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Ancient Books Go Online
jd writes "The BBC is reporting that the United Nations' World Digital Library has gone online with an initial offering of 1,200 ancient manuscripts, parchments and documents. To no great surprise, Europe comes in first with 380 items. South America comes in second with 320, with a very distant third place being given to the Middle East at a paltry 157 texts. This is only the initial round, so the leader board can be expected to change. There are, for example, a lot of Sumerian and Babylonian tablets, many of which are already online elsewhere. Astonishingly, the collection is covered by numerous copyright laws, according to the legal page. Use of material from a given country is subject to whatever restrictions that country places, in addition to any local and international copyright laws. With some of the contributions being over 8,000 years old, this has to be the longest copyright extension ever offered. There is nothing on whether the original artists get royalties, however."
With some of the contributions being over 8,000 years old, this has to be the longest copyright extension ever offered.
Is anyone surprised at this? Seriously, does copyright ever end these days?
Pretty much the entire content of the site appears to consist of photographs (or facsimiles, if you prefer; I don't know the details of how the images were copied). Somehow I doubt the photographs were taken 8000 years ago.
If you were to transcribe the text of The Precious Book on Noteworthy Dates by Husayn bin Zayd bin 'Ali al-Jahhaf, written in the 10th century, you won't be infringing anyone's copyright. However, if you reproduce the images ... beware.
I honestly can't believe that anyone actually thinks that the copyright is on the content of the items. It's pretty obvious that the copyright is on the photographs taken of the items.
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Wait, what racist overtone? Just about anyone who's actually on the lookout for older manuscripts knows that there's not a lot of middle eastern content available. It's just a fact. An unfortunate one, to be sure, for historians, but there's no racism. You're being oversensitive.
Europe, on the other hand, has a great deal of published archaeological research. For example, if I want to research medieval knives, I can find a wealth of information on English artifacts. When I tried to find references on Armenian specimens, the only thing I could find was a 3-volume Russian dig report. The situation is endlessly frustrating.
--Somebody infect me with a
You are correct. There's no shortage of Middle Eastern material already on the Internet ETCSL, Library of Congress, CDLI all have collections of cuneiform documents from Sumeria, Akkadia and Babylonia. It would have been child's play to collect all of that and add it to the collection.
They might well do so, in future. The standings in the league table are merely the starting point. But, yes, because of who is doing the starting, it IS no surprise that American and British researchers would concentrate on texts closer to home, particularly as there's going to be a national incentive to prioritize home-grown stuff above museum pieces. Especially if *cough* some of the museums would rather not remind people of what they have.
On the other hand, Middle Eastern countries don't have quite the same fascination with massively ancient cultures, many simply don't have the money or the resources (Iraq being a good example), and even when they DO have these, more than a few of the really early writings from the region are, ummm, elsewhere.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The tip of the tail will change and data (rare songs or live recordings) will slip off the available net unless a couple of organisations start cataloguing every single piece of such information.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
I am surprised that there are 2 items for North America dating to pre-1500, and digging a little they are works describing Columbus discovery as-it-happens!
Funny thing is that there are a total of 4 items relating to the subject of Columbus and while two of them are "located" to the place of publication, those two are "located" to NA, but with the descriptive text indicating
It most likely was produced in Basel, Switzerland[...]
and
The first edition of the letter was printed in Spanish, in Barcelona, in April 1493. Within a month, Stephan Plannck published a Latin translation in Rome.
I wouldn't call myself a librarian if I did this kind of mistakes...
Can I put a spell on those who can't spell?
Your wheels are loose and they're losing their grip, good you're there.
I'm wondering if that part of the summary is just a troll. "Astonishingly, the collection is covered by numerous copyright laws, according to the legal page" says the summary. Looking at the only legal page I can find: http://www.wdl.org/en/legal.html it says:
Maybe I've missed another page or something, but that just seems like a standard bit of CYA, not an attempt to extend copyrights by millennia.
This sig all sigs devours
[Amended for scope:] The copyright laws of other countries do not apply in any particular country.
An international treaty is always {{fact}} ratified into law in the host country. Laws of other countries may be upheld by a law drafted in the host country but it is the host countries law that is enforcing it.
If someone can contradict this with evidence I'd be fascinated.
The only example I think might exist would be a religious law?
The USA ratified the Berne Convention in 1980-ish IIRC.
But doing it right isn't trivial.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Quite a few in English...
http://www.wdl.org/en/search/gallery?ql=eng&l=English
Thats why there is something like "format normalization process". A very important part of any long term archiving solution.
There are already several project to scan and/or make available ancient texts [see, for example,
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ or http://www.archive.org/ , not to say of the more specialist sites like http://www.etana.org/ (for ancient near-east history) or the impressive Posner Collection at
http://posner.library.cmu.edu/Posner/ ]
However, most of these (with the remarkable exception of gallica and cmu)
mostly present late XIX
early XX century editions of the texts. This is good, but I feel it is definitely interesting to get also some "primary texts" online, which is what this project is doing [I don't quite like that la "Description de l'Egypte" is under 8000 BC- 499 AD, rather than 1800 AD - 1849 AD: the books are ABOUT Egyptian Antiquities, yet they were written after the Napoleonic expedition!]
I was going to complain about the need to use wget to get the books to browse off line, yet I have just seen that there actually is an option to download the texts as pdf files (alas not djvu); this is really a nice surprise; actually, I was expecting the donating libraries to try their utmost to prevent this [not that it would ever works]
I would say that this is really a worthy project.
P.S.
There is a small editorial here as well, but I don't know if it requires subscription to be read:
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090420/full/news.2009.377.html
Is anyone surprised at this? Seriously, does copyright ever end these days?
Nope. It gets prolonged by 20 years every 20 years. Do the math (please don't do it numerically, however ;-) ).
It is as if we are preparing for the end of creative culture.
Of course it can never sustain itself for too long in a free society. Maybe copyright will be lowered back down to 30 years or less one day, when people realize the difference between a fundamental right, such as the right to physical property, as opposed to a state-created privilege, that as a copyright is.
Rights can never be ethically withdrawn.
Privileges can be withdrawn any time, at the whim of the one who sustains the privilege.
Copyright on things like the Mona Lisa, or Eiffel Tower are "perpetually" held, even though they were created and "discovered" during "modern" copyright terms.
Not quite true.
In French law, which applies to the Eiffel Tower, the architect of a building owns the rights to the commercial reproduction of images of that building for a set period of time (being 70 years after the death of the architect IIRR).
The case of the Eiffel Tower is particularly illuminating, in that the tower can be photographed during the day and that the image can be used for commercial purposes, yet a similar photograph taken at night may not be used so freely...
The problem is that the lights on the tower are protected by the same laws as the tower itself.
This question is posed quite frequently in French photography magazines (e.g. Chasseur d'Images) and there are plenty of references on the web. Below is an very good article. http://www.journaldunet.com/ebusiness/temoignage/temoignage/24557/ai-je-le-droit-d-utiliser-l-image-d-un-batiment-public-tel-que-la-tour-eiffel-par-exemple-pour-l-integrer-dans-le-graphisme-d-un-site-internet/
K.