Hat tip to reader Steve Ward, who told me about this in a comment to the last blog post….

There is an article on the topic of the duration of copyright protection in the business section of today’s New York Times. This is obviously an important topic that is receiving a great deal of attention in a number of different sectors.

Perhaps Congress needs to step up and clarify some of these issues so that researchers know what they can and cannot do with a given source.

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Chris Wehner had an interesting post on his blog the other day on historical documents and copyright. Someone asked Chris who owns the copyright for historical documents.

Copyright can be kind of a tricky concept to wrap one’s arms around. You cannot copyright an idea, only the expression of that idea. Thus, I had an idea to write a book about the Battle of Monroe’s Crossroads. That idea, in and of itself, cannot be copyrighted. The book itself–how I expressed that idea–is what is subject to copyright protection. Once we get our arms around that concept, we can then move on to the more difficult question of what is and is not in the public domain.

The first issue, of …

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Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed…

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As mentioned in my prior post, I recently learned that Potomac Books intends to remainder my book The Union Cavalry Comes of Age: Hartwood Church to Brandy Station, 1863. Consequently, I e-mailed the publisher, Sam Dorrance, to request that they either bring the book back into print or revert my publishing rights to me, so that I could take the book elsewhere in the hope of keeping it in print.

Sam wrote me back on Friday to let me know that only the hardcover edition is being remaindered, as sales have slowed to almost nothing. However, he indicated that sales of the softcover edition remain steady, and that the softcover edition is not being remaindered. He also indicated …

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Susan and I went to Pittsburgh for the day yesterday to attend the wedding of some close friends. There was something extremely appropriate about my being in the Steel City yesterday. Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of my graduation from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. I moved to Columbus on June 1, 1987, and I’ve been here ever since.

It hardly seems possible that twenty years have passed since that roasting hot, humid day, but they clearly have. If you had asked me then whether I’d still be here in Columbus twenty years later, I would have told you that you were out of your mind, but it’s true. And so it goes…..

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Well, it’s happened again. Potomac Books, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to remainder me again. This time, it’s one of my very favorite books, and one that has a very large investment of me in it, The Union Cavalry Comes of Age: Hartwood Church to Brandy Station, 1863. That means that I will see something that I hate: one of my titles on the shelf at Half Price Books, marked down to next to nothing. It also means that I don’t get paid royalties on the remaindering sales.

I understand that publishing is a business and that publishers have to turn inventory. I get that. I also understand that warehouse space is expensive and that they need to …

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Lawrence B. Ebert is a registered patent lawyer from New Jersey. He maintains a blog called IPBiz that deals with the business of intellectual property. He has commented on this blog previously, and he also is an active member of the CWDG.

Last week, Mr. Ebert had an interesting post on plagiarism, and he selected Carhart’s festering pile of turds as the example for analysis. Referring to Paul D. Walker’s The Cavalry Battle that Saved the Union, which is, without doubt, one of the worst Civil War books ever published, Ebert points out that Walker’s book also claims that Stuart’s movement on East Cavalry Field was coordinated with Pickett’s Charge. Walker’s book, awful as it may be–and it …

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Below are photos from the recent trip to North Carolina. The first photograph is of a Confederate light saber recovered from the Monroe’s Crossroads battlefield that is owned by a fellow named Al Potts. The wrist guard is bent, but Mr. Potts does not know whether it is battle damage. The blade is pretty chewed up, but I couldn’t tell if it was from battle or from being exposed to the elements. The next batch of photos are from the Guilford Court House National Military Park. There are 32 monuments on the Guilford Court House battlefield and we photographed most of them. The last batch of pictures are from the Jeb Stuart birthplace.

This is Al Pott’s Ames Confederate saber, …

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A week ago today, I had a horrifying realization, one I’ve been dreading for a LONG time.

We had dinner with another couple and then went to see Spiderman III. When we got to their house, I grabbed the newspaper to make sure of the times when the movie was playing, and realized that….I couldn’t read the fine print with the movie times!!! Rather suddenly, my arms had grown too short.

I had to borrow my friend Mark’s reading glasses in order to read the movie times. I’m 46, and I knew this day was coming, sooner than later. The next day, last Sunday, we went to Costco and I bought three pairs of +1.25 reading glasses for $18. That …

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We’re home safe and sound, but very, very tired.

We were up at 5:30 on Thursday morning to get the dogs to the fabulous place where we board them when we go out of town. We hit the road at 8:00. It is every bit of an eight hour drive to Pinehurst, not like the typo in my last post suggested. We got to Teej’s house about 4:15. We visited a bit, and then checked into the hotel. After dropping off our stuff, we headed out to dinner and then to the CWRT meeting.

The program chair didn’t bother to coordinate with me, so I wasn’t sure what I was expected to talk about. I figured I would do the …

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