copyright

[Bernard_Lewis]

Interesting thread!

Bernard

[Phil Wood]

Effort or not, a transcription does NOT create a new work. if it did, then with enough effort, you'd be able to transcribe every diary at Kew and sell them as you wished, after which you could indeed transcribe the text of Harry Potter and make it a new work. You seem to understand that both are Verboten so your take on what copyright is (or isn't) is contradictory.

Don't mistake a public record with being in the public domain. All Crown Copyright documents are public records but they are not in the public domain. You've spotted that their use falls under the open governent license, which means you are licensed to use the material. That's very different from having copyright on it.

A 'Public Record' as defined by TNA is one that comes under the Open License Agreement - as I hope I said in my previous post - and I am under no illusion about them being in the public domain.

When you transcribe a war diary the odds are it will be into a computer file of some sort - which will be the transcriber's copyright (under the European Database Directive of 1996). It protects the transcriber from unauthorised copying of their work - which the words obviously aren't. Freedom to publish a transcript still relies on the Open Government License.

[martin_sole]

You may well be right Keith but this mere mortal is still unsure of what the rules are. Both Martins make compelling arguments (it would be perhaps easier if one of them changed their name to, say, Peter) and both argue from a position of some knowledge, knowledge that I don't have yet would love to get. Is there a way of parking the thread until a third party with similar levels of knowledge can come and help unpick what the two Martins (or is it now Martin and Peter) are saying?

It's something which comes up pretty regularly and there are generally the same differences of opinion. It's annoying that the official documentation doesn't address the issue directly.

Yesterday I e-mailed a short Q&A on this particular topic to the NA and various professional legal types. We'll see who replies and what they say. I'll publish the findings here.

To re-iterate, if you're dealing with war diaries extracts from the National Archives for publication in a book, then whether or not you have copyright on your transcriptions makes no odds. you are just as free to us their material commercially or non-comercially either way.

atb

Peter

[Norrette]

...

Mick, the only thing to consider is what the law says, not the credentials of people arguing otherwise. Martin G may well own a transcription service, but he is dead wrong with some of his ideas on what constitutes copyright.

It's all here:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/contents

Hi Martin S.

Can you provide an indication to which section of this legislation refers to the examples of War Diaries, or other crown documents? Also where it defines the differences between transcriptions, copies and facsimiles. As far as I was aware, a facsimile is a form of photocopy.

I have an interest as I am transcribing some myself.

Norrette

[martin_sole]

Hi Martin S.

Can you provide an indication to which section of this legislation refers to the examples of War Diaries, or other crown documents? Also where it defines the differences between transcriptions, copies and facsimiles. As far as I was aware, a facsimile is a form of photocopy.

I have an interest as I am transcribing some myself.

Norrette

The legal compliance for using Crown Copyright material is no different to that of any other form of copyright. It sits within the existing legal framework of the 1988 Act.

Everyone here is in agreement that the transcription of War Diaries for scholarly research or publication is perfectly above board. The NA's rules on HOW you may copy their material doesn't affect what copyright is, it is only a limitation that they have set on the permission they are giving you to use their works. Having permission to use something isn't the same as having copyright on it, although that seems to get a lot of resistance from certain quarters.