[Sca-cooks] NPR Segment on Copyright infringement

[Susan Lin]

I'm going to make the suggestion that while there has been a lot of
information given regarding copyright law here if you have ANY question
regarding something you are going to publish you really need to speak to an
attorney who specializes in copyright law so as not to make any mistakes or
to verify that the law you are relying on is still current and correct.  I
may be a lawyer but I would not begin to tell someone that they are right or
wrong when it comes to publishing.  While everything here may be just fine I
would not feel comfortable using it without verification.  Just my 2 cents.

Shoshana

On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 6:01 PM, James Prescott <prescotj at telusplanet.net>wrote:

> 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
>
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