The books are still very much copyrighted, but I am not so sure that means much. The content may be the same but the book and the radio series are still entirely separate entities in copyright law. That is why you can copyright a recording of a presentation of Beethoven's 9th.
I assume archive.org has done their homework here, but IANAL.
Assuming radio plays required copyright notices in the US at the time, the BBC didn't have them on broadcasts they sold to the US so that is probably what happened here.
The novel and radio play will still be very much under copyright in Europe.
From the third comment on archive.org :
"The three novels which make up the original Foundation trilogy were written as a magazine serial between 1940 and 1950, for a science fiction magazine edited by the legendary John W Campbell. They were thus composed as a series of short stories, giving them a number of advantages over the later books by which Asimov added to the story forty years afterwards."
So there is no Asimov copyright problem as it's based on Campbell's work.
Yet it's presented as Assimov's trilogy. So I don't know what to believe.
Copyright is now 70 years. So, assuming it was published between 1940 and 1942, it effectively felt in public domain hence, inmho ianal, both original story and recorded are now in public domain.
In addition to economics, I reread "The Wizard of Oz" recently. In the book, the witch's shoes are silver while in the movie they are ruby red. This was only one of places where the book and movie diverged. I can understand that someone who likes the movie may prefer to read the book of the movie, rather than the original book.
The books are still very much copyrighted, but I am not so sure that means much.
That means everything. The audio recordings are a derivative work, so the audio"ness" of it is a separate copyrightable/copyrighted work (but the underlying novel itself remains subject to the original copyright). This means that the audio recording is subject to both copyrights unless part of the license given to the creators of the audio work includes a license to redistribute the audio work, which may be the case given that it is a BBC production.
Right, since it is a legal licensed redistribution it seems logical to me that the situation is not as simple as it just being another publication of the same work. It is a licensed re-performance of the same content, but my understanding is that it is a separate legal entity (something that the legal owner of the original work agreed to upon licencing.)
So the Asimov estate has no beef with the BBC, since all licensing was done there, the BBC presumably has no beef with archive.org users, and the Asimov estate has no beef with archive.org users because it is not their place to.
That would be my guess (and IANAL, either). The BBC presumably paid Asimov for worldwide distribution rights for the audio performance, so the Asimov estate has no reason to kick.
I alluded to this in my initial comment: I find it hard to believe that Asimov's publishers would have agreed to a license deal that permitted public domain distribution of the derivative work. If this recording truly is public domain today, I should be able to type a transcript as a novel and sell it, right? What sane publisher would sign such a deal?
> If this recording truly is public domain today, I should be able to type a transcript as a novel and sell it, right?
No, that is not what "public domain" means. A public-domain work is still properly attributed to its creator. A person can't take credit for it on the ground that it's in the public domain.
[For the record, my intent wasn't that I'd pretend I was the original author, just that I'd sell the transcribed book. But running with your take on this anyway, and with the usual IANAL disclaimer:]
Morally, you're certainly right: it's wrong to take credit for work that is not your own. But legally, I thought this is precisely what "public domain" means. Disney can make a movie out of Snow White without bothering to credit the Brothers Grimm (or their sources) at all, much less needing permission from their heirs. Public domain works can be used by anyone, in any way, for any purpose.
As one example to illustrate this, Creative Commons provides a way to "dedicate work to the public domain". Their human-readable summary says,
"You can copy, modify, distribute and
perform the work, even for commercial
purposes, all without asking permission."
That's pretty much what I was attempting to describe in my previous comment.
Yes, but not having to ask permission isn't the same as not having to include an attribution of the source and its author. The latter is required in virtually all cases. Consider the issue of plagiarism -- is it plagiarism if the plagiarized work is in the public domain? I think you know the answer.
I'm a college professor and a research scientist: I'd better know the answer! But I've never heard that plagiarism is a legal issue. Are there actual laws on the books that criminalize plagiarism of public domain material? (I live in the US; is that answer different here than elsewhere?)
But honestly, your objection here is very much a side issue. As I already said, the point of my example earlier was to wonder whether someone could hypothetically transcribe the Foundation stories from the audio recording and sell the resulting novels, complete with a cover reading "Isaac Asimov's /Foundation/" (and perhaps with "Edited by J. Smith" in small text somewhere).
> But I've never heard that plagiarism is a legal issue. Are there actual laws on the books that criminalize plagiarism of public domain material?
It's more typically an issue of academics ethics. Plagiarism is a very serious charge in academia (and to some extent in politics), regardless of the source of the plagiarized material.
As to its being a legal issue, I don't think so, but IANAL. My earlier point was about proper attribution.
> As I already said, the point of my example earlier was to wonder whether someone could hypothetically transcribe the Foundation stories from the audio recording and sell the resulting novels, complete with a cover reading "Isaac Asimov's /Foundation/" (and perhaps with "Edited by J. Smith" in small text somewhere).
I have to say I don't know how that would play out. I guess the example of Shakespeare's plays stands as an example of the freedom one may have in such a case. But that's not plagiarism -- defined as claiming another's work as your own.
I assume archive.org has done their homework here, but IANAL.