Open Knowledge Foundation discussion list

Re: Copyright status of the Open Shakespeare texts ?

Philippe Aigrain wrote:
> I did a further test on co-ment by creating a text with both parts of Henry 
> the Fourth, and it is still works OK (just takes a while to open the text).
> 
> However, while doing so, I actually checked the Project Gutenberg source, and 
> it looks like the copyright status is uncertain : is it because of the 
> translation to modern English in As you like it and Part I of Henry IV ?
> Thanks for letting me know if I can keep such texts public on co-ment, or 
> pointing me to Shakespeare texts that are actually in teh public domain.

You've just stumbled across one of the major (initial) reasons for doing 
Open Shakespeare -- that even though the texts are really old a lot of 
the versions found on the Internet display copyright notices (including 
some of those on PG). Some of these notices may be valid some of them 
may not be but who wants to spend the time to find out?

Open Shakespeare has done the work for you and all the texts we took 
from PG we believe to be in the public domain (when I last looked PG has 
roughly 4 version of each Shakespeare text PG and 2 of these have 
copyright notices). Thus you can definitely keep the texts you've used 
on co-ment.

~rufus

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Philippe Aigrain | 6 Feb 14:25

Re: Copyright status of the Open Shakespeare texts ?

OK, it stays publics. Thanks to your example, we detected a bug on the 
processing of line breaks when using Firefox. To correct it we had to delete 
and create the test example for As you like it. The new text is at:
http://www.co-ment.net/text/106/

Philippe

Le mercredi 6 février 2008, Rufus Pollock a écrit :
> Philippe Aigrain wrote:
> > I did a further test on co-ment by creating a text with both parts of
> > Henry the Fourth, and it is still works OK (just takes a while to open
> > the text).
> >
> > However, while doing so, I actually checked the Project Gutenberg source,
> > and it looks like the copyright status is uncertain : is it because of
> > the translation to modern English in As you like it and Part I of Henry
> > IV ? Thanks for letting me know if I can keep such texts public on
> > co-ment, or pointing me to Shakespeare texts that are actually in teh
> > public domain.
>
> You've just stumbled across one of the major (initial) reasons for doing
> Open Shakespeare -- that even though the texts are really old a lot of
> the versions found on the Internet display copyright notices (including
> some of those on PG). Some of these notices may be valid some of them
> may not be but who wants to spend the time to find out?
>
> Open Shakespeare has done the work for you and all the texts we took
> from PG we believe to be in the public domain (when I last looked PG has
> roughly 4 version of each Shakespeare text PG and 2 of these have
> copyright notices). Thus you can definitely keep the texts you've used

(Continue reading)

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Luis Villa | 6 Feb 17:53

Re: Copyright status of the Open Shakespeare texts ?

On Feb 6, 2008 8:25 AM, Philippe Aigrain
<philippe.aigrain@...> wrote:
> OK, it stays publics. Thanks to your example, we detected a bug on the
> processing of line breaks when using Firefox. To correct it we had to delete
> and create the test example for As you like it. The new text is at:
> http://www.co-ment.net/text/106/

Philippe, I now get 403 unauthorized on that URL with account name 'luis'.

Luis

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Philippe Aigrain | 6 Feb 22:07

Re: Copyright status of the Open Shakespeare texts ?

Le Wednesday 06 February 2008 17:53:44, vous avez écrit :
> Philippe, I now get 403 unauthorized on that URL with account name 'luis'.
Sorry, I did not make the text public. That's now done. With present settings 
you do not even need to be logged in to comment (though it is preferable 
since you don't have to fill your email and screen name).

Philippe