[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
,

Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
,

University of Alberta, Canada
.

South Asia at the U of A:
 
sas.ualberta.ca



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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Simon Brodbeck <BrodbeckSP@cardiff.ac.uk>
To: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces@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@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