[Sca-cooks] NPR Segment on Copyright infringement

[James Prescott]

At 10:06 AM -0500 11/26/10, Robin Carroll-Mann wrote:

>  What about a translation done from a facsimile in a copyrighted book?
>  Though I haven't bought it yet, "Regalo de la Vida Humana" sounds very
>  tempting.  It contains a facsimile of a 16th c. manuscript, and an
>  edited transcription.  There is only one copy of the original
>  manuscript in the world, and it is owned by the national library of
>  Austria.  A facsimile was presented to the regional government of
>  Navarra (Spain), which published the 2-volume book in 2007.
>
>  If I did translations of some of the recipes (with or without my own
>  transcription attached), and post them to this list and/or a website,
>  would I be violating copyright?
>
>  Brighid ni Chiarain


If you translate from the facsimile into English you are not violating
copyright.  The underlying text is out of copyright.

The edited transcription is probably copyrightable, though that would
depend upon the judge and the jurisdiction.  If you translate from the
transcription into English you might then be violating the copyright of
the transcription.  It is a fuzzy area, and it is safer to assume that
the transcription is copyright, and work only from the facsimile.  Or
simply ask permission from those who did the transcription.

Working from the facsimile also gives you the opportunity to make your
own decisions about tricky bits in the original.  If the translation
does not seem to make sense, going back to stare at the facsimile can
let you see that the transcription was in error (true story).

Posting your own transcriptions made from the facsimile, and your
own translations from your own transcriptions, is fine.


As noted before, some museums and other owners of old works want to
stretch the notion of copyright by claiming that a photograph (or
facsimile) is copyrightable and that therefore gives them rights
over the original text or painting as well.  I can sympathize with
their desire to augment their often woefully inadequate incomes,
while disagreeing strongly with their attempts to stretch the notion
of copyright.  If you happen to live in a jurisdiction where the
courts have been sympathetic to such attempts, and where the museum
has a reputation for being litigious, then you might want to err on
the side of caution.


Thorvald