zozazumi is wrong on a couple of points. “adding value” is not the standard for copyrighting. The actual test is whether a “spark of creativity” has occurred. (Yes, it’s more vague.) Under U.S. law, typesetting or scanning isn’t copyrightable. (Under UK law, and I don’t know where else, typesetting is copyrightable.) Adding value isn’t the same as adding creativity.

t. gracchus has the principle right but is wrong in saying that you have to publish something with a copyright notice in order for it to be in copyright. This was true before 1978, but works created after that point are protected from the moment of creation.

A lot of these more interesting questions don’t get hashed out because the people interested don’t have the money to take the cases to court.

That is doubtful—at least in the U.S. in light of the decision in the ‘Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel’ case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_Ltd._v._Corel_Corporation

The critical issue seems to be whether or not any creativity was involved in the reproduction or whether it was just an example of ‘slavish copying’. This leads me to wonder whether scanning a public domain text and changing the typeface or adding minor formatting, punctuation or spelling changes would constitute ‘creativity’ for the purposes of U.S. copyright law. As far as I know, there hasn’t been a case where the reasoning in Bridgeman is applied to reproduction of public domain texts.

Here’s to PG’s variorum editions, if and when they come. As much as initiatives such as Distributed Proofreaders are fantastic—and I’ve done some proofing—I’d love to see a few people with editing skills jump on board with models of how to assemble a good teaching or study text. Admittedly, it challenges the notion of working on a potentially-lucrative scholarly edition (£60 hardback, but a necessary purchase for university libraries) but the web has long been ripe as a medium for such things.

I’ll make a note to our content providers that PG could use the 1818 edition, as well as a better 1831 edition as well. Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell how long it would take for these to make it through the system.

If someone then takes your edition, scans it, and prints their version of the novel, they are in violation of your copyright. Many publishers insert subtle changes into their versions of public domain works to catch copyright violators.

A real world example would be a photo agency that acquires copies of public domain photos from the National Archives or Library of Congress. Once they’ve reprinted or scanned the photos or done any editing to them, they’ve added value and are legally entitled to copyright the images and sell them. That’s why you may see the same Matthew Brady photo on a variety of agency sites and each one bears that agency’s notice of copyright.

I am not a lawyer and this information is in no way presented as legal advice. This is the internet, not the law offices of Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe (apologies to the Tappet Bros.).

Yes, you can cede IP to the public domain, by, as you say, a speech act. You can give away property of any kind to anyone you want to (well, excepting guns and convicts and that sort of thing).

As I understand it, the current practise of Distributed Proofreaders (the largest group submitting books to Project Gutenberg) is to identify which edition of a book was transcribed. But this wasn’t always done in the early days of Project Gutenberg, and Frankenstein – in particular – is regarded as needing to be redone.