[HNW] A Pictorial History of Embroidery

[Kristine Elliott]

On 6/28/07, Allison263 at aol.com <Allison263 at aol.com> wrote:
>
>  In a message dated 6/28/07 12:07:09 AM, fran at lavoltapress.com writes:
>
>
>
> BTW--has absolutely no
>  bearing on whether copyright theft damages the publishing industry as a
>  whole. I've worked in the publishing industry for over 23 years.  I
>  dount you have.  It does.
>
>  I think this is unnecessarly harsh. I, too, have worked in the publishing
> industry for over 20 years and I'm a published author dozens of times over.
> I'm a big believer in copyrights, trust me, and I completely disagree with
> your incredibly rude comments.
>
>  For the purposes of what we do, I don't think making personal copies of a
> fairly obsure, out of print work for personal research and study is a
> problem. If someone made mass copies of the book and sold them, that would
> be wrong and illegal. Yes, copyright law/fair use is very vague, even
> copyright lawyers agree on that point, but I deeply doubt that anyone is
> going to come knocking on our doors because we made a bad xerox of this book
> on a library copy machine.
>
>  And who, exactly, do you think that we're "stealing" this book from? Are
> you versed in the publishing history of this particular book and who,
> exactly owns the copyright? The book was originally published by Verlag
> Ernst Wasmuth, Tubingen, Germany, in 1963. If you are well versed in German
> copyright law, then you can certainly tell us whether they retain copyright
> and if we should send a check to them. However, the English translation was
> done by none other than the great Donald King and copyrighted by Thames and
> Hudson in 1963. If you are certain that THEY still own the copyright, then
> by all means let us all know. In addition, some of us own French
> translations of the book. Who owns THOSE copyrights? Are we stealing from
> them, too? And while we're at it, since the book consists mainly of photos,
> you could also argue that we're stealing royalties from every single museum,
> church, cathedral, and collection in Europe each time we make a copy of one
> of those old, B&W, sometimes fuzzy, images in Schuette.
>
>  The U.S. publisher of the book was Frederick Praeger, Inc, in 1964. Praeger
> is now Greenwood publishing out of Connecticut, who likely doesn't own any
> copyright to the book. My guess is that they purchased limited rights to
> publish the book in the U.S. The book was published under two different
> titles, "Pictorial History of Embroidery" in the U.S and "Art of Embroidery"
> in the U.K, which means that if we don't want to steal anything we should
> probably send our money to both places just to, you know, make sure. And how
> much, exactly, should we be paying for our theivery? The original cover
> price of the book? The going rate from used/rare book sellers, maybe? What
> it cost us per page to make all those bad xeroxes?
>
>  It's very possible that Schuette is an "orphan," which is a copyrighted
> work in which the copyright can no longer be determined. I don't know this
> for a fact, but it's likely given its publishing history. If that is the
> case, then fair use laws are much more relaxed. It also very well could be
> one reason why the book has never been reprinted, although I'd guess it's
> the cost of renewing the rights to all those pictures that makes it too
> expensive.
>
>  A big thiefs I am!
>  Gabrielle

I'm afraid I have never understood why copying an out of print source
for personal use is called theft and buying a used book is not.

Now, copying an in-print book for private use, that is indeed theft to
my mind. If the publishers kept everything in print that I wanted, I
would gladly buy it. Unfortunately what I want tends to be out of
print. I buy used when I can, but a photocopy is better than nothing,
and is always replaced when I can get a "real" of the source.

Scolastica
-- 
http://www.geocities.com/souriete/

If you can't get rid of them ugly old skeletons in the closet, at least teach
'em how to dance funny.  Billy C. Wirtz