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Re: Image copyrights, again

From: wbutcher <wbutcher~at~netvigator.com>
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 20:47:25 +0800
To: "'Jules Verne Forum'" <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>

Terry,

These are all good questions. In this case, according to my understanding,
any claimant would have to have survived beyond 1935.

The Society of Authors, of which I am a member, has access to the best
specialists. If you want to send me an email, perhaps not to the whole
forum, with the draft of the precise question you want to ask, I can submit
it to them for an authoritative answer.

Best,
Bill
wbutcher~at~netvigator.com
http://verne.tk/
1/F, 46A, Lung mei Village, Taipo, Hong Kong

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-jvf~at~Gilead.org.il [mailto:owner-jvf~at~Gilead.org.il] On Behalf Of
Terry Harpold
Sent: 02 September 2004 07:30
To: Jules Verne Forum
Subject: Re: Image copyrights, again

On Wednesday, September 1, 2004, Jean-Michel Margot
<jmmargot~at~mindspring.com> writes:

>Fifty years after the death of the author (not counting the wars years),
>his material (text and illustrations) are in the public domain in France.
>It's now 40 years that scholars around the world duplicate Hetzel's Verne
>engravings in their scholarly publications.

To complicate my question a bit further: which applies in the case of
Hetzel's editions -- the death of the author, the death of the artist, or
the date of publication of the work? What do we know about Hetzel's control
over the rights to reproduction of work by those who contributed to the
editions (illustrators, authors, illustrators, engravers, etc.) In a modern
vernacular, the question would be perhaps phrased, "Did any of the artists
retain rights after publication, or were they signed entirely over to the
publisher?" Was that distinction even operative in late 19th-century French
publishing?

Assuming that the rights to images from the _Voyages extraordinaires_ have
passed into the public domain, is it still possible that, in the case of
selected editions or illustrations, that someone must give permission for
their reproduction -- such as is the case, for example, of paintings which
were painted, say, more than a century ago, but which reside in a museum?
I've always been a little unclear on that matter.

My prospective editor reports that the 50-70-75 year time lapse is not
sufficient; he needs proof that no one still controls rights to the images.
It's a legitimate question in a litigious era, but I'm not sure about where
to begin to answer it...

TH

----------------------------------------------
Terry Harpold
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Florida

tharpold~at~acm.org
tharpold~at~english.ufl.edu
http://www.english.ufl.edu/~tharpold

"Reading in no way obliges you to understand."
Received on Thu 02 Sep 2004 - 16:58:29 IDT

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