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No Sweat of the Brow Copyright
Work performed on a public domain item, known as sweat of the brow, does not result in a new copyright. This is the judgment of Project Gutenberg's copyright lawyers, and is founded in a study of case law in the United States. This is founded in the notion of authorship, which is a prerequisite for a new copyright. Non-authorship activities do not create a new copyright.
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- digitizing, cropping, color-adjusting or other modifications to images
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- substantial reorganization, such as moving footnotes to end-notes, or changing the locations of pictures within the text
- recoding to new character sets, such as Unicode, or new formats, such as PDF
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- translation into another human language
- creating a new compilation of existing materials (though the individual items compiled retain their public domain status)
- creating new original art work
- creating an original derivative work, such as an audio performance, a new chapter, or a set of favorite quotations
- adding a new introduction or critical essay
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