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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 10 of 19 05 April 2011 at 11:33pm | IP Logged |
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I know someone who runs a publishing house in Iran, and I will ask his opinion in the
next couple of days. It will be interesting to see what he says. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5195 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 11 of 19 06 April 2011 at 12:03am | IP Logged |
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You won't mind if someone copies your book and puts it up on an Iranian website, will you?
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 12 of 19 06 April 2011 at 1:46am | IP Logged |
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Actually it's possible Iranian law might protect me against that. But I would have to
worry about the Uzbeks and North Koreans. :-) If it is possible, I imagine this kind of loophole has never come to light because companies have had enough of a problem stopping illegal file sharing in their own countries, without worrying about Iranian websites trying to sell their copyrighted materials. If something like this was taking place, and there was no legal action that the publisher could take, I'm not sure they would be all that bothered. Of course, that's not my judgement to make. But if they were sold at a higher price than their own monolingual ebook edition, they wouldn't be loosing any sales as result of the site. And if they did decide to sell their own bilingual editions as ebooks, they could do so through the major distribution channels, and make the site irrelevant. I'm sure a sensible reason will turn up soon as to why such a scheme is not possible. Edited by DavidW on 06 April 2011 at 1:59am 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 13 of 19 06 April 2011 at 2:08pm | IP Logged |
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Google:
WTO Antigua USA gambling Dubious legality, but it happened. Gambling is big business in Antigua, hence the legal wranglings. Bilingual books won't be big enough to make a suitable stink. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5267 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 14 of 19 06 April 2011 at 3:19pm | IP Logged |
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In my opinion, there's a reason why we don't see a lot of bilingual books for sale. The market (language learners) is small and insignificant in comparison to the vast uni-lingual market. If this were a money making proposition we would be inundated with bilingual books by all the big publishing houses. Edited by iguanamon on 06 April 2011 at 3:22pm 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 15 of 19 06 April 2011 at 6:58pm | IP Logged |
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I agree, I don't think it makes economic sense to publishers. If it did, they would
take the trouble to put clauses for bilingual editions in the contracts they make when licencing translations. I get the impression that they wouldn't be against licensing the works for another company to do it, just they usually already have agreements in place. I could otherwise make it worthwhile, because I do most aspects of the project myself (scanning/OCR, alignment and interior design, cover design, ISBNs, setting up with the printer, listing at Amazon, web design etc.), and have no overheads. I also have an account with 'lightning source,' the major print-on-demand printer, and sell at a 'short discount' to Amazon. This means even very small volumes, from 100 copies a year, can still make sense for me. Choosing suitable works is the one area I struggle in. I could do other things with my time, but I think this is something worthwhile. For some languages, copyright is less of an issue. This is because there are well known works in the public domain, with public domain translations, that still read well today and could serve as a model for language acquisition. French, German and Russian might fall into this category. Otherwise, the only other alternative I can see is file sharing. This is illegal, and the visibility of such sites has to be low to keep 'under the radar,' so many people who are interested in such materials will not be able find them. There is also no possibility for any economic remuneration, for the copyright holder or the producers of the materials. related article Edited by DavidW on 06 April 2011 at 7:58pm 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 16 of 19 07 April 2011 at 8:03pm | IP Logged |
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I had a few more ideas today.
If the site is going to be highly visible (easily found), and even advertised, the price of the ebooks would have to be perhaps 125-150% of the monolingual ebook edition to avoid people purchasing the bilingual version in preference to the monolingual version, when they are not interested in the translation, and leading to a loss of sales for the publisher. This would mean texts would cost about $7.50 - $15 USD. This, for some countries, is too much. But there can only be a single price. I am not sure it makes sense to send royalty payments to copyright holders. The amounts might be quite small, and only serve to announce the sites presence and attract unwanted attention. It might also be quite complicated to carry out the different payments. Or possibly send payment if they request it. I know quite a few people on the forum prepare bilingual texts. From the legal aspect Cainntear mentioned, it perhaps wouldn't be a good idea to make payments to people if that would like to submit the files they prepare. In this case, I don't think the site can justify keeping the full sale price of the books, especially if some files are submitted by volunteers. The amount of work that needs to be done by the site doesn't really justify this payment. The site might keep 30% of the proceeds for itself, for the work it does in obtaining texts, aligning them, presenting them in different formats (similar to Project Gutenburg) and maintaining the website. The rest could be donated to a suitable charity. The site would probably use DRM-free files, whilst I imagine most ebooks are sold with DRM. Plain text versions for popular books are available fairly easily on the net anyway, so I don't think this would significantly contribute to piracy. There could also be a few rules to avoid the site discouraging publishers from producing bilingual versions themselves.. perhaps by having a rule to take down a book from the site once the publishers version appears on the market.. this might need a little more thought. Admittedly this all still makes me somewhat uneasy. The titles could be referenced in the database I mentioned in another post, stored together with links to other (public domain and commercial) bilingual texts, and matching (free and commercial) audiobooks. Edited by DavidW on 07 April 2011 at 11:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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