Dear colleagues,

yes, it does become more complicated, and this is the reason why Germany and several other countries have special copyright laws for scientific text editions.

In most countries, copyright does not depend on a specific formula or even the presence of a © symbol but, first of all, on the author. The rights of an author expire after a certain period (60, 70, 75 or more years) after the death of the (last) author or, in the case of scientific editions in several European countries, after 25 or 30 years after the first publication. So BORI could, in any case, only claim the copyright for a certain time (I don't know when the last author of the edition died) and in certain countries. The same applies to the NT editions mentioned by Richard Mahoney, which both mention their "authors" (who of course are, philologically speaking, editors). 

So legally, it all depends on authorship. For all I know, the editors of critical editions are authors, even though the base texts are public domain: even if you think of critical editions only as compilations, they can, in my view, be copyrighted, because they involve the creative selection and rearrangement of preexisting material. Of course, they are not supposed to be "new," but how could you prove (in court) that they are not, as long as the archetype is not found? I would argue that this applies regardless of what Sukthankar or any other authority says. In the eyes of the world, they are new texts, created by peope who are legally authors. At least in Austria, you cannot even get rid of authorship that easily – it is attributed to you if it is clear that you are the author, whether you claim it or not. And with this comes and goes the copyright.

Best regards,
Dominik A. Haas

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

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From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces@list.indology.info> on behalf of Dominik Haas via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info>
Sent: 01 October 2019 09:45
To: indology@list.indology.info <indology@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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