20,003 Leagues under the sea, by Jules Verne and Jane Doe?

August 16, 2009 1:47 PM

YANML. is it legal to rewrite a public domain book with a new co-author?

Is it legal to take a public domain book (say the art of war, for example), and rewrite it and update it, adding lots of material...

and republishing as "the new art of war, by Sun Tzu and John Doe"?

Or "think and grow rich in the 22nd century", by napoleon hill and jane doe...

(the version that is in the public domain, obviously.)

you are not my lawyer.


thank you!

posted by Izzmeister to law & government (17 comments total)

Yes. Public domain means anything goes.
posted by unixrat at 1:55 PM on August 16

I Am Not A Zombie.

If a book is in the public domain, it is in the public domain.
posted by b1tr0t at 1:57 PM on August 16

Yes, you can do anything you want with public domain works, but only the newly created parts of the work would be copyrightable.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 1:58 PM on August 16

Yeah, because if no one owns it, who is going to sue you? Not the government.
posted by johngoren at 2:04 PM on August 16

That text is freely available to do whatever you wish with it, and I don't think how you frame it is really even a matter of law at all. Anything original to you would still be legally protected by copyright laws.

This is not to say that you might not run afoul of legal entanglement if, for example, the works have living representatives who have vested interests in maintaining some sort of ownership, whether legally supportable or not, over the work (living relatives, an estate).

I also think that depending how this was handled it could be a move - if the goal were a commercially viable publication - that could invite very negative and unflattering response. Partnering up with dead co-creators who have no say in the matter isn't always popular (think pop wannabes of the day recording "duets" with recognized icons). Hey look who co-wrote a book with Homer! Some jerk I never heard of.
posted by nanojath at 2:21 PM on August 16

any attorneys that can comment, please?

does the work being in the public domain mean that the authors "name" is public domain too?

i Don't think the dale carnigie foundation would be to happy about such a book- but could it be done?
posted by Izzmeister at 2:28 PM on August 16

IANYL and I am not any sort of copyright expert, but also consider the translator. Sure, the Art of War may be public domain, but the translation may well be property of the translator (vis a vis their authorship in the translation).
posted by Admiral Haddock at 2:29 PM on August 16 [1 favorite]

good point admiral!

so let's stick to books being printed in the original language....
posted by Izzmeister at 2:31 PM on August 16

following b1tr0t:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6019956/Zombies-and-sea-monsters-added-to-classic-literature.html
posted by Izzmeister at 2:36 PM on August 16

http://books.google.com/books?id=I6JuM6kgDWUC&pg=PA393&lpg=PA393&dq=dale+carnegie+public+domain&source=bl&ots=SZMeA0vNYz&sig=gwjWZZITNgvnw4SybEJfzvR-JXs&hl=en&ei=VHyISsQVmNKMB_6nxaIL&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8#v=onepage&q=&f=false

shows a Dale Carnegie book with a modern day co-author....
posted by Izzmeister at 2:48 PM on August 16

Izzmeister: any attorneys that can comment, please?

I sincerely doubt you can get an attorney to comment in that capacity on the internet. If it were possible to do so, then I don't think asking directly like that would be the way, given that they'd almost certainly be creating an attorney-client relationship by doing so; lawyers have been successfully sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars by people they actually declined to represent in certain cases where courts have ruled that an attorney-client relationship was created inadvertantly.¹ Just an FYI.
posted by koeselitz at 3:04 PM on August 16 [1 favorite]

does the work being in the public domain mean that the authors "name" is public domain too?

No, not necessarily. The fact that the copyright on a work has fallen into the public domain does not automatically mean that a rights-holder might exist that could enforce other rights against you. For instance, many jurisdictions recognize a right of publicity that limit the commercial use of someone's identity without their permission. For example, California's right of publicity law prohibits the use of a celebrity's name, voice, signature, photograph and likeness for commercial advantage without permission. In some jurisdictions this right survives death, and can be exercised by their heirs (most notoriously, in Indiana this right expires 100 years after death).

In addition, trademark rights generally don't have an explicit date on which they expire. A trademark could, in theory, never expire, so long as a the holder of the trademark continues to use the trademark commercially and continues to defend the trademark against infringement. For example, its likely that Disney will continue to be using and defending its Mickey Mouse trademarks long after the day the Mickey Mouse cartoons will fall into the public domain.

So, hypothetically, a book that has fallen into the public domain could still have heirs who won't let you use the name of the author and or perhaps a trademarked title still in use with a rights holder unwilling to let you use the title commercially.
posted by RichardP at 3:11 PM on August 16 [1 favorite]

Public domain stories get re-told all the time -- for an obvious example think of fairy tales.
posted by glider at 3:44 PM on August 16

Certain jurisdictions call these moral rights, that "moral rights are distinct from any economic rights tied to copyrights. Even if an artist has assigned his or her rights to a work to a third party, he or she still maintains the moral rights to the work." and that moral rights include "the right of attribution, the right to have a work published anonymously or pseudonymously, and the right to the integrity of the work."

So adding your name to it is fine but removing their name would not be (although as other posters note: who's going to sue you?).

IANAL
posted by holloway at 3:57 PM on August 16

Assuming you're in the US, here it is from the horse's mouth, actually:

Where is the public domain? The public domain is not a place. A work of authorship is in the “public domain” if it is no longer under copyright protection or if it failed to meet the requirements for copyright protection. Works in the public domain may be used freely without the permission of the former copyright owner. [emphasis mine]

–That's from the U.S. Copyright Office, anyhow. Note that, while many of the things people have said above are quite true, the U.S. Copyright Office is pretty unequivocal: public domain means you can use it freely.

If I may speak within my limited (amateur) interest in the subject, it seems to me that, while there are notable exceptions which have generally been made when somebody very powerful got very pissed off (as is often the case in law) this rule holds. The circumstances listed above - particularly the Mickey Mouse 'trademark' exception, which is (in my book) an egregious abuse of the law by a company that can pretty much afford to abuse the law - are just ones you'll have to avoid; Mickey Mouse is technically public domain, but who wants to take on raw, unbridled corporate power, eh? Avoid the obvious ones - Disney, famous names, people who have descendants who are rich or powerful, etc. - and follow the public domain rules, and you will be fine. And, as is always the case, you can further prevent litigation by going out of your way to be nice to anybody who might still be alive and has a connection to the work.

Now, what are the rules which determine what is in the public domain? Here, look at this handy chart from Cornell University. To try to put it as simply as possible, any work which was published¹ before 1909² is within the public domain; yes, you can construct rationalizations for the public-domain status of works from after that date, but it might just be easier (since you seem somewhat flexible as far as source texts are concerned) to shoot below that line.

Jane Austen will not roll over in her grave if you write a zombie book about her. She'll probably like it. More importantly, you won't get in trouble.
____________________________________________________________________
1. Or, if the work wasn't published, the author must have died before 1939; or, if the work was pseudonymous or ghostwritten, then it must have been created before 1889.
2. Or, outside of Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Guam, or the Northern Mariana Islands, before 1923. Yes, it's ridiculous. Just use the chart and you'll be fine.
posted by koeselitz at 4:41 PM on August 16

Hey, and it occurs to me that there's an easy way to check and see if a particular book might be public domain: just go to the Project Gutenberg website and see if they have it. They've been transcribing and uploading public-domain texts for decades in an effort to make as many books as possible freely available, so they've generally done their homework on what works are public domain and which are not. Of course it's always a good idea to go through the chart and check yourself if you're about to use something, but browsing Gutenberg for particular books and looking in the "Copyright Status" box is probably a good easy way to do preliminary checks on whether the copyright on a particular work is still outstanding..

For example, here is a translation of The Art Of War that was done in 1910, and is therefore within the public domain.
posted by koeselitz at 4:55 PM on August 16

This question was litigated ad nauseum in the 90's by LexisNexis and West Publishing after Al Gore invented the internets. :) West and Lexis take U.S. government works (mostly case law), which are in the public domain and for which no copyright can be claimed, and add "editorial enhancements" to them, such as indexing, headnotes, citation systems, and the like. But none of these additions changes the actual text of the statute or judicial opinion. It's an interesting stage in the development of the legal publishing business, but for your purposes, the answer is really meaningless because you are starting from a true public domain work and not obtaining the underlying base material from a source that could claim some copyright. Go for it.
posted by webhund at 7:16 PM on August 16 [1 favorite]