[INDOLOGY] Highlights from the Sanskrit corpora

[Harry Spier]

I vaguely recall an Indian copyright lawyer telling me years ago that for
works published in India before 1957 copyright expires 50 years after date
of publication.  But for works published after 1957 copyright expires 50 or
75 years after the authors death. (I don't recall if he said 50 or 75
years).  And for government published works its 50 or 75 years after
publication.

Can anyone confirm or correct this?

Thanks,
Harry Spier

On Tue, Oct 1, 2019 at 5:49 AM Dominik Wujastyk via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> Copyright is a slippery beast.  But the law is not *that* difficult in
> broad outline.
>
> What you say, Jonathan, about not being able to claim copyright over
> editions, is definitely wrong.  One can.  Authors, editors, and publishers
> do so all the time.  It's routinely printed on the back of the title page.
>
> There *is* a precedent of some sort specifically in German law that
> copyright on an edition expires after 25 years, and not the usual 60 or 70
> years after the death of the author.  Some other countries are looking at
> this German law and behaving accordingly.  See
> Margoni, Thomas and Perry, Mark, Scientific and Critical Editions of
> Public Domain Works: An Example of European Copyright Law
> (Dis)Harmonization (November 18, 2011). Canadian Intellectual Property
> Review, Vol. 27, p. 157. Available at SSRN:
> https://ssrn.com/abstract=1961535 (PDF)
> <https://www.dropbox.com/s/mb8mc9rpsc1q2wb/Margoni%202011%20SSRN-id1961535.pdf?dl=0>
>
> But copyright inheres in all sorts of things.  So, a book contains text
> written by an author.  The author has copyright of that (unless they sign
> it away).  But the book also has a certain design, created by a book
> designer.  That may be subject to copyright, if it is particularly
> original.  Someone created the typeface and owns the copyright of that.  So
> you could get the author's permission to photocopy the book and the
> designer and typeface creators could still sue you for breach of their
> copyright.  It's all very vexing.
>
> In the case of the Mbh, I think there's a arguable case that BORI owns
> copyright of the text, but Prof. Tokunaga co-owns copyright of the
> electronic transcription.  Because he made something new and unique,
> especially by dividing compounds and so forth, thereby creatively adding
> original content.
>
> The Wikipedia page on Copyright <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright>and
> on infringement <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement>
> are good, incidentally.  As the latter page says,
>
> Shifting public expectations, advances in digital technology, and the
> increasing reach of the Internet have led to such widespread, anonymous
> infringement that copyright-dependent industries now focus less on pursuing
> individuals who seek and share copyright-protected content online, and more
> on expanding copyright law to recognize and penalize, as indirect
> infringers, the service providers and software distributors who are said to
> facilitate and encourage individual acts of infringement by others.
>
> So while it's unlikely that you personally would be pursued for putting
> the BORI Mbh on your website, the website maintainer or even hosting
> business might be pursued.
>
> Best,
> Dominik
> _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> indology-owner at list.indology.info (messages to the list's managing
> committee)
> http://listinfo.indology.info (where you can change your list options or
> unsubscribe)
>


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20191001/29d69324/attachment.htm>