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Access Copyright Charging for Public Domain Material

By Howard Knopf, Esq.

A comment by one "Sysyphe" on my blog yesterday about Access Copyright ("AC") pointed out how AC is listing PD works in its repertoire for digital licensing. For those outside of Canada, AC is a collective that purports to license reprographic and digital reproduction of books, magazines, newspapers and other publications.

A quick check reveals the same practice in its transactional licensing tool.

Check out the AC licensing wizard,which offers to sell a license to make ten copies of 10 pages of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion for $25.00. The inconvenient truth, however, is that Shaw died in 1950 and his work is in the public domain in Canada. This does not speak well for AC's repertoire claims or to credibility in its long awaited and still invisible public domain registry.

HK

Full post as published by Excess Copyright on July 28, 2009 (boomark / email).