Project:Why are some of Wittgenstein’s texts missing from this website?: Difference between revisions

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[[File:Ludwig Wittgenstein.jpg|thumb|upright|right|link=|Ludwig Wittgenstein (Vienna, 1889 – Cambridge, 1951). Photo by Moritz Nähr.]]
[[File:Ludwig Wittgenstein.jpg|thumb|upright|right|link=|Ludwig Wittgenstein (Vienna, 1889 – Cambridge, 1951). Photo by Moritz Nähr.]]


Now, the ''Nachlass'' itself—the collection of Wittgenstein’s manuscript material, the “raw” Wittgenstein—has been available online since the 2010s, almost in its entirety, both in a fac-simile edition and in an XML/HTML transcription. This was made possible by the generosity of the copyright holders of the originals, The Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the work of the Wittgenstein Archives Bergen. Much of the digitised content has been released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC).<ref>For more information, see the website of the <span class="plainlinks">[http://wab.uib.no/ Wittgenstein Archives Bergen]</span> and <span class="plainlinks">[http://www.wittgensteinsource.org/ WittgensteinSource]</span>.</ref>
Now, the ''Nachlass'' itself—the collection of Wittgenstein’s manuscript material, the “raw” Wittgenstein—has been available online since the 2010s, almost in its entirety, both in a fac-simile edition and in an XML/HTML transcription. This was made possible by the generosity of the copyright holders of the originals, The Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the work of the Wittgenstein Archives Bergen. Much of the digitised content has been released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC).<ref>For more information, see the website of the <span class="plainlinks">[http://wab.uib.no/ Wittgenstein Archives Bergen]</span> and <span class="plainlinks">[http://www.wittgensteinsource.org/ Wittgenstein Source]</span>.</ref>


The intellectual property rights on the ''Nachlass'' will expire in those countries where the copyright term is the life of the author plus 70 years on 1 January 2022. Everything in Wittgenstein’s own writing will then be in the public domain in such countries, the list of which includes Austria (where Wittgenstein was born), the United Kingdom (where Wittgenstein became a naturalised citizen), and Italy (where the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project is based and where its servers are located).
The intellectual property rights on the ''Nachlass'' will expire in those countries where the copyright term is the life of the author plus 70 years on 1 January 2022. Everything in Wittgenstein’s own writing will then be in the public domain in such countries, the list of which includes Austria (where Wittgenstein was born), the United Kingdom (where Wittgenstein became a naturalised citizen), and Italy (where the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project is based and where its servers are located).
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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|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.]]
[[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/ Wittgenstein Source]</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.