Originally Posted By: Drew Hause
Linking to copyrighted materials
http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/linking-copyrighted-materials

Laurie Morrow owned / still owns? the rights to Corey Ford's works, including "The Minutes of the Lower Forty" published in Field & Stream, and is the official biographer of Dartmouth College Corey Ford Archives. One must assume Field & Stream had permission to place the story on the web, available to anyone in the world with access to the internet ie. public domain. It's the first link that comes up by googling "The Road to Tinkhamtown".


That's part right. Laurie Morrow is the official biographer of the Ford archives. But Dartmouth College owns the rights. Note that the F&S link does not say that they got permission from Laurie Morrow. It says they got permission from Dartmouth College. Could be that Dartmouth has designated Laurie as the person to contact for permission. But in any case, permission was secured--per the statement from F&S.

And the fact that the story is on the internet is beside the point. How about let's put a Hemingway short story about hunting on this website? Ford's dead. So is Hemingway. But putting a story on the internet without permission--assuming someone still owns the rights--doesn't mean it's LEGALLY in the public domain. What it means is that someone is putting the website at risk by NOT GETTING PERMISSION TO PUBLISH MATERIAL WHICH IS NOT IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. Or how about a Michael McIntosh article that appeared in Shooting Sportsman? I'd certainly recommend contacting Shooting Sportsman before doing that. Because of the "first time North American serial rights" thing, SSM may or may not own the rights. But I'd certainly start by asking them, because if they don't own the rights, they may very well know who does. And it's very likely someone does.

The existence of the Internet does not grant worldwide permission to publish anything just because the author happens to be dead. Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula", first published in 1897, has been in print ever since. With the approach of Halloween, someone might think it a great idea to put the entire book on the Internet. The problem is, since it's still in print, some publishing company owns the rights to it. And anyone who dares to put it on the Internet is likely to find the bloody count rising from the grave to bite them on their legal necks.

Last edited by L. Brown; 10/30/19 08:33 AM.