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{{p center|By {{person link|Michele Lavazza}}<ref group="N">The author would like to thank Dr Jasmin Trächtler, Mr David Chandler, and Mr Javier Arango for reviewing this text. Additionally, he would like to extend sincere gratitude to Dr Nicolas Bell, the Librarian of Trinity College, who provided insightful comments on a draft of this essay; and to Prof Alois Pichler of the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen, the conversations with whom helped give this essay its final shape.</ref>}}
{{p center|By {{person link|Michele Lavazza}}<ref group="N">The author would like to thank Dr Jasmin Trächtler, Mr David Chandler, and Mr Javier Arango for reviewing this text. Additionally, he would like to extend sincere gratitude to Dr Nicolas Bell, the Librarian of Trinity College, who provided insightful comments on a draft of this essay; and to Prof Alois Pichler of the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen, the conversations with whom helped give this essay its final shape.</ref>}}
{{p center|31 July 2022}}
{{p center|20 November 2022}}




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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.
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.
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, even though the WAB’s transcriptions are produced in accordance with the strict rules based on the {{plainlink|[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_Encoding_Initiative TEI Guidelines]}}, in many cases the transcriber was forced to propose what we may call an interpretation. This is not only because, unlike printed texts, Wittgenstein’s handwritten texts maybe difficult to decipher on the grounds of the quality of the author’s penmanship; it is also and perhaps most importantly because often more than one way of encoding the text was consistent with the rules. Where there is room for this kind of uncertainty and an interpretation is needed to make up for the 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.
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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