| Author | Message | ||
     Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
My understanding is that different countries have different copy write time limits. This raises the intriguing question: Who gets Lovecraft's royalties? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.224.223 |
No one: he is public domain, to the best of my knowledge, having had no heirs. Stuart Gordon said as much, in an interview I read somewhere with him... that anyone can make any Lovecraf-based film they want.... I think Derleth at one time attempted to, illegally, claim rights for himself? Where did I hear that? *Someone* did, because - nerdly/coincidentally enough (see my other post) - TSR's DIETIES AND DEMIGODS, back in the 80's, was famously forced to remove their Lovecraft pantheon, for copyright reasons (as well as their Leiber pantheon...? or was it their Moorcock pantheon?... fuck, what's wrong with my fucking memory?!?) I may have all this wrong. Regardless: there's always some idiot who wants to take and grab, what they don't have any business taking and grabbing... interpret as you will.... | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.78.125.11 |
I think that you are right Craig. He is in the public domain now - I have a quote as an epigraph for one of my stories. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
But only just. Hence the many Lovecraft publications in the last couple of years! Lovecraft went out of copyright in February 2007. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.18.29.70 |
In the UK intellectual property passes to the deceased's estate and allocated according to their will or if there is no will in the manner prescribed by the relevant legislation. I think one country has a copy write period of 90 years. Canada? | ||
| John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.199.0.212 |
Lovecraft must be public domain, otherwise Charlie Band would never have made movies based on his stories. Although if he only became public domain in 2007 that's a bit odd | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
Well, books that are older than a year are vanishing, apparently: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=987724&contrassID=2&subCon trassID=11 | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.78.89.55 |
Apparently if the original text was changed and then subject to copyright it all starts again for another x amount of years. I thought that I did know about it but then again I might be confused. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
Cool Air and The Horror in the Museum are not found in any collection published in the UK. I contacted Donovan Loucks at the The H.P.Lovecraft Archive about this ten years ago and he said those exact same stories are missing from US collections as well. But he didn't know why. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.189.45 |
Copyright in the States is immensely complicated, because they keep changing the rules (usually whenever Mickey Mouse comes close to being out of copyright). However, one thing there is set in stone, and I have heard this from numerous people who are vastly experienced in dealing with copyright: if it was published before 1923 then it is out of copyright in America. Full stop. End of sentence. In Britain and the EU it's death plus seventy years. Therefore the previously published works of any author who died in 1937 or previous to then is out of copyright in these countries (exceptions do occur, mostly when it comes to material that was not published during the author's lifetime). In Canada it is currently death plus fifty years; so anyone who died in 1957 or earlier is out of copyright here. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.98 |
"The Horror in the Museum" can be found in THE HORROR IN THE MUSEUM, a Panther edition published in Great Britain in 1975. "Cool Air" is in another Panther, THE LURKING FEAR, which was first published in 1964. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.196.225 |
And the former story is in CRAWLING CHAOS (Creation Books, 1993, 1997) while the latter is in THE CALL OF CTHULHU (Penguin, still in print). | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.225.115 |
But I believe copyright is based on heirs. If a man with no family of any kind writes a novel and dies, I believe his work goes into immediate public domain: no one can claim ownership of the material. (Assuming here too, that he didn't sell off all rights, though I am doubtful about the substance of that kind of deal-making.) Lovecraft had no heirs, and his wife died long ago: the Lovecraft line is dead. Therefore, everything he wrote is available to whomever wants to publish it. Notice just how many Lovecraft books there are, by different publishers?... It's cheap: put them in print, and sell. I could do it myself tomorrow, if I wanted to.... | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
In the UK there's a hierarchy in such cases to funnel the estates assets to relevant direct or indirect descendents. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
Perhaps the Horror in the Museum and Cool Air just are not very good. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
No Griff, that's not the case. Referring to your last posting I mean, not the estate stuff. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.59.198 |
Do you know more about it Joel? I still get confused. Is it all something to do with - if the script has been changed and that is copyrighted then the while process starts again for another x amount of years? | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Surely Lovecraft has an estate. Gulp. Imagine that. A Lovecraft council estate. Yes, Ramsey did that, sort of. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Actually, Lovecraft did it himself: Innsmouth and Dunwich are both Lovecraft estates. Imagine the conversations over the garden fences: "I saw that Lavinia last week. She's not looking too good. Things have been getting on top of her." | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Sorry. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Ally, I'm not sure about revised or amended texts. I get the impression that S.T. Joshi has taken the corrected texts that he has been editing since the early 1980s out of copyright to make sure they don't get buried by reissued corrupt texts. Imagine the pristine ur-text getting literally buried in a pit full of rotting defective texts. All those Oxford commas marking the pages like tiny skin carcinomas. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.59.198 |
Perish the thought, Joel :>) | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
'Perish the thought' is evidently the motto of the Internet. |