On Sun, Nov 11, 2001 at 06:04:27AM -0800, Henry House wrote:
On Fri, Nov 09, 2001 at 11:50:58PM +0000, Gareth Owen
wrote:
Robert Bihlmeyer <robbe+wiki(a)orcus.priv.at>
writes:
(from
<URL:http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/copyright.html>)
It's not clear to me how much copyright they can place on the texts
Anything classical is PD, the translations can be copyright, but then they
would not be at Perseus
I'm afraid that's not necesarily true. Most classical "texts" have
survived
as many-times-copied manuscripts mouldering away in libraries. Suppose
"Euclid's Geometry" is available to us as four manuscripts, one of which
is
partial. Each of these is based on former copies that have not survived. Each
copy was made by hand, an error-prone process, from an older copy with
copying errors of its own.
The result is that each surviving manucript has a few dozen words that are
different, and some are missing entire passages. Which is the closest to the
original? None is particilarly close. So a good modern edition of "Euclid's
Geometry" is based on a study of all available manuscripts, which the editor
has used to correct each other, given certain assumptions about what the
likely errors are.
This sort of extensive editing would certainly create a new edition and
therefore a new copyright under US law.
Exactly right, and you have to watch even some more recent texts, for
example Shakespeare. Unfortunately that means we miss out on some more
modern scholarship, but there's no way around that except to wait for
copyright to expire.
--
Dr. David C. Merrill
http://www.lupercalia.net
Linux Documentation Project david(a)lupercalia.net
Collection Editor & Coordinator
http://www.linuxdoc.org
We turn the wheel to welcome her
Every breath is sacred
Opening, we welcome her
Every breath is sacred
As we walk this ancient path
Every breath is sacred
We are stronger than we know
Every breath is sacred
-- The Midwife's Song, Calla Unsworth