copyright

[Peter Schreiner]

In aòmessage of 12 September 1991 Dominik had replied to a question about
Text Archives; I may mention that I responded (more than once) to
requests for information about my inputs from James A. Wilderotter II, Project
Assistant, Georgetown Center for Text and Technology, Academic Computer Center,
Reiss Science Building, Room 238, Georgetwon University, Washington, DC 20057,
USA. Unfortunately they have not responded to my request to send me a list of
other projects etc. working with Sanskrit, which might be listed in that
Catalogue of Archives.
 
In that same message Dominik attempted (successfully, as you can see) "to nudge
him (me!) into giving a brief account of what he has done". I am not going to
give that account here, but I may mention that I felt encouraged to submit the
text which we added most recently to our "library" of transliterated Sanskrit
texts at Zuerich with the Oxford Text Archive: A file with the text of the
Chandogya-upanishad on disk has been mailed to Oxford. Those who bother to get a
copy from Oxford should also get a file (called CHUPDOC) in which I explain the
conventions of transliteration etc. which we have been following. A first
attempt to translate these input conventions into TEI format has not been
successful; but any advice or models etc. in that direction will certainly be
welcome.
 
I would like to use this first deposit of a text with the Archive to raise a
discussion among my colleagues (using the INDOLOGY-discussion group, to begin
with) concerning the copyright situation. Depositing the transliteration of a
text with the Archive does of course presuppose violation of what is printed in
every book: "No part of this issue may be translated or reproduced in any form
.. without permission from the publisher." I have not contacted the
publisher(s); and my work does include "reproduction". On the other hand I have
not just "reproduced" the Limaye edition of the ChUp: I changed the script
(typeface) from Devanagari to Roman, I added markers for compounds and phonetic
changes, i.e. sandhi (ca. 9000 characters out of ca. 133.000, out of which
another ca. 14.000 are markers for diacritics), I (partly, in this case)
collated two editions, and I added a numbering system to count syntactic units
(which amounts to another ca. 25.000 character added to the source material). I
am saying this not to show off or anything like that, but simply because I would
like to know and to discuss publicly whether and to which extend am I moving
inside or outside of lawfulness by sharing such "raw material" for textual
analysis with the scholarly community. I may add that my own use of the material
is strictly "scholarly" (and not commercial); and I assume that this applies to
all with whom I am going to share the outcome of my labours (via the Archive).
Am I "reproducing", am I "reprinting", am I creating something new (which
might entitle me to a copyright for "my" ChUp)??
 
Those who have information and-or experience in this matter should perhaps
address their response not to me privately but to all INDOLOGYsts.
 
 
Hoping to hear from you,
Peter Schreiner