Copyright duration

Does copyright still exist when a website has been taken offline?

[GoldFish]

A question on copyrights. A very informative website has recently been taken offline, for good. I was thinking about republishing that information on a website of my own. Now of course the million dollar question is: would that be an intrusion of copyright? The original work no longer exists, so does that mean people are free to republish it?

GF

[docubio]

Hi Goldfish--

I am not a copyright lawyer, but I can pass on some basic copyright info that might help you.

In the US authors are granted a copyright on their work the moment the pen hits the paper. It's instantaneous and does not require registration. So just because a site has gone offline, doesn't mean that the content is no longer copyrighted. The author(s) still own the copyright(s).

However, you did mention republishing "information". Facts cannot be copyrighted. You can reproduce facts from that site on your own. But you can't copy articles full of facts word for word. You'll have to devise your own way of presenting these facts to the user, whether it is in charts or articles or pictures with circles and arrows. Essentially, facts are not copyrighted, but the particular presentation of these facts for the readers is copyrighted. This means you can't copy the jpegs of their diagrams and charts, but you are free to make your own using the same data.

Perhaps try to get in touch with the site owner. He may have lost interest and be willing to sell cheaply or license the use to you for a cut of ad revenues. He may like the idea of finding a steward to continue his mission to keep the info on the web. If that's the case he might just chargle little to nothing. Or, perhaps he took it all offline because he got a juicy book deal. If that's the case it's good to get a heads up that Addison-Wesley's lawyers will be on your case if you overstep copyright boundaries.

Best of luck!

[GoldFish]

Docubio,

Thanks a lot for the quick reply. I've just sent a friendly email to the owner of the website to see if there's any possibility of republishing. Let's hope for the best! :) Neither me or the old website's owner are from the US though, so do the rules you wrote down still apply then?

Cheers, GF

[BigDave]

In just about any country that is a member of the Berne Convention, the rules will be similar or even stricter.

The best thing to do is get permission to copy or write your own version.

Writing your own version does not mean just changing some words around. It means using that website for research on the "facts", yet creating your presentation of those facts from scratch.

[stapel]

In the offline world, the copyright to a book is not released just because that book goes out of print. That is, the work does not become public domain. Nobody else can re-publish the work (at least not without the permission of the copyright-holder).

I think your case, where the written work has gone offline permanently (gone out of print, as it were), is analagous. The fact that the copyrighted work is no longer in publication (is no longer online) does not imply that you cannot re-publish the work.

Eliz.

[martingale]

The author of the work retains copyright for the rest of their life, and their estate gets copyright for some number of years after that. So it will be at least 75 years or so before copyright expires on the content of this website.

[stapel]

...it will be at least 75 years or so before copyright expires on the content of this website.

Seventy-five years isn't that long, in terms of books, but -- good golly! -- can you even imagine what the web might be like in that amount of time?!?

Eliz.