Soviet copyright law (1)

[Janice Pilch]

Dear Edward,

International copyright operates on the principles of
reciprocal relation and national treatment between the
country of origin of the work and the country where the work
is being used. For published works, the country of origin is
generally considered to be the country where the work was
first published. For unpublished works, the country of origin
is based on other criteria such as nationality or habitual
residence of the author. This is often described as the
country that has the closest relationship to the author.

Censored or not, Bulgakov's work known as Master i Margarita
was first published in the USSR in 1966-67. I think that most
courts would agree that a copyright determination on this
work in the U.S. should be based on U.S.-Russia copyright
relations. But at the same time, because of the nature of
this work, the situation is not black-and-white, and the
copyright determination would also depend on what exactly
you were doing with the work.

It is difficult for me to say how the parts that were first
published in a later edition would be viewed. Copyright law
is not that specific, and the determination would be subject
to legal interpretation. Some might argue that the bits
published later are copyrighted on the basis of the date and
place of their first publication, aside from the original
parts. I suppose than an argument could also be made that the
later, uncensored edition would be a whole new work, subject
to its own copyright.

But I can say with reasonable certainty that if you were to
take large sections of the 1966-67 work that were identical
to those in the "uncensored" version and use them in a way
that was not considered fair use or did not fall under an
exemption, you would be infringing on the 1966-67 copyright.
That expression first appeared in 1966-67--period.

If the use you have in mind is the whole work, you should
count from the first publication, which is the 1966-67 Soviet
publication.

If the use you have in mind involves only the originally
censored parts, which is unlikely--what would be the point?--
you might think about it differently. But there is no answer
in the law itself--the final determination would be made in a
courtroom if you were sued for infringement. So I always tell
people to play it safe, and be as conservative as possible in
the counting.

Yes, Russians must obey the same rules of counting, using the
copyright terms established in their law to protect foreign
works.

Sincerely,

Janice Pilch

---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 23:29:29 -0500
>From: Edward M Dumanis <dumanis at BUFFALO.EDU>
>Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Soviet copyright law
>To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>
>I am not sure here why journal Moskva's publication is a
starting point.
>It was not a full version published at that time; it was cut
by the
>Soviet censors. The full version was first published in the
West. Should
>we count then from the time of the first western edition?
And should then
>Russia obey the same rules of counting?
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Edward Dumanis <dumanis at buffalo.edu>
>
>On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, Janice Pilch wrote:
>
>............/snip/....................
>
>> Another interesting example is that of Bulgakov's The
Master
>> and Margarita, written in the years before Bulgakov's
death
>> in 1940, and first published in Moscow in the journal
Moskva
>> in 1966-67. The term of protection for posthumously
published
>> works in Russia is now 70 years from publication. This
means
>> that The Master and Margarita is protected in Russia
through
>> 2037. Since it was protected in Russia on January 1, 1996,
>> the novel is protected in the U.S. for 95 years from
>> publication, through 2062.
>
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----------------------------------------
Janice T. Pilch, Assistant Professor of Library Administration
Acting Head, Acquisitions, Slavic and East European Library
Librarian for South Slavic Studies and Slavic Languages & Literatures
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1408 West Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL 61801
Tel. (217) 244-9399  E-mail: pilch at uiuc.edu

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