Is this illegal?

[adventurernumber1]

Lately, I have been wanting to start a new thread in the Photos, Videos, and More subforum (if it is where it in fact belongs, that is) to showcase the beautiful, fascinating, important history of the roads in part of our country. Specifically, I basically mean posting a lot of pictures documenting the roads in California (on a map) from my 1940 Rand McNally Atlas, so everyone can see, and maybe it may even help with some's educational road history journey. Of course, California is one of the biggest places for road history. You've got the history of US 66, US 99, and all the other US Routes that fell victim to the Mass Decomissioning Diaster in California. Tons of roads (not just US Highways) also have simple interesting road history such as old alignments and the sort. There is tons out there! But the point of this thread is, with me wanting to make this thread where I publicly post pictures of the roads in California on the map from my 1940 Rand McNally Atlas, I have a very, very important question: If I do this, is that illegal? I know that these old, old, atlases and such are not that easy to find - they're not just lying around in stores ready to be bought by the tons like the 2018 Rand McNally Atlas right now. However, could I still get in legal trouble for publicly posting the content of a product that belongs to me (that I bought with money on eBay quite a while ago), and that other people (the public) would probably technically have to buy it to access it themselves?? It just seems to me that this product (the atlas) is less of a "profit item" for corporations, and more of a rare, unbelievably important document that showcases history at its richest, and maybe it could or should be shared for everyone to see. I learned a lot about copyright and that kind of thing in my Video Production class a few years ago, but I simply don't know the answer to this specific very important question. I really hope that it isn't illegal, because I would truly love for all of you to see this intriguing stuff. 

[MNHighwayMan]

Technically, since a map is copyrighted material, yeah, in theory you could get in trouble for it. In practice, I wouldn't worry about it–there aren't people getting paid to scour the web looking for scans of maps from 70 years ago. Post away, my friend.

[Scott5114]

If you're posting it for educational purposes, it could be argued to be fair use. This is how Wikipedia gets away with including some copyrighted images, like corporate logos.

[formulanone]

Basically, if you mention that it's not your work and credit each image appropriately with publisher and copyright, you're probably going to be okay. That's still more than what 99% of the rest of the web does. I also wouldn't publish the entire contents of the book, just a handful of relevant items.

Just because you "own" the product which has a copyright (expressed or implied), doesn't mean you have ultimate control of how the material is re-displayed (what is called a "derivative work"). The same goes with an album, song, lyrics, music, play, advertisement, movies, book, journal, photo, letter, postcard, newspaper, logos, devices, drawing, painting, sculpture, software, or even another website; if it is not Public Domain by law or something displaying an explicit permission for Re-Use (Creative Commons, GNU license, copyleft, et al), then it's essentially always covered by copyright, whether enforced or not.

After that...worst case scenario, DMCA gets applied and they get Google or website to take it down, and that's the end of that.

[jeffandnicole]

Many, many years ago, when the web was in its infancy, I copied and posted a portion of a Rand McNally map to a website I ran.  I notified Rand McNally of it too.  They responded back with basically a cease and desist order telling me it's copyrighted info and to take it down immediately.  I also had a webpage hit counter that would tell me the address or whatever of the visitors visiting the site.  Sure enough, a few weeks later they did check the site again to verify I removed the image.

Now, that was 20 years ago.  Would the same thing happen to you today?  Very doubtful.  Especially if you don't actually notify them!

[Max Rockatansky]

I know that I'm not touching on the main question but isn't this what we kind of already do on the Pacific Southwest Board already with the old school maps and alignments?  Here is a 1938 State Map from the Division of Highways, wrap your mind on the County Maintained sections of state highways like; 28, 33, 49, and 180:

https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~239588~5511892:Road-Map-of-the-State-of-California?sort=Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No&qvq=q:caltrans;sort:Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No;lc:RUMSEY~8~1&mi=69&trs=86

[1995hoo]

A further suggestion to help with establishing fair use would be to scan the pages at less than full resolution and to avoid posting the entire atlas (instead, post selected pages only). Essentially the idea there is that it helps support the argument that your use of a portion of the work won't have a negative impact on the copyright holder's rights in the work (even recognizing the very limited market for old road maps).

[NE2]

There's a whole 1989 Rand McNally here and has been for years: http://broermapsonline.org/site/online-historic-maps/
So I wouldn't worry about it unless you're trying to make money on it.

[MNHighwayMan]

I know that I'm not touching on the main question but isn't this what we kind of already do on the Pacific Southwest Board already with the old school maps and alignments?  Here is a 1938 State Map from the Division of Highways, wrap your mind on the County Maintained sections of state highways like; 28, 33, 49, and 180:

It's going to vary by state, but in some states, anything produced by the state government is not copyrightable/is in the public domain (akin to stuff produced by the federal government.) Don't know if that's true in regard to California, though.

[Max Rockatansky]

I know that I'm not touching on the main question but isn't this what we kind of already do on the Pacific Southwest Board already with the old school maps and alignments?  Here is a 1938 State Map from the Division of Highways, wrap your mind on the County Maintained sections of state highways like; 28, 33, 49, and 180:

It's going to vary by state, but in some states, anything produced by the state government is not copyrightable/is in the public domain (akin to stuff produced by the federal government.) Don't know if that's true in regard to California, though.

I would assume it would be, pretty much every edition is available from 1918 to 1970 on David Rumsey already. 

[adventurernumber1]

Thanks for the responses, everyone! 


This would definitely have to fall under fair use, as what I plan to post is very educational. A lot of you may be able to learn a bunch of stuff regarding road history, and you get to visually see it yourself. So I am very excited for that.