I'm not able to engage in this in an informed manner (but did that stop me before? ;), but, according to what I understand of Dominik's comment, the editors of the Mbh could NOT claim copyright over the Skt text, *unless* for instance they printed a conjecture in the text. If they simply (!!) transcribe MSS, and delete some, over what could they claim copyright? Because when I type out a text, I do not copy their font, formatting or anything else, and I already mentioned that we were not talking about the forematter, any editorial comments, notes etc. From a very technical point of view, the work of the editors consisted of selecting preexisting text, choosing what to print, and printing that. (Again, please, I'm not saying that is what we really do, but I'm saying from the point of view of law about creativity this seems to me the way it would be seen).

Anyway, thanks in part to the inspiration of Dominik I have been making efforts as far as i am able to present all my own work in Open Access form (but I have tenure and don't have to worry about being judged, I know this). One example: the edition of the Praśnottararatnamālikā I recently published in the IIJ is Open Access (but actually I try to post all my own stuff online anyway... And I do not plan to publish any scholarly book in the future that is not Open Access.)

Jonathan

On Tue, Oct 1, 2019 at 10:14 AM Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk@gmail.com> 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)

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 and on 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