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Project:Why are some of Wittgenstein’s texts missing from this website?: Difference between revisions
Project:Why are some of Wittgenstein’s texts missing from this website? (view source)
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Copyright protects the output of all intellectual activity that has a creative nature, as opposed to the result of mere sweat-of-the-brow work. Of course, case law varies country by country, but there is a general, worldwide convergence toward the concept that a “threshold of originality” must be met in order for a work to be copyrighted. For example a verbatim transcription, just like the scan of a sheet of paper, does not generate new intellectual property rights, because it is purely mechanical in nature: if the transcribed text and the scanned picture are in the public domain, so are the transcription and the scan. A translation, on the other hand, requires an amount of thought and choice that makes it a creative work in its own right, so that even if the original-language edition of a book is out of copyright all new translations of that text are, by default, copyrighted. | Copyright protects the output of all intellectual activity that has a creative nature, as opposed to the result of mere sweat-of-the-brow work. Of course, case law varies country by country, but there is a general, worldwide convergence toward the concept that a “threshold of originality” must be met in order for a work to be copyrighted. For example a verbatim transcription, just like the scan of a sheet of paper, does not generate new intellectual property rights, because it is purely mechanical in nature: if the transcribed text and the scanned picture are in the public domain, so are the transcription and the scan. A translation, on the other hand, requires an amount of thought and choice that makes it a creative work in its own right, so that even if the original-language edition of a book is out of copyright all new translations of that text are, by default, copyrighted. | ||
[[File:Tagebuecher 9.8.14.jpg|thumb|left|The first page of Wittgenstein's MS-101, featuring a handwritten note from 9 August 1914, as published on <span class="plainlinks">[http://www.wittgensteinsource.org/ WittgensteinSource]</span> under CC BY-NC 4.0.]] | [[File:Tagebuecher 9.8.14.jpg|thumb|left|link=|The first page of Wittgenstein's MS-101, featuring a handwritten note from 9 August 1914, as published on <span class="plainlinks">[http://www.wittgensteinsource.org/ WittgensteinSource]</span> under CC BY-NC 4.0.]] | ||
Wittgenstein was certainly the sole author of the works he published during his lifetime, so that there is no doubt concerning their being out of copyright when the term after ''his'' life expires, regardless of whether this term is 50, 70 or 100 years depending on the country. | Wittgenstein was certainly the sole author of the works he published during his lifetime, so that there is no doubt concerning their being out of copyright when the term after ''his'' life expires, regardless of whether this term is 50, 70 or 100 years depending on the country. | ||
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All internet projects inspired by the principles of the Free Culture movement live in what seems to be a contradiction. | All internet projects inspired by the principles of the Free Culture movement live in what seems to be a contradiction. | ||
[[File:Ludwig and Paul Wittgenstein by Carl Pietzner, 1909.jpg|thumb|right|Ludwig and Paul Wittgenstein photographed by Carl Pietzner in 1909.]] | [[File:Ludwig and Paul Wittgenstein by Carl Pietzner, 1909.jpg|thumb|right|link=|Ludwig and Paul Wittgenstein photographed by Carl Pietzner in 1909.]] | ||
Our very existence is an objection against the status quo of intellectual property laws. Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, the Gutenberg Project and all the others, including, small as it may be, the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project, are (among other things) living objections against the notion that copyright should benefit heirs for decades after the death of authors. We hope and we work for a world in which knowledge and culture can be freely accessible to all. And we want all to be aware that our world would be one step closer to that if copyright helped creators make a living out of their creations and then expired at the moment of their passing. | Our very existence is an objection against the status quo of intellectual property laws. Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, the Gutenberg Project and all the others, including, small as it may be, the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project, are (among other things) living objections against the notion that copyright should benefit heirs for decades after the death of authors. We hope and we work for a world in which knowledge and culture can be freely accessible to all. And we want all to be aware that our world would be one step closer to that if copyright helped creators make a living out of their creations and then expired at the moment of their passing. | ||