Stanford opens copyright renewal database
Found via BoingBoing:
Stanford University has opened an on-line copyright renewal search database, covering the period from 1923 to 1963 when preventing a work from passing into the public domain required renewing its copyright registration. Prior to this database, there had been no easy or inexpensive way to search renewals for this period.
This database will assist both prospective publishers of orphaned works and public domain scanning groups such as Project Gutenberg.
April 6th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
“Prior to this database, there had been no easy or inexpensive way to search renewals for this period.”
Actually, it’s been easy and inexpensive for a few years now. The Stanford database is based on:
1) Distributed Proofreaders’ transcriptions of renewal sections of the Catalog of Copyright Entries, which have been freely available since Project Gutenberg posted them on March 30, 2004; and
2) renewal entries from the Copyright Office’s online database, which has been freely available since the 1980’s, I think.
Mike Lesk combined these two sources into a web-searchable database that’s been around since June 2004: http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~lesk/copyrenew.html
April 7th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Yes, public domain scanning groups such as Project Gutenberg are very much helped by their own efforts!