography and Documentation Subcommittee on Copyright
> Issues. I have to add the customary disclaimer that I am not
> a lawyer and not authorized to give legal advice. The above
> information should not be taken as legally binding, but only
> as informal assistance to provide some direction for you.
> Please feel free contact me directly if you have any further
> questions!
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Janice Pilch
>
>
> ---- Original message ----
>> Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 14:53:05 -0600
>> From: nataliek at UALBERTA.CA
>> Subject: [SEELANGS] query about copyright
>> To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>>
>> Dear Fellow list members,
>>
>> I'm looking for some illustrations and would love to use
> lubki.  I know
>> that a number of folklore books have used lubki as
> illustrations.  Here
>> is the question (or rather questions): are lubki in the
> public domain?
>> If not, who holds the copyright?  What about lubki that have
> been
>> reproduced in books?  Who owns those?
>>
>> On a related topic, does anyone know of books with drawings
> that could
>> be used to illustrate Slavic folklore?  I have found photos
> that are
>> outside copyright restrictions.  But some drawings would be
> nice,
>> especially for beings of the imagination like the
> domovoi/domovyk,
>> leshii/lisovyk, etc.  Again, these have to be in the public
> domain.
>> This means published before 1923.
>>
>> Thanks in advance.
>>
>> Natalie Kononenko
>>
>> Kule Chair of Ukrainian Ethnography
>> University of Alberta
>> Modern Languages and Cultural Studies
>> 200 Arts Building
>> Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E6
>> Phone: 780-492-6810
>> Web: http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/uvp/
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------
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> ------------
> ----------------------------------------
> Janice T. Pilch, Assistant Professor of Library Administration; Acting
> Head, Slavic and East European Acquisitions; Librarian for South Slavic
> Studies, Baltic Studies, and Slavic Languages & Literatures University of
> Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
> 1408 West Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL 61801
> Tel. (217) 244-9399

Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies
Duke University
303 Languages Building
Box 90260
Durham, NC  27708-0260
Tel.: 919-660-3150
Fax: 919-660-3188

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