Some research on the Annexation movement during the Civil War era uncovered the following page from Library and Archives Canada
It is packed with fascinating information, even an 1866 “Annexation Bill”.
What is troubling, however, is to see the copyright notice for this material as well as others on the website:
“The Reciprocity Treaty of 1854″. 2nd Session, 61st Congress, Senate Documents, No. 357.
© Government of the United States of America“A Bill for the admission of the States of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada East, and Canada West, and for the organization of the Territories of Selkirk, Saskatchewan, and Columbia”.
© Government of the United States of America
“© Government of the United States of America”?!?
Under American copyright law, such a copyright statement is meaningless, at least within the United States:
§ 105. Subject matter of copyright: United States Government works
Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.
In fact, Title 17 defines the term: A “work of the United States Government” is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties.
If it is true that a claim to copyright, made by the United States government, on a work of the U.S. government within the United States, is a non-starter, and even if one were to assume that Canadian law could recognize copyright in the work in its early days, how on Earth can the United States claim copyright in this century-and-a-half-old document, according to the Canadian Copyright Act?
This is hardly a case where LAC made a mistake in their public domain classification. Indeed, other documents in the same collection are marked correctly as “© Public Domain”.
In any case, such a misinterpretation and misuse of copyright law is all too common at LAC for its usual patrons. Be it the rude and threatening red copyright notice reminding you not to do anything to their documents, even if they are in public domain, or the highly dubious ban against “any modification, translation or reformatting that alters the meaning or context of the material or compromises its authenticity,” there is still a whole lot of things left for this national cultural organization to learn about copyright law prohibitions and permissions, especially when it comes to its own rights and those of its patrons regarding non-copyrighted materials.
National Library of Canada must quit misleading its patrons concerning copyright issues. Library stands for the word and not lieberry.