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Copyrights in Iran | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| DavidW Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6531 days ago 318 posts - 458 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Malay Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, German, Urdu | Message 1 of 19 05 April 2011 at 12:01am | IP Logged |
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Over the last couple of months I've been trying to get permission to use copyrighted
texts in bilingual books for language students. It's been very difficult, in part because copyright holders often make exclusive arrangements with their publishers. A bilingual book has a quite different market from a regular monolingual book, but a contract is a contract. Also, often getting hold of the copyright holders to arrange permission can take some serious detective work. Iran has very different system regarding copyright. From what I have heard, the publisher basically just prints what he likes, but he must send a royalty (percentage set by law) to the author. No permission is required. This may not be exactly right. What's more, Iran is one of the few countries not to have signed the Berne Convention, so there is not protection for foreign copyrights. The government even has servers hosting 'pirate' Microsoft software, and this is not illegal: EDITED Also, I remember reading that as the servers for project Gutenburg are located in the US, they are able to host texts that are in the public domain in the US, even though users from other countries could potentially access the site. This is possibly not a great idea, but if I was to set up a site selling digital bilingual texts of well-authors, or have some Iranian friends of mine set it up for me, with the server in Iran.. would that get me into trouble? Probably wouldn't make me very popular with a number of people. I would charge for the material, with a price slightly higher than what a monolingual paperback edition would cost, as I don't want to promote piracy, and I would want to send a check to the copyright holder with a reasonable royalty, or put a message on the site that a check is waiting for them if they contact me. Please point out the flaw in my logic to me. Please don't remove this post on the basis it concerns illegal file sharing, as according to my understanding, there is nothing necessarily illegal about what I am proposing. I am trying to find a way to make valuable tools available to language students. Edited by newyorkeric on 05 April 2011 at 2:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6384 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 19 05 April 2011 at 2:09am | IP Logged |
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I'm not sure you should be taking advice on this from a bunch of people who likely know very little about it. Maybe it's time to contact an attorney?
PS I've removed the links to the software in your post. Edited by newyorkeric on 05 April 2011 at 2:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DavidW Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6531 days ago 318 posts - 458 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Malay Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, German, Urdu | Message 3 of 19 05 April 2011 at 3:53am | IP Logged |
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Your right, it's probably not the right forum to ask this question. But it relates to
other projects I have discussed in other posts, and it might be of interest to other users who follow these matters. The links pointed to an article titled "Iranian Government Runs Public Warez" and a Wikipedia article titled "Iran-United States copyright relations." Edited by DavidW on 05 April 2011 at 3:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6384 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 19 05 April 2011 at 3:59am | IP Logged |
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Sorry I just looked at one of the addresses, and it seemed a little weird so I didn't want to click on it. Go ahead and put them back in if you want. Edited by newyorkeric on 05 April 2011 at 4:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6016 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 6 of 19 05 April 2011 at 1:50pm | IP Logged |
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Are you thinking about moving to Iran yourself?
Are you planning to sell to Iranians only? Anyone wanting to attack you would likely only have to establish on balance of probabilities (reasonable doubt only applies in criminal cases) that you carry out part of the publishing operations in the UK in order to get a judge to rule that you potentially fall under UK jurisdiction. Once in court, the only way you could defend yourself was by proving that the services were aimed at an Iranian audience, not international distribution. I suspect you're not talking about printing a lot of books in Farsi, so that's not likely to wash. I also suspect you'd be pricing in something other than Iranian Rials and paying it into a non-Iranian bank account, which also wouldn't help your case. I am not a lawyer, and I'm perhaps overcautious. I certainly wouldn't attempt anything like this without very strong advice from a pro. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DavidW Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6531 days ago 318 posts - 458 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Malay Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, German, Urdu | Message 8 of 19 05 April 2011 at 3:57pm | IP Logged |
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"All for naught -- Harry Potter is persecuted in Iran these days and he is helpless to
do anything about it. Suspect your servers will will be regarded suspect." I know censorship is very stringent for printed works in Iran. "If Iran won't help your project, try North Korea. If North Korea won't assist, um, Uzbekistan is rumored around these parts to already be into this kind of thing." Or perhaps Somalia, where you buy your passport from a man in the market called 'Mr Big Beard' Youtube-Getting a somali passport It also has 'some of the best telecomunications in Africa' wikipedia ..despite having no central government. Thanks Cainntear, that was insightful. I am considering spending some time in Iran, but I don't plan tp live there forever. On the other hand, it could be something that people I know in Iran could do, and I would not be involved. But the site would be in English, and take payment in US $ etc., so it would clearly be intended to sell to other countries. I will ask my Iranian friends to look into this for me, to see if this would be a problem. "Seems you're wanting to circumvent copyright law, nothing more... maybe parallel text enthusiasts are too small a niche to interest publishers." Well, yes. It is a very small market for them, and the laws and business customs of the publishing industry make it very difficult for someone to produce and sell such materials 'by the book.' Your idea about selling a file with data to align purchased ebooks is interesting. Only I imagine most ebooks are sold with DRM which limits access to the contents to specific programs. Otherwise, I could write a program, that, given two purchased ebooks and an alignment file, would give you back a formatted bilingual text, that could used as is or printed out at a print shop etc. Edited by DavidW on 05 April 2011 at 3:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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