[INDOLOGY] Uncaught bounce notification

[Dominik Wujastyk]

[Both the posts below bounced; I'm guessing that the Simon and Dominik
didn't send their posts from the email addresses with which they're
registered at INDOLOGY.]

But to respond, Simon mistakes intellectual property rights with
copyright.

In my experience, it is often the case that authors and scholars (including
myself!) have false ideas about the nature of copyright.  It really is
worth going to a seminar or buying a book about it.

Copyright is a mechanical thing.  It is about *copying*.  About the right
to make a physical copy of an object that somebody else made earlier.  BORI
"made" the books, in the sense of physically producing the objects.  So it
has the right to control who copies those books.    BORI and Tokunaga (and
John) *made* the e-text.  So they, ... etc. etc.

This is somewhat reductionist, I realize, but it is the core of the issue
and it may help to have it stated baldly.

Best,
Dominik
--
Professor Dominik Wujastyk <http://ualberta.academia.edu/DominikWujastyk>
,

Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
,

Department of History and Classics <http://historyandclassics.ualberta.ca/>
,
University of Alberta, Canada
.

South Asia at the U of A:

sas.ualberta.ca



On Tue, 1 Oct 2019 at 03:02, <mailman-bounces at list.indology.info> wrote:

> The attached message was received as a bounce, but either the bounce
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> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Simon Brodbeck <BrodbeckSP at cardiff.ac.uk>
> To: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2019 09:26:19 +0000
> Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Highlights from the Sanskrit corpora
> Dear colleagues,
>
> I wonder if the matter might be complicated, at least in principle, by the
> idea that the Mahabharata as critically reconstituted by the editors is an
> approximation of a text that was produced many centuries earlier? Reading
> Sukthankar's "Prolegomena" one has the impression that his claim was not to
> have created a new text, but to have recreated an old one. Although there
> may be different views on whether or not that claim was justified, it might
> seem somewhat contradictory for Sukthankar or BORI to claim copyright on
> the published reconstituted text. And if so, wouldn't the situation be
> similar for any number of explicitly reconstructive editions?
>
> Yours,
> Simon Brodbeck
> Cardiff University
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info> on behalf of
> Dominik Haas via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>
> *Sent:* 01 October 2019 09:45
> *To:* indology at list.indology.info <indology at list.indology.info>
> *Subject:* Re: [INDOLOGY] Highlights from the Sanskrit corpora
>
>
> Dear Jonathan and Dominik,
>
> I just had the very same thoughts. I'm not an expert of law either, but technically
> speaking, the BORI Mahābhārata is not simply an edition, but a new text
> created by its editors between 1919 and 1966. The editors are, in this
> case, actually authors, who obviously transferred their copyright to the
> still existing BORI. So unless an ancient and complete manuscript appears
> which contains the very same text as the BORI Mahābhārata (very unlikely, I
> would say), the BORI holds the copyright of its text. According to German
> law (mentioned by Dominik), however, it does not – 25 years have long gone
> past since the publication of the original edition. The co-owned copyright
> of Prof. Tokunaga (1994), too, would expire this year – in Germany.
>
> Of course, authors also have the copyright to transcriptions of their text
> – just imagine someone would transcribe a talk you give and then publish it
> as their own text. I would argue that creating an electronic transcription
> of a (copyrighted) Devanāgarī text isn't much different.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Dominik A. Haas
>
>
>
>


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