A Copyright Question

[Vince]

As some may know, I am building the Long Island Rail Road and in the course of my research I have gathered many hundreds of track plans, drawings and photos of the railroad.
The reason I'm asking this is I want to include as many of these documents, photos and drawings as I can when I release the route for distribution.

Now photographs I regard as copyrighted. No use without permission. But what if the guy is dead?

Also, hand drawn track maps, something a dispatcher or conductor would create to make their job easier I regard as copyrighted by the original author but again what if the original author is dead?

My question though is on Official LIRR Blueprints, made for the Long Island Rail Road by whatever engineering firm or the LIRR in house designers.
These blueprints do not bear a Copyright mark. They are engineering drawings once owned by the LIRR and dumped in the trash and rescued by dumpster divers and now preserved in someones website (many now gone some still there)

Since these drawings were discarded by the LIRR (dumped is the word) and then rescued by folks who wanted to preserve Long Island Rail Road history I realize the person(s) who 'rescued' them now own them. But what about copyright?
The Railroad never copyrighted them. The rescuer now owner does not 'own' the copyright because there never was one. All he or she did was root through the trash and save them. The owner owns the thrown out original bluprints I would think but thats the extent of the owners 'control'. He 'owns' them, thats all. No copyright here at all for the specific example I cited, discarded official LIRR blueprints.
Here is an example; A blueprint of the Pond interlocking.

What would be the right thing to do to credit this drawing? Look at the date!
Thank you LIRR?
Thank you unknown dumpster diver?
Or what?

[OTTODAD]

Hi Vince !

I don't think that there are many in this forum who are qualified to give you precise and valid advice, not like outfits like this one can:

http://www.mandourlaw.com

O t t o

[Dan1]

I can only help at the level of experience in working in archives. I am not sure if it is a question of copywrite or a question of referencing. Copywrite as I recall is 75 years from the original. If the author is dead then it goes to the estate - ie surviving heirs.

With something like this I would treat it as documentary evidence especially if you are using it in documentation. That is to say: anything from the net - full url and date accessed. Anything from the public records should have a fond reference. You list the source you obtained it from rather than the original source. If you hold the original copy or you have no reference then you would state 'original / photocopy in authors possession'.

So, in the case of the drawing you have I would put:

'LIRR original blueprint of Pond Interlocking dated xx/xx/xx - any original reference, sheet 4' copy in authors possession or url.

As I say I don't think it is an issue of copywrite - the only time you might hit a copywrite issue is with something taken from someone elses website.

[rdamurphy]

Anything created by or for a Government is not copyrighted. That's why you see NASA pictures all over the net. Also maps, or weather reports, which originate with the USGS or the USWS. As mentioned, public records are just that: You can't copyright your birth certificate or your marraige license!

Robert

[Vince]

Railroad History in the Dumpster. Copyrighted?

Thank you all for taking the time to reply.

What I shall try to do is to credit the persons or the collections when I can.
If the source is unknown I will state exactly that, that the source is unknown and request help in finding the author.
I'm talking about material that in some cases is over 50 years old and had been posted on a website with no source information.

And Robert, I did know that government published material was not copyrighted. After all, you and I paid for it! Part of it anyway, but in such case I would list the source. That's the polite thing to do.

In the case of the Long Island Rail Road though, it was not a government agency in the 1950's where most of my material came from, hence the question of copyrights. And today much of the material is held in collections by the folks who went 'dumpster diving' when the new 'progressive managment' dumped all the history in the trash.
I salute these rescuers of railroad history and do want them to recieve credit for what they did.
Thanks again.

[muskokaandtahoe]

Vince, because of the gross stupidity of the Congress and it's revisions to copyright law, you must start with the assumption that everything produced after ~1921* is still under copyright (excepting, as others have noted, documents from the federal government). It doesn't matter if the creator is dead, or that you cannot contact the creator, or it's obviously something nobody in the right mind would have copyrighted in the first place.

Thank you very much, Sonny the bonehead Bono -- "Copyright should be forever".

'Course, you could also take up a protestor's point of view: if it's over 28 years old it's fair game for fair use. There's no legal basis for that, but hey, the copyright law is a complete ass.

FWIW, the Bono law automatically grants protection to the above text to me and my estate for the period of my lifetime plus 70 years. Can't figure out when it goes into the public domain? Bingo! That's just one reason why this law is an ass.

* 1921 is the year identified as the furthest back in time these changes applied. Because of the ambigity of the protection duration, there's no telling when anything produced after that date falls into the public domain. Corporate works from 1921 start moving into the public domain in 2011 -- 90 years of protection.

[Vince]

Bono's Bonehead.

Now I know why the treehuggers were after him when he wiped out against that 'stupid' tree. He damaged the tree!

I'll make every reasonable effort to contact but if mails go unanswered I will publish any historical material I feel should be included for a history of the Rail Road. If it's published on the Web, Public Domain. I will cite sources, collections as best I can.

As far as the route copyright; I made it. Quoting Sniper here; You may fold, bend, spindle, mutilate, shread, tear, paint, copy and burn the route if you wish.
Just don't try to sell it. You won't hear from me but Microsoft for one and the hundreds of folks in the Sim community might get somewhat pissed if you do.

This message is copyrighted but I dont care what you do with it!

[chucksc]

You guys do know that Bonehead's entire reason de entre was as a creature of the RIAA do you not?

Make more sense now?

[muskokaandtahoe]

You guys do know that Bonehead's entire reason de entre was as a creature of the RIAA do you not?

Make more sense now?

Yes, I do know that.

It's probably not very clear from my comments above how seriously I hold a negative point of view on copyright. I respect copyright on stuff that was produced by the little guys of the world -- MSTS stuff for example. No problem. I pay my money and get my copy. End of story.

OTOH, I see no reason why a copyright period should be any longer than a patent. So long as the media companies have bribed their way into perverting the law to be 4x - 6x longer that a patent, with trivial period reset provisions, I see no particular reason to respect it, especially as it relates to them.

FWIW, under the pre 1977 law, only a 5 percent of all items actually registered for copyright protection came back and registered for an extension. Almost all of that 5% was music and video. Were that law in effect today, 95% of whatever had been created before 1980 would be in the public domain -- meaning virtually all pre 1980 text and photos would be open to everyone.

[rdamurphy]

Hey, Dave, you could call that a "Mickey Mouse" law, y'know!

Robert

[rpicardi1]

Enjoy your broadcast music - while you still can. That music will soon be unavailable from the free airwaves thanks to RIAA and you may have a pay per listening to that music on your subscription radio service or cable TV service in the near future.

When that day comes, all radio will be forced to switch to a talk and news format and the recording industry will self destruct as a result of the greed of the RIAA leaches.

[Hawk]

Maybe this will help.

http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

http://www.templetons.com/brad/copyright.html

[Dan1]

Vince - the one thing I would add is, if you list the sources of information and their location if nothing else it will help future generations of designers. ie MSTS 6 I say this because I've just spent 6 weeks looking for a document that someone incorrectly/inadquetely referenced.

In reference to the documents. I've done some checking up. It is not necessarily copyright but ownership that your issues hang on. In effect possession remains 9/10ths of the law.

I don't know about the history of the LIRR so I will cover all the possible angles.

If the LIRR became government owned then all documents still in the possession of the state (ie in libraries and archives) are considered to be public documents and permission to use/reproduce them is through the normal channels. Government archives etc have

If the LIRR was bought out by a private company (ie UP) and the documents were in the possession of that company then permission to reproduce is from the company.

If the documents were discarded and reclaimed then possession to reproduce is from the person currently in possession of the documents. So if they were found by dumpster diver X and sold to railfan Y and railfan Y were to show you the documents then you would need the permission of Y to reproduce them.

Anything from a website or book is reproduced by permission of the author.

I hope that this helps. If you are in real doubt then I would suggest finding a copyright lawyer.

[Vince]

Divers of Dumpsters

"If the documents were discarded and reclaimed then possession to reproduce is from the person currently in possession of the documents. So if they were found by dumpster diver X and sold to railfan Y and railfan Y were to show you the documents then you would need the permission of Y to reproduce them. "

It was something like this:
LIRR taken over by City of New York
New chairman orders headquarters basement cleaned out.
Tons of historical documents dumped in the garbage.
Horrified LIRR employees and railfans rescued what they could.
They sat in private hands for many years, no museum wanted them.
With the arrival of the internet these documents were scanned and
uploaded to various websites
ex; http://www.lirrhistory.com/index.html being onr of them.

I dont think there is a found/sold/ issue. These were put up on these sites as a way of preserving a bit of history, a love of the Rail Road by some dedicated railfans with a sense of history.

Anyway, thanks for your replies. I will make every effort to insure I don't violate any copyright laws and give due credit wherever I can. Thanx again.

[Dan1]

I would say that in this case permission to reproduce resides with whoever holds the current hard copy of those documents.

An example: I own a map. You want to scan it and put it on your website. I say fine but you need to reference me as the owner since it is part of my collection. A third person comes a long and wants to use the scan for their book. They have to reference you as the source and get permission from me to reproduce it.

I think the maxim I was taught on my first day in the workshop applies here: 'If in doubt - fail-safe'.