At 08:46 99/03/17 -0600, you wrote:
> Thanks to Paul Callomon for drawing back the curtain of the shell
> publisher's back room. Interesting! Don't forget to tell us about the
> positive aspects of publishing from time to time, as well as the
> disappointments.
Sure :
- one comes slowly to understand the limitations of human endeavour in
classifying nature and thereby to appreciate nature more;
 
- one comes to appreciate the efforts of other authors and publishers a
great deal more than one did as a mere reader;
 
- it's better than working or real life, whichever is worse.
 
> Paul, please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't most material published
> before 1909 no longer under US copyright unless the copyright has been
> renewed? Of course, rules differ from country to country, and I am no
> lawyer. This would seem to indicate that you can copy images from books
> published before 1909, as long as the image hasn't been reprinted since
> then by someone else.
 
Not being a US citizen I am not too familiar with the details of US
copyright law, but I think there are different time limits for different
publications. As far as I know, after either 90 or 100 years no copyright
on anything can be renewed. The dreadful Walt Disney corporation (of which
I am not a fan) recently offered all the members of the Garrick club in
London 39,000 pounds each if they would agree to sell the remaining
copyrights to A. A. Milne and E. H. Shephard's Winnie the Pooh books. Milne
bequeathed the copyrights to the Garrick, of which he was a lifelong
member. Apparently, all Disney had to do was wait another 8 years or so and
the copyrights would have expired, but they can probably make more out of
their nasty, soulless plastic version of Pooh in a week than it cost to buy
the rights. What happened in the end I haven't found out, but the case
shows that copyrights are regularly enforced right up to their last days -
at least when large sums of money are involved.