zlacker

When you rewrite a book like this, does it reset the copyright? Matilda was set to become public domain in 2060 (70 years after Dahl's death). With the books now owned by a corporation and essentially recreated by them, the copyright extends another fifty years.

>>whoopd+(OP)
Yes, their version of Matilda is a new work.

>>whoopd+(OP)
The rewritten version gets a fresh copyright timer of its own, but the original's copyright still expires the same time it was always going to.

>>whoopd+(OP)
Yes, but the new copyright only applies to the creative aspects of the changes. And that's an extremely thin copyright. So once the originals enter the public domain, the only thing they would be able to sue over is "you bowdlerized the book in exactly the same way I did".

>>kmeist+2t
I suspect that, upon the expiration of the original copyright, there will be new bowdlerized versions made, but that those will bear little resemblance to the versions now being released, except that some of the same things will have been changed, though not changed in the same way.

>>joseph+V9
So, if the publisher changes a single word in a new copyright, and the old one expires, can the publisher sue someone who shared the old version? It'd only be one word off, so they could argue it's effectively infringement...

>>detrit+Dc1
No. If that trick worked, you'd have seen it happen to at least one extremely popular public domain work (e.g., the King James Bible) by now.

>>detrit+Dc1
They could make that argument, but wouldn’t succeed (speaking from the US legal viewpoint, anyway). The only copyright held by the publisher would cover the additions and changes; the original work would no longer be copyrightable.

>>detrit+Dc1
You can always sue, but the court may laugh at you.

>>joseph+Oe1
The King James Bible is actually under perpetual Crown Copyright in the UK.

>>detrit+Dc1
So ironically the forbidden versions will be released freely first. Hilarious.