Portal talk:Stratemeyer Syndicate

Actual authors?

Is it possible (easy?) to find out who the actual authors of the stories were? In some countries with Life+X copyright term the term ends X years after publication (as opposed to death of author) if the author is anonymous, however, pseudonymous authors may not be anonymous in a legal sense (if the true authors' identities can be "easily" found out).

Besides it would add to the value of Wikisource to have the authors' real names attached to their stories.--GrafZahl 10:40, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

As these were all published before 1923, I'm not sure that there are any issues with the public domain status of these texts... I could be wrong. A quick bit of research implies that Howard R. Garis was the author of the first 37 Tom Swifts... Whether or not this is correct, I'm not sure. Jude (talk,contribs,email) 10:51, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

It was not my intention to question the legality of these texts on Wikisource. Sorry if it came across like that. The texts are in the public domain in the US and since, I understand, Wikisource is hosted in the US, the copyright law of that country is the only one the project is legally required to obey. In many countries (including some mostly-English speaking ones), however, copyright is strongly tied to the author(s), so not knowing the true author's name may be of inconvenience for the users of those countries. For example, works by Howard Garis are still in copyright in the UK. Well, never mind. My initial post was only a semi-reflected shot at what seems to be a more general problem: how much of the burden of determining public domain status do we want to take from foreign users? The solutions lies probably in enhancing Help:Copyright_and_Wikisource or creating a new page to this end, and giving per-author information only if feasible.--GrafZahl 17:32, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

We strive to give our best information about texts and their copyright status. All out license tags not only declare the staus of copyright but also our reasoning for declaring the status. Foriegn users will have to decide how that reasoning applies to the laws they live under. I think we provide a good deal of information on the subject, but definative answers are not really possible. Copyright is not clear issue. In this case I think these book should be listed here as well as under the actual author if known for certian. However in a case like this the author may not have ever owned the copyright and his death date would then have no bearing on copyright.--BirgitteSB 00:07, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying!--GrafZahl 20:39, 16 June 2006 (UTC)