Gerard Arthus, Copyright Law and Intellectual Delusions

Excerpt: "It is quite clear that even in the Library Community there exists a common delusion concerning Copyright protections and Public Domain materials. While it is very common for publishers (for example 'Dover') to reissue materials which have long since passed into the public domain and attach misleading copyright notices to these publications implying that the reprinted publication falls under their copyright protection as a derivative work; such practices seem to be endemic within the library community, particularly with respect to the proliferation of digital collections based upon a particular libraries possession of public domain materials donated to them by some benefactor (or in many cases anonymously). All sorts of mechanisms are often used such as watermarks, banding, fuzzification of images and various attempts to bastardize images so they cannot be used for other purposes. Such attempts to undermine and wreck the statutes governing Public Domain materials are unprofessional at best and ethically fall into behavior which could be considered as criminal."