Do they really have automated systems searching for 50+ year old newspapers? Probably a lot of them haven't even been digitised before, so it would be impossible to search for them in an automated way.
From personal experience, I can tell you that there are automated systems searching for such pieces of art.
As for newspapers, all it takes is one copyright troll to realize it's happening, and suddenly there's lawsuit settlements everywhere, making him rich.
The trolls can always try. OTOH I would be a little surprise if, a) one can intimidate The British Library by just sending some silly nastygrams, b) The British Library either doesn’t have in-house counsel or didn’t consult competent law firms before publishing these papers.
For that to happen they'd have to be the owners of the Copyright, they're not exactly patent trolls who can use the law creatively.
The Newspapers are largely regional (and mostly defunct) papers. Who at the Derby Evening Telegraph is going to waste lawyers fees getting a Library to remove 100year old content?
The Derby Evening Telegraph may have sold the rights of their archives to an entity (like ProQuest) which has a financial interest in finding and shutting down competition.
Yes but they can creatively say it applies to a whole manner of tenuous things. A sneaky newspaper owner can’t claim copyright on anything other than what they own
