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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| joesoefkalla Newbie Indonesia Joined 4710 days ago 22 posts - 22 votes Studies: English | Message 17 of 52 04 January 2012 at 11:55am | IP Logged | |||||
Just print your soft-copy file, then. Problem solved. 
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| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5563 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 18 of 52 04 January 2012 at 12:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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For the Without Toil books you can normally pick them up quite cheaply by ticking the 'worldwide' box in ebay.
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| yaboycon Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4733 days ago 40 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 19 of 52 04 January 2012 at 1:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's just not the same, having the original book to me feels a lot better. If I download a CD onto my computer, it's not the same as having the CD. I feel a lot better having the CD or having the book in my hands. Just the way I am I suppose Flexi, thanks for the advice. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kimmitt Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4949 days ago 33 posts - 38 votes Studies: French | Message 20 of 52 04 January 2012 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
Partly correct - we protect intellectual property rights for reasons of public policy i.e. to encourage people to share their efforts with others. In the UK, the author's intellectual property rights in a work can be protected for a lifetime + 70 years. I'm not sure what the equivalent is in other jursidctions. We also choose to protect something called 'neighbouring rights' - the rights of people that benefit financially from the intellectual property of others. In the case of an authored work in the UK, that protection is limited to the life of the author + 50 years. I would imagine the principle reason that Assimil wouldn't want people to be able to obtain free copies of 'French without Toil' is that, if they could do so, they may choose to not purchase copies of 'French with Ease.' 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 21 of 52 04 January 2012 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
the question actually arose from the old Teach Yourself books. I posted the scenario in another post in this thread. I just gave assimil as another example because I know how vigilant they are. edit: here is what I said "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. " The reason I was curious is because I was imagining I was the author of the books. Im pretty sure most of the authors of those books died many decades ago. If I published a book in 2050, I would feel great if people were using my book in 2100 even for free. I would more than likely be dead but the thought that the work done by me is still useful and still helping someone even after I am dead would be a happy thougt. A far better thought that having the work locked away by the people who own the copyright. It is just my uneducated opinion though. Edited by yaboycon on 04 January 2012 at 3:25pm 2 persons have 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 22 of 52 04 January 2012 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, maybe it is, though I thought capital and rent were different. It's an area I'm going to have to learn more about: though that applies to IP in general
Well of course in Capitalism a thing is worth what you can get for it; but many people don't realise that, at least here in the UK, hence you hear lots of people complaining about being charged "too much" for instance bus companies. Legally the company has every right to follow it's own business model in an attempt to make the maximum profit, but morally most of us feel they should be charging a "fair price" a nebulous concept if ever there was one, but then it's up to us to make it clearer and more precise. This difference in view is not black and white, though. Most people fall somewhere on a continuum between these views. In Pearl Buck's "The Good Earth" there is an arresting scene where there is a famine and the two main characters and their children are dying of starvation. A distant relative comes and offers to buy the land they worked so hard on for a tiny fraction of its worth, but thus saving their lives. Even most died-in-the-wool capitalists would agree that this is taking the principle of "a thing is worth what someone is willing to pay for it" much too far (in fact the main characters are so angry they reject his offer even though it risks their deaths). Equally most people like me are happy for businesses to make a profit through cleverly anticipating the market as long as they don't start taking he mickey. It's all a question of where you draw the line. For me what your bookseller is doing IS immoral, I know you you disagree , but my point was only that morally speaking this is a live debate, whereas legally it's clear that sharing these old courses is illegal. Edited by Random review on 04 January 2012 at 3:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6009 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 23 of 52 04 January 2012 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
That would really depend on whether you felt you had recouped the fair recompense for your work by this time. Imagine if you were living in poverty at the time and people are running around with copies of your book that someone else printed without paying you a penny. I doubt you'd be happy in that situation. Actually, a lot of publishing deals specify that the rights revert to the original author after a certain amount of time -- the author may strip out the publisher's branding and trademarks and relaunch it if they want... but most don't want to. I'm only aware of one author who has gone to the effort of creating a new edition of an old book -- that's Roibeard O Maolalaigh who took the Hugo out of his book Scottish Gaelic in Three Months and released an updated edition as Scottish Gaelic in Twelve Weeks. Some university lecturers have released their grammar books free and unaltered, but I believe part of the motivation for that is it allows them to continue refer to them in their lecture notes, rather than having to rewrite their courses to match the layout of a new book. So my point is that if authors really wanted to release their materials for free after X years, they would -- very few books are "sat on" by the publisher. Edited by Cainntear on 04 January 2012 at 8:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sipes23 Diglot Senior Member United States pluteopleno.com/wprs Joined 4868 days ago 134 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: Spanish, Ancient Greek, Persian | Message 24 of 52 04 January 2012 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been inside the belly of the publishing beast. It's not pretty.
Here's my understanding of the situation, though I am no intellectual property lawyer. Once upon at time, copyright was 14 years, with an optional 14 year renewal. Eventually it was extended to 28 and 28. I don't remember the details for corporate works. I think publication +75. Then Mickey Mouse—himself a ripoff of a Buster Keaton silent film—was about to turn 75. Mickey in the public domain would not do. The current situation—and I bet good money it will change again before ol' Mickey goes public domain—is publication +95 for corporate works and author's death +70. This means that nothing enters the public domain in the US before 2019—works from 1923. So only stuff published before 1923 is legitimately public domain. This puts 40s and 50s Linguaphone stuff solidly under copyright in the US. Further details: if a publisher lets a book go out of print, rights revert back to the author. (This is why my boss never let us sell out of *anything*. When we got near the end of a print run with no intention of reprinting, the price went up rather dramatically. We could then say, "Still in print." I digress.) If the author dies without assigning rights to specific heirs, those rights get sent to a spouse, split evenly among children, or again spilt for grandchildren, etc. So just because you're dead doesn't mean your "rights" disappeared. Now, just for fun. Look at the copyright page for a random language learner's book. See who holds the copyright. I was surprised to see that the first one I pulled was copyright by the author. The next four were copyright by the publishing company. It makes a difference. So the idea of republishing old TYS, Linguaphone or Assimil stuff as a public service, i.e. so it is available for language heads, is looking for trouble. The publisher could rightly come after anyone republishing this old but still protected stuff. And probably easily win. Now, whether all these layers of copyright is a good idea or not is another story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act for more info. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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