Linking to Hathitrust

[cypressdome]

I believe that Hathi Trust's policy of limiting access to works published from 1873-1923 to U.S.-only IP addresses represents their simple yet effective means of addressing the issue of jurisdictions in which copyright is determined by the date of the last surviving contributor's death. 2014-70 = 1944. I think it would be safe to assume that most contributors to works that were published before 1873 would have died by 1943 and thus the works would be in the public domain in all 70 (and 50) year post-mortem author countries.

[Eric]

Pardon me if I still consider that unacceptable laziness rather than simple but effective, especially when some of the documents in question are important government public-domain...

[normanpotamo]

Great, thanks for checking, and for the heads-up about Hathi Helper too!

[steltz]

I think I've also seen several published before 1923 that were blocked, though I can't remember titles right now.

[Eric]

that's because the memory has been blocked too

[MichaelLRobinson]

This is what we are benefiting from copyright law. You can access them after their expiry until the content is available.
May be its little off-track but do you think copyright as the best tool to protect your web based content or invention over the patent law?

[steltz]

"the memory has been blocked too " tee hee, more than likely . . . .

By the way,

do you think copyright as the best tool to protect your web based content or invention over the patent law?

It is authorship, not invention, so it definitely has to be covered by copyright, not patent law. Thee are specific definitions for each.

[MichaelLRobinson]

"the memory has been blocked too " tee hee, more than likely . . . .

By the way,

do you think copyright as the best tool to protect your web based content or invention over the patent law?

It is authorship, not invention, so it definitely has to be covered by copyright, not patent law. Thee are specific definitions for each.

It means that you are little aware with the fact that in many countries software inventions are provided with copyrights and not patent just because the inventions are software related.

[steltz]

Yes, but musical scores are not software-related, so they wouldn't fall in that category. Software "invention" is, I believe, considered "authorship" in the countries of which you speak, which explains the copyright vs patent protection.

[MichaelLRobinson]

But don't you think software patents privilege should not be denied to the entrepreneurs who have original inventions and can be beneficial to the nations also.I mean is it not necessary for them?
Country should not matter for them for this particular issue,I believe.

[kosboot]

Maybe this is a bit late, but if non-US people can't view HathiTrust items, maybe those of us who are able to access the site should set up a cooperative effort to download the material for IMSLP. Is this viable? And if so, how do we set up such a group?

[cypressdome]

Prior to Hathi Trust blocking the use of Hathi Helper I downloaded approximately 48gb of files. As I recall I went through over 300 pages of music scores in their search results and grabbed whatever caught my eye and items which were not available on IMSLP at that time. Sadly, I've only managed to transfer a small number of these to IMSLP. The entire list can be seen here: Hathi Trust links. Certainly, if there are particular items in that list anyone would like to see moved to IMSLP I'll do my best to get it done.