Hi,

have you just registed the company name then Ian?

Cheers,
malc

nn wrote:Ian: I thought that magazine copyright only lasted 25 years in UK law ?

That's a confusion arising from the copyright term of the "typographic arrangement of a published edition" being 25 years in the UK in order to protect the publisher rather than the original author or estate where the author's term has lapsed. This is in addition to other (c) protection and may also be used, for example, if publishing a "new edition" of Shakespeare as well as for newspaper publishers where reporting and writing-up of "factual" news items is carried out for them by their employees.
02c/afaik, anyhow, but I haven't seen anything substantial to the contrary since first checking up on this.

q.v. http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/UK ... 8_en_1.htm , sec. 1(1)(c), 9(2)(d), 15 / http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-dura ... lished.htm / http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/gov/ ... copyright/ / http://tinyurl.com/n74a85

lawrenson wrote:Hi,

have you just registed the company name then Ian?

Cheers,
malc

Nope? Beast Enterprises Limited was never a registered company. It seems that they were just using the name, as many do, whithout being a limited company under the law.

lawrenson wrote:Hi,

well, someone is using it now. Odd coincidence.

Its on the Companies House Database:

BEAST ENTERPRISES LIMITED

110 MOSELLE AVENUE...

Heh, heh; good spot but not enough front yard to swing a cougar. (Albeit would probably get arrested for that in public...).

Hi,

plus there are 5 "B Barrett"s listed in Oxford/Oxfordshire.

Dunno if they are Basils tho

Cheers,
Malc

Thanks.

James who? Do you have a phone number or e-mail address?
I e-mailed GD and NS to see if they had any info. GD sid he hadn't worked with BB, only SF back in the 90's when they published the GW versions of same, so Hogshead may well have just been reprinting Games Workshop's 'scripts.

I did write to the B Barretts listed in Oxfordshire and Birmingham back in 2005/6 working off of the 2002 electoral register with result. That doesn't mean one of them isn't who I'm looking for, just that they chose not to reply.

Hi Ian,

i also shot an email to someone I know in the UK RPG Publishing industry, he got back to me this morning, with possibly not what you want to hear:

Hi,

I'll put some feelers out to see if we can locate Simon and Basil. Even if we do locate them it might not be as easy as getting permission to reprint the mags on a CD-ROM. It all depends on who owns the copyright for the actual articles.

For a lot of magazines the original writers maintained copyright of the article and the magazine had 'first printing' rights to them. So Simon and Basil may not be able to grant permission to soemone else to reproduce the works.

WotC feel foul of this a number of years ago when they published the 250 Issues of Dragon on CD-ROM (and that's the reason why Kenzer got to be able to publish Hackmaster using the D&D 1st Ed rules and had the D&D Logo stamped on their Kingdoms of Kalamar setting - the only third party company allowed to use the official D&D logo - as they settled out of court with WotC on the matter of WotC reprinting the KoDT Dragon strips without permission).

If your friend went ahead and did it without permission they could find themselves taken to court by either the various authors or the magazine owners for reproducing the material without permission.

None of it will currently be in the public domain as not enough time has passed between original publication and, I suspect in most if not all cases, the authors are still alive and ertainly won't have been dead for the required 75 years.

I'd certainly urge him not to produce it unless he wants to make a single copy for personal use. Legally he would be in the wrong beyond a single personal use copy. Even more so if he is distributing and charging money for it.

I'll see if I can unearth anything for you though.


I'll let you know if he comes back with any more info tho.

Cheers,
malc

lawrenson wrote:For a lot of magazines the original writers maintained copyright of the article and the magazine had 'first printing' rights to them.

That's pretty much universal and, yes, complicates matters accordingly. I can think of a few exceptions but not many for the older 'zines.

Excellent news, sounds promising!