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It could be argued that a significant degree of competence is, however, required in order to successfully complete a transcription such as that of the ''Tractatus'', and that not everyone would be able to do it, and that therefore the task is more than merely mechanical. The reply to this is as follows: no transcription into a digital format could ever be done by a person who cannot read and write, because, even if (as a stretch) it is thinkable that indivual strokes of ink may be reproduced by pen or pencil without interpreting them as a sequence of letters and words, the very fact of using a keyboard requires the ability to switch seamlessly from lowercase to uppercase and to understand the difference between an “O” and a “0”, between a lowercase “L” and a capital “I”, etc., that is, it requires the ability to read and write. Now, it is agreed that copying a text verbatim is not a creative activity. It should also be acknowledged that the divide between not being able to read and write and being able to do so is greater than the divide between, for example, not understanding MediaWiki markup and understanding it, or between being familar with Wittgenstein’s logical and mathematical notation and not being familiar with it. Therefore, if the competence needed to transcribe a text into Microsoft Word (that is, the ability to read and write) is not enough to make that activity creative, then the competence needed to transcribe all the formatting and the exotic features of the ''Tractatus'' into MediaWiki is not enough to make ''that'' activity creative. More generally, even if it is true that a certain degree of competence is necessary in order to achieve an acceptable level of accuracy in a complex transcription, that does not mean that a new copyright layer is created in the process, because that degree of competence has nothing to do with creativity or originality.
It could be argued that a significant degree of competence is, however, required in order to successfully complete a transcription such as that of the ''Tractatus'', and that not everyone would be able to do it, and that therefore the task is more than merely mechanical. The reply to this is as follows: no transcription into a digital format could ever be done by a person who cannot read and write, because, even if (as a stretch) it is thinkable that indivual strokes of ink may be reproduced by pen or pencil without interpreting them as a sequence of letters and words, the very fact of using a keyboard requires the ability to switch seamlessly from lowercase to uppercase and to understand the difference between an “O” and a “0”, between a lowercase “L” and a capital “I”, etc., that is, it requires the ability to read and write. Now, it is agreed that copying a text verbatim is not a creative activity. It should also be acknowledged that the divide between not being able to read and write and being able to do so is greater than the divide between, for example, not understanding MediaWiki markup and understanding it, or between being familar with Wittgenstein’s logical and mathematical notation and not being familiar with it. Therefore, if the competence needed to transcribe a text into Microsoft Word (that is, the ability to read and write) is not enough to make that activity creative, then the competence needed to transcribe all the formatting and the exotic features of the ''Tractatus'' into MediaWiki is not enough to make ''that'' activity creative. More generally, even if it is true that a certain degree of competence is necessary in order to achieve an acceptable level of accuracy in a complex transcription, that does not mean that a new copyright layer is created in the process, because that degree of competence has nothing to do with creativity or originality.


For transcriptions of handwritten materials which set themselves a goal that goes beyond providing a digital version of the text, different conclusions may have to be drawn because different hypotheses may have to be taken into account. In the context of Wittgenstein studies, the case of the {{plainlink|[http://wab.uib.no/index.page Wittgenstein Archives Bergen]}}’s <span class="plainlinks">[http://wab.uib.no/transform/wab.php?modus=opsjoner transcriptions of the ''Nachlass'']</span> must now be discussed explicitly.
Under the direction of Profs Claus Huitfeldt and Alois Pichler and over more than 30 years, the WAB has rendered the scholarly community an invaluable service by providing excellent, extremely rich transcriptions of Wittgenstein’s manuscripts and typescripts that, at the moment of this writing, can be accessed online at no cost. The XML files created by the WAB include all the information which the originals themselves contain – including emphases, strikeouts, alternatives, sidenotes, page breaks, and more – and allow the user to dynamically select which information set should be displayed. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this resource, and the generosity behind the decision – by Trinity and the WAB – to make it available on the internet for free should be duly stressed. The effort that went into making and proofreading the transcriptions should also be recognised. The question arises whether and to what extent this effort cannot count as a creative one.
What was said above remains valid for the WAB transcriptions: insofar as creating a digital edition of a handwritten or typewritten text consists of a 1-to-1 substitution of some visual feature with the corresponding character or XML tag, the output is to be considered a faithtul reproduction of the original material and cannot, in and of itself, be copyrighted. From this point of view, the fact that the WAB transcriptions are so thorough and contain information about all the details of the original (including things, such as the position of those line breaks that are not paragraph breaks, that would normally be ignored when copying a text) only makes it more difficult to consider the work that went into their production to be of a creative nature: no room for filtering out unimportant details was left and the task of the transcriber was only that of meticolousness.
However, two points must be stressed that were not relevant in the case we discussed previously, the example of the French translation of the ''Tractatus'', but are important here. The first is that, unlike a printed text, Wittgenstein’s handwritten texts maybe difficult to decipher, simply because of the quality of the author’s penmanship; in some cases, the transcriber was forced to propose what we may call an interpretation, and where there is room for this kind of uncertainty there is room for originality too. The second is that the WAB’s transcriptions also make Wittgenstein’s implicit references to people and books explicit: embedded in the XML file are also the full names of people Wittgenstein only mentions by surname or talks about without naming them at all; information about the books Wittgenstein discusses or quotes from without citing the full title; etc.; at least in some cases, a margin of uncertainty certaintly existed and the transcriber can then be said to have carried out an interpretation, and again where there is margin for interpretation (when the multiplicity of the text is not exactly the multiplicity needed for the transcription to be unequivocal), then there is room for originality too.
When talking about the transcription of the French print edition of the ''Tractatus'', it was said that because the procedure was tantamount to copying, it did not generate a new copyright layer; when talking about the WAB transcriptions, it should be said that if or when the procedure was tantamount to copying, it did not generate a new copyright layer, but if or when it was not, it did. It could also be agreed to express this conclusion – which, incidentally, is an open conclusion, that does not claim to settle the question of the copyright status of the WAB’s XML files once and for all – by saying that, unlinke the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project’s digital edition of the Granger translation of the ''Tractatus'', the WAB’s XML files, or at least some of them, are more than just transcriptions.


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<p style="text-align: center; color: #54595d;">The first image is a scan of Wittgensein’s Ms-176,19v. The second image is the corresponding transcription with HTML markup (for example, the tag <code><nowiki><em></em></nowiki></code> is for emphasis); the WAB’s XML files are richer (for example, the emphasis tag supports several attributes that correspond to different types of underlined text, etc.) but they are not qualitatively different. The third image is the HTML transcription as viewed in a web browser. The processes that lead from the first picture to the second (encoding) and from the second to the third (rendering) are both 1-to-1 substitutions (images in the Tractarian sense).</p>
<p style="text-align: center; color: #54595d;">The first image is a scan of Wittgensein’s Ms-176,19v. The second image is the corresponding transcription with HTML markup (for example, the tag <code><nowiki><em></em></nowiki></code> is for emphasis); the WAB’s XML files are richer (for example, the emphasis tag supports several attributes that correspond to different types of underlined text, etc.) but they are not qualitatively different. The third image is the HTML transcription as viewed in a web browser. The processes that lead from the first picture to the second (encoding) and from the second to the third (rendering) are both 1-to-1 substitutions (images in the Tractarian sense).</p>


For transcriptions of handwritten materials which set themselves a goal that goes beyond providing a digital version of the text, different conclusions may have to be drawn because different hypotheses may have to be taken into account. In the context of Wittgenstein studies, the case of the {{plainlink|[http://wab.uib.no/index.page Wittgenstein Archives Bergen]}}’s <span class="plainlinks">[http://wab.uib.no/transform/wab.php?modus=opsjoner transcriptions of the ''Nachlass'']</span> must now be discussed explicitly.
Under the direction of Profs Claus Huitfeldt and Alois Pichler and over more than 30 years, the WAB has rendered the scholarly community an invaluable service by providing excellent, extremely rich transcriptions of Wittgenstein’s manuscripts and typescripts that, at the moment of this writing, can be accessed online at no cost. The XML files created by the WAB include all the information which the originals themselves contain – including emphases, strikeouts, alternatives, sidenotes, page breaks, and more – and allow the user to dynamically select which information set should be displayed. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this resource, and the generosity behind the decision – by Trinity and the WAB – to make it available on the internet for free should be duly stressed. The effort that went into making and proofreading the transcriptions should also be recognised. The question arises whether and to what extent this effort cannot count as a creative one.
What was said above remains valid for the WAB transcriptions: insofar as creating a digital edition of a handwritten or typewritten text consists of a 1-to-1 substitution of some visual feature with the corresponding character or XML tag, the output is to be considered a faithtul reproduction of the original material and cannot, in and of itself, be copyrighted. From this point of view, the fact that the WAB transcriptions are so thorough and contain information about all the details of the original (including things, such as the position of those line breaks that are not paragraph breaks, that would normally be ignored when copying a text) only makes it more difficult to consider the work that went into their production to be of a creative nature: no room for filtering out unimportant details was left and the task of the transcriber was only that of meticolousness.
However, two points must be stressed that were not relevant in the case we discussed previously, the example of the French translation of the ''Tractatus'', but are important here. The first is that, unlike a printed text, Wittgenstein’s handwritten texts maybe difficult to decipher, simply because of the quality of the author’s penmanship; in some cases, the transcriber was forced to propose what we may call an interpretation, and where there is room for this kind of uncertainty there is room for originality too. The second is that the WAB’s transcriptions also make Wittgenstein’s implicit references to people and books explicit: embedded in the XML file are also the full names of people Wittgenstein only mentions by surname or talks about without naming them at all; information about the books Wittgenstein discusses or quotes from without citing the full title; etc.; at least in some cases, a margin of uncertainty certaintly existed and the transcriber can then be said to have carried out an interpretation, and again where there is margin for interpretation (when the multiplicity of the text is not exactly the multiplicity needed for the transcription to be unequivocal), then there is room for originality too.
When talking about the transcription of the French print edition of the ''Tractatus'', it was said that because the procedure was tantamount to copying, it did not generate a new copyright layer; when talking about the WAB transcriptions, it should be said that if or when the procedure was tantamount to copying, it did not generate a new copyright layer, but if or when it was not, it did. It could also be agreed to express this conclusion – which, incidentally, is an open conclusion, that does not claim to settle the question of the copyright status of the WAB’s XML files once and for all – by saying that, unlinke the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project’s digital edition of the Granger translation of the ''Tractatus'', the WAB’s XML files, or at least some of them, are more than just transcriptions.
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[[File:Ms-176,1v Facsimile.jpg|thumb|center]]
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[[File:Ms-176,1v XML.png|thumb|center]]
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[[File:Ms-176,19v.jpg|thumb|center]]
[[File:Ms-176,1v XML.png|thumb|center]]
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<p style="text-align: center; color: #54595d;">The first image is a scan of Wittgensein’s Ms-176,1v (from Wittgenstein Source). The second image is the corresponding WAB XML transcription. The <code><nowiki><del></del></nowiki></code> and <code><nowiki><add></add></nowiki></code> tags, which account for Wittgenstein’s substitution of ''ist'' with ''wird'', can be considered 1-to-1 substitutions of certain visual features with some conventional markup. On the other hand, the inclusion of a reference to a specific passage in Georg Lichtenberg’s ''Sudelbuch K'', which Wittgenstein does not cite explicitly, can be considered an actual addition and a ground for arguing that there is room for originality in the role played by the transcriber.</p>


=== The authorship issue ===
=== The authorship issue ===
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