Jürgen R. wrote:
schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
On May 9, 12:54 pm, samsloan wrote:
Elo's book, The Rating of Chess Players, Past and Present, is
reprinted today.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0923891277

Professor Elo's book, long out of print and almost impossible to
obtain, has just been reprinted.

Sam Sloan

I'm still wondering if this book is in the public domain at this
time. It was first published in 1978, just 30 years ago. What is the
length of copyright for such works?

Elo died in 1992, so most likely the copyright runs until 2062. The
book was originally published in 1978 by 'Arco', which seems to
be a vanity label. If you google you find a reference to a 1979
edition by Batsford. It is possible, therefore, that Batsford
owns the copyright; also possible that Elo's heirs own it.

It is pretty much certain that Sloan doesn't own the rights
to this nor to most of the other nonsense he is
reprinting.

The book itself isn't very interesting, because Elo stretches
his point and doesn't have a solid grasp of statistical logic.
However, the basic method, which is elementary, is well
described in this book and also in 2 papers published
earlier.

What Sloan means when he says he is
'sending the book to the printers' is that he is sending
a CD with the page images to Amazon. Amazon
then runs off a copy and glues it together *after*
somebody orders it.

They don't seem to be very concerned about copyright
ownership; However, Sloan does have to state that he
owns the rights. Presumably then Amazon is in
the clear and it is Sloan who will get sued if the owner
takes notice and thinks it is worthwhile.

Another aspect of Sloan's current scam is that
he seems to have no inhibitions about copying
cover artwork for the pirated reprints.
This may well be under separate copyright.


Arco was not a vanity press. They published a number of chess books
during the 1970s, including "The Complete Games of Paul Keres," a one-
volume edition of Keres's three books. I assume they were later
gobbled up by one of the bigger fish, but I've never researched it.