Project:The copyright status of Wittgenstein’s works: Difference between revisions

For each work, the copyright status in the country of origin and in Italy will be described and explained.<ref>In the paragraphs below, when a country’s copyright term is mentioned for the first time, the relevant intellectual property law is cited – except in the case of the US, where the reference is to a secondary source. Each of the cited laws is listed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) as the main IP law enacted by the relevant legislature.</ref> What is written about Italy can be considered to be valid, to some extent, for all countries where, as a general rule, copyright expires 70 years or fewer P.M.A.; however, since local exceptions may exist,<ref>As an example, it is worthwhile to briefly discuss an issue that often comes up in conversations between Wittgensteinians about copyright. In the UK, as a general rule, copyright expires 70 years P.M.A. However, texts that were unpublished as of the end of 1989 will be copyrighted until the end of 2039 regardless of the date of the author’s death. For further information, see ''{{plainlink|[https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/copyright-notice-duration-of-copyright-term/copyright-notice-duration-of-copyright-term Copyright Notice: Duration of copyright (term)]}}'', UK Intellectual Property office, 15 January 2021, retrieved 16 July 2022 ({{plainlink|[https://web.archive.org/web/20220716101721/https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/copyright-notice-duration-of-copyright-term/copyright-notice-duration-of-copyright-term archived URL]}}). This does not affect any of the texts published on the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project’s website, but those among Wittgenstein’s manuscripts that were indeed unpublished as of 1989 are still copyrighted in the UK.</ref> generalisations should be made, so to speak, at one’s own risk. Occasionally, the copyright status in the United States will be discussed, as the US, despite not playing any special role from the point of view of the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project, are certainly, to this day, the centre of gravity of the web.

Their country of origin is the United Kingdom. These works are in the public domain there, as well as in Italy, because the copyright term for literary works in both countries is 70 years P.M.A. and the author died before 1952.

However, Ms-172, Ms-173, and Ms-176, in which Wittgenstein’s remarks on colour are contained and from which the 1977 edition was compiled, had already been published, albeit in a rather uncommon kind of edition. In 1967, looking to make the ''Nachlass'' available to scholars in its “raw” form, Cornell University microfilmed the corpus; the print version of the microfilms, i.e., a facsimile edition of (almost) the entire ''Nachlass'', was published by Cornell itself in 1968.<ref>''The Wittgenstein Papers'', Cornell University Libraries, Ithaca (NY) 1968. For more information, see A. Pichler, “{{plainlink|[https://www.inst.at/trans/10Nr/pichler10.htm Encoding Wittgenstein. Some Remarks on Wittgenstein’s ''Nachlass'', the ''Bergen Electronic Edition'', and future electronic publishing and networking”]}}, in ''Trans. Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften'', no. 10, January 2022, retrieved 30 July 2022 ({{plainlink|[https://web.archive.org/web/20220730162159/https://www.inst.at/trans/10Nr/pichler10.htm archived URL]}}).</ref> Even though it is a rather untypical book and even though, in particular, it lacks an imprint, the Cornell edition seems to meet the American legal definition of “publication”<ref>“‘Publication’ is the distribution of copies or phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending.” Title 17 of the United States Code (17 U. S. C.) §101. By this definition, there is no minimum number of copies to be attained for the distribution to count as a publication, nor there is the need for a formal registration or commercialisation. As Peter Hirtle writes, however, the following should be noted: “‘Publication’ was not explicitly defined in the Copyright Law before 1976, but the 1909 Act indirectly indicated that publication was when copies of the first authorized edition were placed on sale, sold, or publicly distributed by the proprietor of the copyright or under his authority.” See ''{{plainlink|1=[https://guides.library.cornell.edu/copyright/publicdomain Copyright Term and the Public Domain]}}'', Cornell University Library, retrieved 30 July 2022 ({{plainlink|[https://web.archive.org/web/20220711133814/https://guides.library.cornell.edu/copyright/publicdomain archived URL]}}). The 1909 indication seems to stress commercialisation more than Title 17 does; at any rate, it seems that the Cornell edition was indeed sold to research institutes worldwide: see A. Pichler, “{{plainlink|[https://www.inst.at/trans/10Nr/pichler10.htm Encoding Wittgenstein. Some Remarks on Wittgenstein’s ''Nachlass'', the ''Bergen Electronic Edition'', and future electronic publishing and networking”]}}, in ''Trans. Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften'', no. 10, January 2022, retrieved 30 July 2022 ({{plainlink|[https://web.archive.org/web/20220730162159/https://www.inst.at/trans/10Nr/pichler10.htm archived URL]}}).</ref> and the ''Bemerkungen über die Farben'', which were part of this publication,<ref>M. Biggs, A. Pichler, “Wittgenstein: Two Source Catalogues and a Bibliography. Catalogues of the Published Texts and of the Published Diagrams, each Related to its Sources”, in ''Working Papers from the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen'', no. 7, 1993.</ref> must therefore be considered to have the US as their country of origin. Possibly because of being published by a university library for mere research purposes, however, this edition did not bear a copyright notice. Works first published in the US between 1927 and 1977 without a copyright notice are in the public domain there, because at the time this formality was a necessary condition for the work to be copyrighted at all.<ref name="hirtle-chart" /> Thus, the ''Bemerkungen über die Farben'' are in the public domain in their country of origin. If, on the other hand, the Cornell edition does not in fact meet the American legal definition of publication, then it must again count as having first been published in the United Kingdom in 1977, and so again it is in the public domain in its country of origin.