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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| yaboycon Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4733 days ago 40 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 1 of 52 03 January 2012 at 4:12am | IP Logged | ||
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I am not attacking anyone here but just curious about something. On these forums some old language books are quite popular for example Assimil, old Teach yourself and Linguaphone. These books are out of print. You can only obtain them second hand. Whoever owns the copyright is not making any money off of them any more. However they do not seem to like it when their stuff is posted online. They don't make any money off of these books anymore and it is like they are locking these books away from the public. So they are not distributing the material but they are not letting anyone else either.
My understanding (which is not great at all) is that copyright laws are to stop people from copying your work and making money off of your work. They protect the authors of the books. These books are not being sold and they will never ever be sold again by the copyright holders. They will never really benefit from them. Most of the authors died a long time ago. If I wrote a book and published it in 2050 for example and then I died in 2070. I would have no problems with the idea that my work would be on the internet in 2100 and people were using them in 2100. It would actually make me happy because it would mean my book was still valued and my hard work was still being used by people. I would not like it so much if my book was on the internet in 2060 because then I would be losing out. I dont know if I have explained myself too well but the question is basically: Why do the copyright holders of old books from the 50's and 60's have a problem with their stuff on the internet being distributed freely when they will never make money oof of them and they do not distribute it themselves? Who is actually on the internet checking for this stuff? They must care a lot of they have people checking online for where their old stuff is. thanks 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6377 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 52 03 January 2012 at 5:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Your analogy doesn't work because the publisher owns the work and is an entity that lives forever, regardless of when the author dies.
Why do they care? Two reasons: 1. They don't like giving away their products for free. 2. If you have access to their older courses for free, you may not buy their new courses. Edited by newyorkeric on 03 January 2012 at 5:31am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6149 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 3 of 52 03 January 2012 at 10:53am | IP Logged | ||
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This is quite topical, as the copyright on James Joyce's works has just expired.
EU copyright on Joyce works expires The EU copyright holds until 70 years after the authors death. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| yaboycon Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4733 days ago 40 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 4 of 52 03 January 2012 at 11:18am | IP Logged | ||
fair points, thank you for posting. The reason I was talking about the author is because whether the books are in copyright depends on the author's death. I thought the main point of copyright was to protect the author and what I was saying is that if I were the author of some of those books I would be happy for my work to be freely distributed 20, 30, 40 years after my death. Your second point makes a lot of sense. With Teach Yourself, the publishers who publish the new Teach Yourself Books do not own the copyright to the 40's, 50's and 60's books (atleast the ones I checked). Another publishing company bought them however this company does not publish Teach Yourself Books or even language books. I think they do Novels. I do not know why they bought these copyrights. It is actually this case that got me curious. This company as far as I'm aware does not like people putting this stuff on the internet. They do not publish language books and they will more than likely never make money off of these books. The books aren't in high demand and the content is not even slightly similar to the modern teach yourself books. It isn't a problem for me because I can buy them off Amazon for a few pennies but I am just curious. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| joesoefkalla Newbie Indonesia Joined 4710 days ago 22 posts - 22 votes Studies: English | Message 5 of 52 03 January 2012 at 11:21am | IP Logged | ||
Your posting made me curious, so I just checked out Linguaphone French. Well, it's nice. 
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5563 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 6 of 52 03 January 2012 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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'My understanding (which is not great at all) is that copyright laws are to stop people from copying your work and making money off of your work. They protect the authors of the books.'
Your understanding is wrong. Copyright laws are designed to convey a proprietary right to the copyright owner for the period of time in the specific jurisdiction - Further, it is to protect the copyright owner, who is not necessarily the author. Just as you can't live in a house owned by someone else (even if vacant), or give away a car owned by someone else (even if it has been parked on the side of the road for a number of years) you can't distribute a work owned by someone else, even if for free. That is the law and that is that. If you do it you are either committing a civil or criminal wrong depending on the jurisdiction. Assimil for one have checked out websites such as http://uz-translations.net/ and have threatened legal action. Why? Probably because as a small company they don't want their products that they sell competing with free versions of products they no longer sell, or, just on the vacant house/unused car analogy it is their property. Edited by Elexi on 03 January 2012 at 4:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lindseylbb Bilingual Triglot Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4930 days ago 92 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, Cantonese*, English Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 7 of 52 03 January 2012 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe tomorrow they will all of a sudden decide to sell ebook version, kindle or whatever, and those free ebook online would definitely hurt their interests. Well, they are business men who never let go potential golds. Edited by lindseylbb on 03 January 2012 at 4:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5781 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 8 of 52 03 January 2012 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that there is an important point here: that we lay-people expect laws to be
fair and intellectual property law doesn't fit the bill to the point that most people are quite surprised to learn the terms that are given. The analogy with the house and car may be legally apt (i'm not equipped to judge) but morally speaking it's false, you have to make a distinction between personal property and private property (personal property is only one kind of private property). Your house and car are your personal property and few people like to see that taken away from them. Furthermore, with information we can use it without denying other people their use! From a moral point of view a better analogy than a house would be a hotel that a company built in New York. This hotel is magic in that it can actually accommodate a potentially infinite number of people, but obviously in practice only a certain number are willing to pay what the company charges. So far morals and the law are hand in hand. Later the company abandons the hotel a and builds another, inferior hotel. 20 to 30 years after being abandoned people start to use the hotel to visit New York. There are drawbacks such as no service staff etc (my best attempt at an analogy with the problems of using old courses), but many of these people would not be able to visit NY otherwise. With this in mind I think you can see that MORALLY speaking this is a live debate (I think it's clear that I think there's noting immoral about it at all, but even those who disagree with me must agree that there's a debate to be had here); legally, there's no debate, it's absolutely clear: it's illegal. In a democracy shouldn't the laws of the land reflect the will of the people? Edited by Random review on 03 January 2012 at 5:54pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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