Copyright Laws

[Sneaky-Pie]

Here's the situation. I have compiled all of H.P. Lovecraft's written works into a single PDF file (It comes out to about 815 pages. it's pretty fancy.) with the aim to distribute to friends who have shown interest in reading some of his stuff.

I was under the impression that the copyright laws for written work, at least for us in the States, that work could be freely distributed after a certain amount of time. After I searched Google and found the legal info about, I quickly discovered I'm really stupid when it comes to "legal talk." Other sources claim that you can distribute copyrighted material for books 70 years after the author's death.

So, in my case, Lovecraft died in 1937 which means that ever since 2007 his work could be freely distributed through what means you wished.

So am I understanding this correctly? Or would be allowing others to download my file be illegal?

 

[Monshroud]

I can tell you that you would be violating copyright law if you distribute this. It is a matter of who now owns the work. I am not sure the case for Mr. Lovecraft, but if his family or publisher owns the works and they are re-publishing and doing various compilations (which they are) then the rights get renewed.

At least that is my understanding of these laws. I am not saying any of this as fact though. You could always contact the publishing house and find out about this as well. Heck, contact a college law professor.

 

[Good morning blues]

Everything that Lovecraft published before 1923 is now public domain; the rest is debatable. See this for more information. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft#Copyright]

 

[Sneaky-Pie]

Everything that Lovecraft published before 1923 is now public domain; the rest is debatable. See this for more information. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft#Copyright]

This is great. Thanks for that link.

 

[vallorn]

can i have a copy of that PDF if it dosnt turn out to break Copyright?
ive recently started reading Lovecraft but Ph'nglui mglw'nath Cthulhu R'lyeh wga'nagl fhtagn!

 

[Wintermoot]

first of its legal if you dont claim it as your own work and dont profit from it
second unless a company holds the rights its opensource (meaning nobody owns it)

 

[Sneaky-Pie]

first of its legal if you dont claim it as your own work and dont profit from it
second unless a company holds the rights its opensource (meaning nobody owns it)

Well, I don't want to make any money off of it and every single short story says it's by Lovecraft.

I'll have to look into it a little bit more, but I'm leaning towards it's fine to distribute it out.

 

[Quaxar]

Although I find your effort great and am myself about to get more of his work to read, are you sure 800 pages of PDF are even readable? I mean that's one massive document of awesomeness, but you still have to sit at your pc or at least laptop to read all that.

 

[Blueruler182]

So... We can hand them the book itself and not have a problem but we can't give them a digital copy. You see, this is why I'm against the Kindle. This and the lack of aesthetic appeal.

 

[zen5887]

I would rather buy all 800 pages of his work then read it off a laptop crippling PDF.

But yeah, pretty sure its all under public domain by now.

 

[Sneaky-Pie]

Although I find your effort great and am myself about to get more of his work to read, are you sure 800 pages of PDF are even readable? I mean that's one massive document of awesomeness, but you still have to sit at your pc or at least laptop to read all that.

Well, When I compiled the stories, I separated each story out so that they would be easily printable (and easily accessed through click-able links to each story) if needed and you could just print one story at a time to not be confided to a computer to view them.

I know it's not the most ideal solution, but hey, it's free.

I've also been looking into a way to turn it into an ebook format, but I'm pretty ignorant into how all that goes. We'll have to wait and see if that's fruitful or not.