What does a Medical Transcription person do?

Is a transcription of a public domain encyclopedia copyrighted itself?

• I have googled, but I have not found any real answers. I'd like to know if the following situation is legally allowed in the United States (IANAL not withstanding) 1)Person A has taken an encyclopedia from the public domain, made 100 years ago, and transcribed 10,000 articles, verbatim, from it and put it on his website, adding hyperlinks. Apart from any very minor edits (perhaps a dozen or so sentences added to all articles total, most of them are untouched), Person A has not really rewritten any of the content, but again, merely (though in this case that was a lot of work, of course) transcribed it. Person A claims copyright on this transcription. Person B would like to put all of those articles on his website, discarding the hyperlinks in favor of his own database hyperlinking solution. All that will be copied is the transcription itself with whatever (again, very minor) changes that Person A has made. Since the original text was in the public domain, is Person A allowed to claim copyright on the transcription itself? Also, is what Person B wants to do legal?

• Answer:

  Hello anonymous47~ Person B is legally entitled to reprint the encyclopedia articles, as long as all original material Person A has added are not used. This includes layout or formatting. Person A may only claim copyright on materials that he or she has added, plus the format in which it is presented. Stanford sums it up thus: "Modifications to a public domain work may be protected by copyright and cannot be used without permission. A famous example used in many copyright classes is of the artist who paints an elaborate hat and mustache on the Mona Lisa. Even though anyone is free to copy the Mona Lisa image, the modified image (with mustache and hat) is protected under the artist's copyright. EXAMPLE: Color has been added to the black and white public domain film God's Little Acre. This colorization process is copyrightable. Therefore, the colorized version of God's Little Acre cannot be copied without permission." ("Public Domain Trouble Spots," Stanford: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter8/8-b.html ) Please note that if Person A had compiled encyclopedia articles from a variety of encyclopedias, then the entire reprinted work would be copyrighted by him or her, and Person B would not be free to reprint it without permission. Person B should be careful that the original encyclopedia articles are, indeed, in public domain, however; otherwise he or she will be breaking copyright law. A good website that will help Person B determine this is online at the University of North Carolina: http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm Kind regards, Kriswrite RESEARCH STRATEGY: Researcher's personal knowledge Google search: "public domain"