Copyright laws on Kipling

Subject: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: GUEST,Kelly
Date: 14 Mar 04 - 12:27 PM

Does anyone here know about copyright laws on Rudyard Kipling's work? I'm doing a recording session soon and I wanna put a song which was originally a Rudyard Kipling poem (Lukannnon) on the CD. It's not like the CD's gonna be available in shops, I'm just planning on selling a few copies at my local folk club and possibly out busking. But I know copyright laws will probably still effect me.
I'd be very grateful of any info!
Thanks
Kelly

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 14 Mar 04 - 02:02 PM

Thanks to The Walt Disney Co., copyright laws are a mess at the moment. This article here
expains some of it.
Kipling died in 1936 so most of his work should have passed into Public Domain by now, and in fact Disney's "Jungle Book" was made using existing PD rules in 1994. However, Disney discovered that if they didn't do something about it, Mickey Mouse himself would also become PD and petitioned Congress to extend the copyright laws (which they did) in 1998.
If you are setting Lukannon to music yourself, you'll be OK there. If you plan to use an existing melody, you will have to go through the same hoops on this.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 14 Mar 04 - 02:36 PM

Contrary to the previous comment...

From This Site

Copyright protection is afforded a much longer period than a patent. If a work is copyright after 1977, the copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. Under the Copyright Extension Act, otherwise known as the Sunny Bono Copyright Extension Act, for works published before 1978 with existing copyrights as of the CTEA's effective date, the CTEA extends the term to 95 years from publication.
However, any work published in the United States before 1923 are now in the public domain (this includes, for instance, the works of Mark Twain).

Basically, Kiplings works are copyright (UK law) until 2006. After which time they are "Public Domain". However, the photocopying etc., can still fall within the publisher's copyright rulings. These give a publisher copyright over their particular lay-out etc., (especially important with music) for 25 years from publication.

CHEERS

Nigel

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Hrothgar
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 02:07 AM

Thought it was date of death plus fifty years in the UK??

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 03:39 AM

In the UK copyright expires 50 years after the deat of the author, it then becomes ' public domain '
eric

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 03:50 AM

Hrothgar:
Extended by the copyright act 1988, see Here

Quote from above link:
"Duration of copyright
For literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works; 70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the last remaining author of the work dies, or the work is made available to the public, (by authorised performance, broadcast, exhibition, etc.)
Sound Recordings and broadcasts; 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which the last remaining author of the work dies, or the work is made available to the public, (by authorised release, performance, broadcast, etc.)
Films; 70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the last principal director, author or composer dies, or the work is made available to the public, (by authorised performance, broadcast, exhibition, etc.)"

CHEERS

Nigel

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: An Pluiméir Ceolmhar
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 06:27 AM

Is Sunny Bono Earnest Bono's alter ego? ;)

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 07:05 AM

Is the 1988 act retrospective - ie were Kipling's works PD from 1986-1988 then did they become copyright again ?

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 09:30 AM

Dave the law on UK revival copyrights is tricky but they do exist. But the date of the change was not 1988, the extension over here was introduced to pacify our masters in Brussells some years later. It gets positively arcane when joint works turn up.

The USA also has revival copyrights but for different reasons with different complications and different transitional dates!

Most of Europe ought logically to have them too and if I remember the directive correctly it does provide for them, but I think there are jurisdictional differences because some provisions of the directive were obligatory and some were permissive.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 09:58 AM

Yes Richard, but if the original (50 year) copyright ran out in 1986 does the 1988 (or later) act then mean that it is now back in copyright - and what would be the status of a recording made in 1987 ?

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 11:27 AM

See my notes above.

Things may have moved back into copyright, however, If an item were legally copied before the law changed, then that (as I understand it) is a legal copy. Copies of that copy are thus also legal. But new copies taken from the original now fall under the copyright rules.

Clear? (as mud)

Nigel

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 12:13 PM

Copyright on manuscripts See parallel discussion

Nigel

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 12:41 PM

PM sent to Joe to try and avoid a repetition of all that has oft been stated before. Also a suggestion that this may be worthy of a "permathread"

Nigel

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 12:58 PM

Note that under Chapter 3 of US copyright law, a work copyright is 28 years plus an additional 67 years if the copyright was renewed, to a total of 95 years.

The 1923 date does not apply. Thus a work copyrighted in 1909, with copyright renewal, is protected until this year.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: GUEST,Crystal
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 01:02 PM

It is all FAR FAR too complicated.
I'm sticking with songs over 100 years old, it's less hassle.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 01:06 PM

Nigel, we do need a permathread on this. I remember at least three other thrreads I have looked at in the past year. I would suggest that someone with legal knowledge of copyright laws (university law prof?) should be found to volunteer aid in the editing.

Most of us are commenting to the best of our ability, but in my case the interpretations come mostly from talks with my son the lawyer, whose firm practices criminal and contract law; he does not claim to be knowledgeable on copyright litigation.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 04:07 PM

Kelly, you are getting replies regarding different laws in different countries. It would help if you told us where you were.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: GUEST,Kelly
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 04:42 PM

I'm in the UK, and I'm wanting to use 1 Kipling poem put to music on a CD that i will be selling, but only inside my local folk club and possibly out busking.
Does that clear things up?
Thanks for all the replies so far, I'm still v confused! It seems so complicated, and all for the sake of 1 song on a 15yr old's cd!!!

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Lester
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 05:18 PM

Go the Mechanical Copyright Society site here where you can get all the info you need. There is even an online form to fill in, they will then charge you for the use of any copyright songs tunes on your CD by number of songs/tunes and number of CDs you intend to produce. My morris side Aldbury have just produced a CD with 8 copyright tracks on it and ~200 sales predicted and it cost us something like £25 for a licence. That way the copyright owners get what they deserve and you are above litigation.

Check out the Aldbury CD herewww.aldburymorris.co.uk

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Amos
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 05:26 PM

Dunno much about kipling but it seems to me what consenting adults do in their own homes is their business, eh?

A

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 15 Mar 04 - 07:12 PM

It's to be remembered that there is a difference between what legal and what you can get away with. A very small distribution of a CD with unpaid copyrighted work on it is not too likely to be caught, but it's still illegal. And that's not even going into the ethical questions.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: GUEST,Mr. X
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 02:51 AM

The "Copyright Act" in Canada only provides a duration of life plus fifty years from the end of the calendar year of the author's death; thus, any published work by Rudyard Kipling would have been in the Public Domain, in Canada, since January 1, 1987.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: GUEST,KJ
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 09:21 AM

We're in the same boat with the Masefield poems we're setting to music. Having looked at a few websites etc I got the impression that as Nigel says it's 70 years. However, copyright charges are relatively cheap if it's a small run. Also if it's your own tune to the Kipling poem, don't forget to copyright the tune!!! (make it ewven more complicated!)

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 09:40 AM

And I think in UK law, the period is longer than 50 years for music.

Steve

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: GUEST,Peter from Essex
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 04:09 PM

All the posts have been about the text. If Kelly is recoding an existing setting then the arranger/composer must also be considered.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Doyle and Sherlock Holmes
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 05:04 PM

Editorial in the NY Times today, Jan. 10, 2010:

The Legacy of Baker Street

"Eventually, time will have its way with Sherlock Holmes, and he will pass fully into the public domain. In America, that bow to posterity will come sometime in 2023. Until then, Holmes is privately owned, and the subject of an uncongenial dispute among the descendants of Arthur Conan Doyle over who controls the rights to his venerable detective, whose last adventure appeared in print in 1914."..........
"Sherlock Holmes is a vivid example of what happens when copyright is repeatedly extended............ there is every prospect of more battles to keep extending it."
The editorial briefly discusses the battles of Doyle's daughter and others to extend the term of copyright for intellectual property, and the 1976 decision is mentioned.
The position of the NY Times is that the author's life plus 70 years is sufficient. "Sherlock Holmes should belong to us all right now."

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: The Vulgar Boatman
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:16 PM

Kipling himself had copyright problems in USA in the 1890's, one quote (Charles Carrington's biography)records: "Your copyright laws have swindled me out of considerable money..." And that was on his own works. What chance is there for the rest of us?

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:19 PM

The Conan Doyle estate asserts that "Sherlock Holmes" has acquired secondary meaning in the USA and enjoys common law trade mark protection in perpetuity.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 07:50 PM

Richard Bridge Esq

As ALWAYS (with your posts)

PLEASE provide a reference ... (an adjudicated journal would be preferred.)

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Your Dicksonian era legal advice....appears antiquated as it applies to the UK's past colonies....USA, India, and even New Zealand.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 08:37 PM

"In the EC the entire work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle enjoys copyright protection until 31 December 2000. After that date, a number of characters created by the author will enjoy trademark protection."
There follows a paragraph on the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act in the US.
I am not sure how this applies to Holmes. Copyrights were extended after their expiry date, and it seems that this extension date is used as a take-off point for the Bono date of 95 years after publication- I dunno!

Andrea Plunkett controls the US copyrights to the Sherlock Holmes stories.
From the Sherlock Holmes Literary Estate:
Licensing:
In the UK and Europe:
Jonathan Clowes Ltd.
10 Iron Bridge House
Bridge Approach
London NW1 8BD

In the US and the rest of the world:
Mrs. Andrea Plunket
Administrator
The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literart Estate
408 Debruce Road
Livingston Manor
New York 12758

For legal queries regarding the copyrights and trademarks:
In the UK
Dr Caroline McCarthy
78 Beak Street
London W1F 9DB

In the US etc.
Mrs. Andrea Plunket
(address above)

Enquiry form provided.

http://www.sherlockholmesonline.org/LicensingInfo/index.htm

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Midchuck
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 09:15 PM

I have been told that Kipling's "The Rhyme of the Three Captains," which is on its face about a British merchant captain complaining to the authorities about being robbed by the American privateer, John Paul Jones, is actually a metaphor for Kipling's anger at American publishers who published his material over here without paying him. He seems to have been quite angry...

He spoke of the Law as he crimped my crew -- he swore it was only a loan;
But when I would ask for my own again, he swore it was none of my own.
He has taken my little parrakeets that nest beneath the Line,
He has stripped my rails of the shaddock-frails and the green unripened pine;
He has taken my bale of dammer and spice I won beyond the seas,
He has taken my grinning heathen gods -- and what should he want o' these?
My foremast would not mend his boom, my deckhouse patch his boats;
He has whittled the two, this Yank Yahoo, to peddle for shoe-peg oats.
I could not fight for the failing light and a rough beam-sea beside,
But I hulled him once for a clumsy crimp and twice because he lied.
Had I had guns (as I had goods) to work my Christian harm,
I had run him up from his quarter-deck to trade with his own yard-arm;
I had nailed his ears to my capstan-head, and ripped them off with a saw,
And soused them in the bilgewater, and served them to him raw;
I had flung him blind in a rudderless boat to rot in the rocking dark,
I had towed him aft of his own craft, a bait for his brother shark;
I had lapped him round with cocoa husk, and drenched him with the oil,
And lashed him fast to his own mast to blaze above my spoil;
I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side, and tasselled his beard i' the mesh,
And spitted his crew on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened flesh;
I had hove him down by the mangroves brown, where the mud-reef sucks and draws,
Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's claws!...

Peter.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 11:53 PM

Gargoyle, don't be an idiot. You know what I do so you should be able to work out how I know.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 25 Jan 10 - 02:45 PM

It's 2010. Kipple away to your heart's content.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Jan 10 - 04:24 PM

Copyright is theft, once the writer and perhaps their immediate dependants are dead.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 25 Jan 10 - 05:02 PM

Sherlock Holmes-
Mrs. Andrea Plunket is not even a distant relative. The peculiarities of her claim (final ruling not yet made) are discussed in the website linked below, but seem questionable to me.

http://www.classicthemes.com/50sTVThemes/themePages/sherlockHolmes1.html

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 25 Jan 10 - 07:06 PM

""The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate" administered in the U.S. by ex-wife Plunket:"

Which bit of that is hard to understand?

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Howard Jones
Date: 25 Jan 10 - 07:49 PM

So "copyright is theft"? What about Great Ormond Street Hospital?

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 09:27 AM

Technically that is not a copyright, but an extended right similar to copyright.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 11:30 AM

He: "Do you like Kipling?"

She: "I don't know; I've never Kippled!"

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Edthefolkie
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 07:20 PM

"Do you like Dickens?"

"Dunno, never been to one!"

I hereby apologise for that joke.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: GUEST,One line in print
Date: 14 Jul 14 - 08:17 PM

I would like to use one line from one of Kipling's poems in a book that I'm writing. Am I safe, copyright-wise?

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: r.padgett
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 02:51 AM

dunno but ensure that you reference it appropriately

Ray

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 06:20 AM

To GUEST,one line in print

Short extracts are very common in journal articles and in books of literary criticism. They must be only a small proportion of the full work (maybe even a whole paragraph from a novel, but only a couple of lines from a shorter poem). It is called 'fair use' and is allowed if the purpose is for criticism, or for a review, or when reporting a current event.

But, as r.padgett said, a proper reference must be included, either in the text or more usually in a footnote or endnote.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 07:39 AM

UK and US laws differ. Which apply to you?

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: GUEST,highlandman at work
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 11:14 AM

Guest One Line, the other Guest is correct up to a point, BUT -- if you happen to be using the rather common device of starting off each chapter with an apropros quote, no matter how small, courts in the US have disallowed this as "fair use" -- because, narrowly speaking, it doesn't come under the umbrella of educational, scholarly, or review purposes. I know published writers whose editors have nixed their cute chapter-heading blurbs just on the grounds that clearing the rights can be an absolute nightmare and they didn't even want to try.
-Glenn

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 04:15 PM

From: GUEST,highlandman at work - PM
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 11:14 AM

Guest One Line, the other Guest is correct up to a point, BUT -- if you happen to be using the rather common device of starting off each chapter with an apropros quote, no matter how small, courts in the US have disallowed this as "fair use" -- because, narrowly speaking, it doesn't come under the umbrella of educational, scholarly, or review purposes. I know published writers whose editors have nixed their cute chapter-heading blurbs just on the grounds that clearing the rights can be an absolute nightmare and they didn't even want to try.
-Glenn
But, this shouldn't be a problem as he's talking about a line from Kipling, which the discussion up to this point seems to agree is now Public Domain.

Subject: RE: Copyright laws on Kipling
From: GUEST,highlandman at work
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 05:13 PM

>Nigel
Agreed, just warning against carefree extrapolation. :-)