Copyrights Q

[440bx]

Hello,

This question is for the forum moderators.

Is it considered a copyright violation to request here, in the forums, material from a publisher that is now _out of business_ and no longer holds the copyrights on the material ?  (note: the publisher has been out of business for about 20 years, give or take a year or two.)

to be a bit more specific, I am interested in the CD that came with a book.  (I already have the book.)

Thank you for your help.

[Kays]

[…] Is it considered a copyright violation to request here, […]

No, just asking for someone else to commit a copyright violation is not a copyright violation since you yourself do not violate copyrights.

[TRon]

@Kays:
You are correct though as a comparison asking for someone else to murder someone is not the most brightest idea ever. So I can understand the cautiousness of 440bx.

@440bx depending on an official answer you could consider asking about what you are looking for and ask for people to respond in a PM in order to not facilitate. Just 2 cents.

[440bx]

@440bx depending on an official answer you could consider asking about what you are looking for and ask for people to respond in a PM in order to not facilitate. Just 2 cents.

Definitely that the next step will depend on the official answer.  I want to ensure that what I do is "kosher".

[Martin_fr]

Is it considered a copyright violation to request here, in the forums, material from a publisher that is now _out of business_ and no longer holds the copyrights on the material ?  (note: the publisher has been out of business for about 20 years, give or take a year or two.)

to be a bit more specific, I am interested in the CD that came with a book.  (I already have the book.)

The problem is, that there would still be copyright to that material in most countries. Just googled, copyright in many countries lasts 50 to 70 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_copyright_terms_of_countries
It does (probably) not matter, if the company is no longer there as a copyright holder. The right is likely still with some individual(s) that owned the company.

The save way would be to aim and get an original CD. That should still be allowed to change owner.

[MarkMLl]

@440bx depending on an official answer you could consider asking about what you are looking for and ask for people to respond in a PM in order to not facilitate. Just 2 cents.

Definitely that the next step will depend on the official answer.  I want to ensure that what I do is "kosher".

In any event, I would suggest that the first step is to ascertain the license terms applicable to the content of the CD that accompanied the book that you have in your possession.

Other than that, the copyright will be owned either by the author(s) or by the corporate successors of the publisher.

MarkMLl

[440bx]

Thank you Martin.

Getting an original CD is the "proper" way.  For that I'd need to purchase a used copy of the book.  I found two problems with that possibility, the first one is the book is selling used for quite a bit more than its list price (go figure) and the worst part is, there is no guarantee that the CD is in working condition.  Most of the time, it is but, I've had some with areas that were unreadable.

Anyway, I'll figure something out.  Thank you for the reply, it's pretty much along the lines of what I expected but, figured I'd ask anyway.


@Mark,

I've tried, unsuccessfully, to locate the authors of the book in the hope I could get a .iso from  one of them.  No luck so far.  TTBOMK, there is no corporate successor to the defunct company (google couldn't find one.)

Julian Bucknall authored a book for that defunct company.  Not sure when and how exactly but, he became the book's copyright owner and makes the CD contents available.   Of course, that is his choice and it has no effect on the other books that are now orphaned.

I was hoping one of the authors of the book whose CD I want would have done something similar but, so far, no luck.

[BrassGear]

Unless I'm mistaken, optical discs have quite a thick layer of plastic between the underside and the metal film that holds the data. So it should be possible to polish the plastic layer back to more or less its original clarity, unless the data layer is damaged.

[MarkMLl]

I've tried, unsuccessfully, to locate the authors of the book in the hope I could get a .iso from  one of them.  No luck so far.  TTBOMK, there is no corporate successor to the defunct company (google couldn't find one.)

Google isn't relevant and you risk getting into trouble if you rely on them. You need the body that regulates corporates in the relevant jurisdiction.

MarkMLl

[MarkMLl]

Unless I'm mistaken, optical discs have quite a thick layer of plastic between the underside and the metal film that holds the data. So it should be possible to polish the plastic layer back to more or less its original clarity, unless the data layer is damaged.

Up to a point: polishing will almost always leave scratches of the same sort of size as the features you're trying to read, and there's also a risk that the metal layer has degraded (particularly if the medium was laser-writeable rather than pressed).

However, I have discovered something interesting over the last few months. One of my audio CDs was, after a certain point, unreadable in a PC (i.e. DVD) drive; however it's fine in a much older audio CD player with Philips mechanism. This is probably something to do with the wavelength of the light (i.e. red rather than green), but could possibly also be affected by other optical considerations (e.g. Philips mechanism might have a shorter focal length than the dominant Japanese and Chinese ones, with less depth of field hence when focusing on the metalisation doesn't resolve surface degradation or defects within the pastic).

MarkMLl

[440bx]

Unless I'm mistaken, optical discs have quite a thick layer of plastic between the underside and the metal film that holds the data. So it should be possible to polish the plastic layer back to more or less its original clarity, unless the data layer is damaged.

That's not how it works.  On a CD the data is recorded on the top (where the label is painted), any scratch on the top, which is completely exposed (except for the insignificant thickness of the ink label) causes at least part of the CD to be unreadable  (and often all of it because of the way the data is laid out - in a continuous spiral - when the continuity is broken, it is often not possible to re-synch.)  IOW, on a CD, there is _no_ protection whatsoever for the recorded layer.  You can polish the bottom, polish the top and you'll have a nice, useless, piece of plastic.

If you have a CD you don't care to ruin, do the following experiment: break the CD in half.  You'll notice in some places parts of the film got "unglued" from parts of the plastic base.  In those areas, the plastic will be completely see-through and, you'll have small pieces of very thin shiny film dangling from some of the plastic.  That very thin shiny film is where the data is recorded.

Just in case, the data is recorded using a laser that passes through the bottom layer.  IOW, it is not recorded by applying the laser directly to the layer.  That's how a CD writer does it.  A manufactured CD goes through a different process that doesn't involve lasers instead it involves glass (I'll let you google the details.)

OTH, a DVD is built differently.  On DVDs the recorded layer is sandwiched between two transparent plastic surfaces.

ETA:

if you decided to break a CD to see how it's put together, exercise caution when breaking the CD, shards can cause physical damage to your hands and potentially other parts of your body.  Again: exercise caution.


@MarkMLI,

Normally, when general information about a company is available, it is easily found using google and, that's all I was looking for.  Nothing there that would get me in trouble.

[Martin_fr]

Some CD (especially from the early age of CD) also start rotting after 30+ years.

[domasz]

Involving other people to rip a CD for you isn't the best idea. Just use bing.com, yandex.com, archive.org or torrents to find the CD. Then the whole wrongdoing is just yours.

But I really suggest you try to find it on Ebay or Amazon and buy the real thing. Rips on the Internet might not be complete or have something "extra spicy" added to them.

[440bx]

buy the real thing.

I already bought the real thing... long... long... long ago.  So long ago, I lost the CD.

but... thank you for that valuable input.

[domasz]

You might want to ask yourself a question- if you paid for the real thing just misplaced it, would it really be such a bad thing to download "backup" from the net? And then visit "amazon" and other "ebays".