[GreenKeys] Copyright musings

[david freeman]

I have an idea to make some money with my Teletype machines, but am unsure about the ethics of it all.
There are a lot of collectors paying a lot of money (thousands of dollars) for original AP wire press
releases of famous events. There are also some buying Xerox copies of press releases for $15 to $20.
Now I’m not looking to dupe anyone, and I also don’t want to enable another less scrupulous person to
dupe anyone either. Could an expert tell if an original AP wire Teletype printed a famous press release
using 40 year old paper and a 40 year old ribbon that it was not 40 years old? What things might I
incorporate to ensure it’s known as a “replica” without ruining the effect? Might there be copyright
infringement issues? Did newspapers in effect buy the rights to a copy by subscribing to the service?

On a similar topic, some of you know that I cleaned up the scraps of John Sheetz estate recently.
While reading through some of the correspondence between John Sheetz and Don Royer, it appears that
Don got entangled into some negotiation with Playboy and Oui about copyright infringement issues.
Later, it seems he must have resolved it, because Don was then copyrighting his RTTY art! (Don
complained to John that he cut off some copyright text below one of his works, and he needed to
put it on the punch tape somehow, even if it was hand written.) Unfortunately, for the most part,
John only saved his replies to the sender, and as such I can perceive less than half the story.
Does RTTY art not infringe? Can you copyright a copied image? How do you think the courts would
rule in a similar case today?

Looking for your input,
Dave, WW8S

PS, I do expect to make some pieces of the estate available to the group in the near future,
as soon as I can get it sorted. It's still one big pile right now :)



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