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Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

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Tassie guidebooks 17-Feb-2005 At 2:30:06 PM Onsight

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I think that Bill’s - and Neil’s second thoughts – take on the guidebook issue is correct. It's likewise my understanding is that facts themselves are not copyrightable but...

I know that Mikl is incredibly generous with providing route info to the climbing community. Perhaps in this case he gave away, or sold, more of his rights than really necessary? I wonder who the authors of the Geryon and Frenchman’s guidebooks are that Chris C was originally referring to? Maybe they gave away/sold the copyright of their work unnecessarily?

It's understandable that an author or publisher of a guidebook might want to protect their rights, but it gets more complicated when the author maybe using descriptions that have been provided to them by others – as opposed to the guidebook authors own original work.

I’d been doing some work on M8’s photo copyright questions (stay tuned) and found this on the (Australian) Copyright Agency Limited website:
“Copyright protection is free and automatic - it does not depend on publication, a copyright notice, or any other procedure. Copyright material is protected from the time it is first written down or recorded in some way, provided it is the result of the creator’s skill and effort and is not merely copied from another work.”