Most of the information I'll give here is just from my study of the
copyright law over the last several weeks.  This message is not public
domain yet.  Now I'll make it public domain.  This message is in the public
domain and without license to anyone.

The Digital Millenium act has changed the public domain and I think that
much of the art that you would use may be public domain.  The end of
perpetual copyrights for unpublished work ended New Years 2003. Before that,
for an example an unpublished civil war diary, was not public domain. Now,
after 2003, it's public domain.  If I remember right, that date is 01/01/23,
you should check that though.  Other public domain materials are available,
according to the law, which you can find at the copyright office.

Most of what I've read about this deals with the sticky issue of derivative
works.  If you create a commercial book and use public domain content.  That
is a derivative work.  The parts that are in the public domain remain public
domain.  The copyright office says that the change in the derivative work
must be substancial enough to create a new work, the parts which are new
content are copyrighted, the public domain parts remain that way.  So
theoretically, you could use images and text from a modern copyrighted book,
that used public domain images and use the public domain images and text as
part of your work.

Here's the rub.....telling the difference, between what is public domain and
new material.  In the case of some motion pictures, like "To Kill a
Mockingbird", which is public domain has been redone to the point of making
a derivative by Universal.  Technically the public domain part is still
public domain, but with the additions of new scenes and cleaning make
ARGUABLY a new work and copyrightable.

To be safe, you should only use images and text from originals of the public
domain work you are using, like original film prints, photos of public
domain art you have shot yourself.  Make sure there's no middle man or that
your materials come from someone reputable that can prove their history.  If
you need to use materials that are copyrighted, you should write the owner
for permissions.  Owners have various degrees of cooperation with teachers
and may grant you a limited right to use their materials for educational
purposes.  I've seen rights like that granted to educators for as little as
nothing, with distribution restrictions.  I remember that I had a high
school teacher that had me investigate getting the rights for "Before Adam",
a Jack London novel and now PD.  At that time, the work wasn't PD, but I did
get rights to reproduce 500 copies (not for sale), since it was out of
print, for free.

The Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov has an online search engine to
help you do copyright searches and most of the applicable laws you'll need
to determine what who owns what.  Then you'll have to decide, what you want
your rights to be in the derivative work you are creating and what parts of
the work that you will claim as your own and what you want the copyright
status of your work to have.  You'll also need to reconcile that with any
rights anyone may have to the materials you used to create the work.

I am not an attorney, not should you take any of this as legal counsel.

Hope this helped

Kevin
http://retroradio.dynu.com

Marianne owns this message from here......



"Marianne Black" <chrismarmeg@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:Gk1gb.2019$oO4.156115@news20.bellglobal.com...
> Hi all,
>
> I am putting together an ebook for Art Teachers that is designed to help
> them teach Art Appreciation to children.  This book is divided into two
> sections: the first deal with the use of line, colour and shapes in art
and
> how artists use them to create mood; the second section deal with eras in
> artwork history (NeoClassicism; Romanticism etc) in an effort to show how
> artists of these eras used their artwork to depict the feelings of the
time.
> The second section of the book requires the use of images that depict
> artwork of each era.  What copyright issues will I run into in using these
> images in my book?  Thanks.
>
> Chris
>
>