The textbook solution would be to contact the magazine and obtain their consent to reprint. The few times I've done it (not in a cycling context) the owners were more than happy to have their work recirculated. For your safety, try to get a letter giving you permission.
However since you say that many of the articles are from magazines that have gone belly up the successors in ownership of the intellectual rights would be hard to find. If the author is known, you should try contacting her directly. She may or may not have retained the rights, but she may have an idea who does own them. And if she says it's ok to publish, you at least have a good faith belief that you received permission.
If you can't make any contact with anyone, you either have to forgo posting due to the risk, or else distribute the materials and wait and see if anyone objects. Posting copyrighted material without permission can create liability to whoever owns the copyright. Of course the probability that anyone will spend time and money to enforce copyright rights on an article that is of interest to crazy old bike nuts is pretty low, but it is theoretically possible.
Tom Adams, in snowbound KC
-----Original Message----- From: Steve Freides <sjf11@idt.net> To: Classic Lightweights <Classicrendezvous@bikelist.org> Date: Friday, December 29, 2000 12:43 PM Subject: [CR]Reprinting Old Cycle Magazine Articles
>Could anyone advise me as to if and how I might share articles from old
>('75-'85) cycling magazines with the rest of the list? I'm not
>concerned about the mechanics of doing it but with the legalities.
>
>I've been looking at a number of older cycling magazines and a lot of
>the articles would make very interesting reading, I think, but I don't
>know how to handle copyright issues - I don't know if I'd be violating
>someone's rights, any laws, or both.
>
>I know it's permitted to make brief quotations but I'd like to post some
>full articles, probably text only. Some of the authors are, of course,
>quite alive and well, but some of the publications, e.g., Cycling, are
>long since out of business, as are the companies on their mastheads.
>
>Many thank in advance, and apologies for the off-topic question but the
>results would be beneficial and interesting to us all.
>
>-S-