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In other words, the “spirit” of copyright laws is that:
In other words, the “spirit” of copyright laws is that:


* upon the birth<ref>Generally speaking, it is not necessary to publish or register a work, or to comply with any formalities at all, in order for it to be copyrighted. This, however, has not always been the case everywhere in the world: because for many decades in the 20th century US law required creative works to bear a copyright notice (for example the copyright symbol “©” followed by the publication date and the author’s name) in order for them to be copyrighted, many works that did not comply with this simple formality were directly, albeit often inadvertently, released in the public domain.</ref> of a piece of creative work, the right to copy it, distribute the copies, sell them, modify the original and disseminate the modified version (a translation, a remix, etc.) belongs exclusively to the author—all rights are reserved;
* upon the birth<ref>Generally speaking, it is not necessary to publish or register a work, or to comply with any formalities at all, in order for it to be copyrighted. This, however, has not always been the case everywhere in the world: because for several decades in the 20th century US law required creative works to bear a copyright notice (for example the copyright symbol “©” followed by the publication date and the author’s name) in order for them to be copyrighted, many works that did not comply with this simple formality were directly, albeit often inadvertently, released in the public domain.</ref> of a piece of creative work, the right to copy it, distribute the copies, sell them, modify the original and disseminate the modified version (a translation, a remix, etc.) belongs exclusively to the author—all rights are reserved;
* when the author dies, the abovementioned rights belong, equally exclusively, to the author’s legal heirs for a period of time that, generally speaking, may vary from 30 to 100 years (but is usually 50 or 70);
* when the author dies, the abovementioned rights belong, equally exclusively, to the author’s legal heirs for a period of time that, generally speaking, may vary from 30 to 100 years (but is usually 50 or 70);
* then, when the copyright term expires, the work enters the public domain, which means that anyone is legally entitled to copy it, distribute it, sell it, modify it; those who were previously the exclusive holders of the rights are not entitled to any privilege any longer and have, in fact, the same status as all other members of the public; no rights are reserved, except for, in some cases, the few “soft” provisions we call “moral rights” (see below, [[#Contracts, constraints unrelated to intellectual property, and politeness|§ Contracts, constraints unrelated to intellectual property, and politeness]]).
* then, when the copyright term expires, the work enters the public domain, which means that anyone is legally entitled to copy it, distribute it, sell it, modify it; those who were previously the exclusive holders of the rights are not entitled to any privilege any longer and have, in fact, the same status as all other members of the public; no rights are reserved, except for, in some cases, the few “soft” provisions we call “moral rights” (see below, [[#Contracts, constraints unrelated to intellectual property, and politeness|§ Contracts, constraints unrelated to intellectual property, and politeness]]).
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== A very short history of the rights on Wittgenstein’s writings ==
== A very short history of the rights on Wittgenstein’s writings ==
Ludwig Wittgenstein died on 29 April 1951. In his last will and testament, he appointed G.E.M. Anscombe, R. Rhees and G.H. von Wright as his literary heirs. Thus, they became the copyright holders for Wittgenstein’s writings.<ref>''{{plainlink|See [https://www.onb.ac.at/bibliothek/sammlungen/handschriften-und-alte-drucke/this-is-the-last-will-of-me-ludwig-wittgenstein This is the last will of me Ludwig Wittgenstein]}}'', Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, retrieved 16 July 2002 ({{plainlink|[https://web.archive.org/web/20220716092558/https://www.onb.ac.at/bibliothek/sammlungen/handschriften-und-alte-drucke/this-is-the-last-will-of-me-ludwig-wittgenstein archived URL]}}).''</ref>
Ludwig Wittgenstein died on 29 April 1951. In his last will and testament, he appointed G.E.M. Anscombe, R. Rhees, and G.H. von Wright as his literary heirs. Thus, they became the copyright holders for Wittgenstein’s writings.<ref>''{{plainlink|See [https://www.onb.ac.at/bibliothek/sammlungen/handschriften-und-alte-drucke/this-is-the-last-will-of-me-ludwig-wittgenstein This is the last will of me Ludwig Wittgenstein]}}'', Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, retrieved 16 July 2002 ({{plainlink|[https://web.archive.org/web/20220716092558/https://www.onb.ac.at/bibliothek/sammlungen/handschriften-und-alte-drucke/this-is-the-last-will-of-me-ludwig-wittgenstein archived URL]}}).''</ref>


In the second half of the 20th century, they made (or sometimes delegated) the decisions about what to publish and how, and they had a right to receive royalties for the sales of books.
In the second half of the 20th century, they made (or sometimes delegated) the decisions about what to publish and how, and they had a right to receive royalties for the sales of the books.


Rhees died in 1989, Anscombe in 2001, and Von Wright in 2003. Although the author of this essay was unable to find a detailed account of their wills and testaments, it is clear that, after their deaths, the copyright holders for Wittgenstein’s writings became The Master and Fellows of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. This leads us to think that it was Rhees’s, Anscombe’s, and Von Wright’s joint will to elect Trinity as the heir to the intellectual property of Wittgenstein’s writings.
Rhees died in 1989, Anscombe in 2001, and Von Wright in 2003. Although the author of this essay was unable to find a detailed account of their wills and testaments, it is clear that, after their deaths, the copyright holders for Wittgenstein’s writings became The Master and Fellows of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. This leads us to think that it was Rhees’s, Anscombe’s, and Von Wright’s joint will to elect Trinity as the heir to the intellectual property of Wittgenstein’s writings.
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On the other hand, photocopies and scans are universally considered to be purely mechanical reproductions of two-dimensional objects, and therefore do not entail the formation of a new layer of copyright. This is also true for frontal photographs of paintings or other two-dimensional works of art. The example here will be much more relevant: since the original handwritten and typewritten notes taken or dictated by Wittgenstein are now in the public domain in most countries, the scans that are available on the {{plainlink|[http://www.wittgensteinsource.org/ Wittgenstein Source]}} website are now in the public domain too, at least in those countries where copyright expires 70 years or fewer P.M.A. No matter how expensive or time-consuming scanning thousands of pages was, such effort was not of a creative nature, it did not leave room for originality, and copyright laws do not cover its output.<ref>For further details on this subject, see Thomas Margoni, ''{{plainlink|[https://web.archive.org/web/20190512145439/http://outofcopyright.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/digitisation_cultural_heritage-thomas-margoni.pdf The digitisation of cultural heritage: originality, derivative works and (non) original photographs]}}'', Institute for Information Law (IViR), Faculty of Law, University of Amsterdam, 2014, p. 51.</ref>
On the other hand, photocopies and scans are universally considered to be purely mechanical reproductions of two-dimensional objects, and therefore do not entail the formation of a new layer of copyright. This is also true for frontal photographs of paintings or other two-dimensional works of art. The example here will be much more relevant: since the original handwritten and typewritten notes taken or dictated by Wittgenstein are now in the public domain in most countries, the scans that are available on the {{plainlink|[http://www.wittgensteinsource.org/ Wittgenstein Source]}} website are now in the public domain too, at least in those countries where copyright expires 70 years or fewer P.M.A. No matter how expensive or time-consuming scanning thousands of pages was, such effort was not of a creative nature, it did not leave room for originality, and copyright laws do not cover its output.<ref>For further details on this subject, see Thomas Margoni, ''{{plainlink|[https://web.archive.org/web/20190512145439/http://outofcopyright.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/digitisation_cultural_heritage-thomas-margoni.pdf The digitisation of cultural heritage: originality, derivative works and (non) original photographs]}}'', Institute for Information Law (IViR), Faculty of Law, University of Amsterdam, 2014, p. 51.</ref>


The same is true for verbatim transcriptions. These are also considered “mechanical”, not in the sense that a machine should be able to carry out the same job as the human transcriber, but in the sense that they are thoroughly faithful reproductions of the text in the abstract sense of the term—i.e., the sequence of characters (letters, numbers, punctuation marks, special characters) with their formatting.
The same is true for verbatim transcriptions. These are also considered “mechanical”, not in the sense that a machine should be able to carry out the same job as a human being, but in the sense that they are thoroughly faithful reproductions of the text in the abstract sense of the term—i.e., the sequence of characters (letters, numbers, punctuation marks, special characters) with their formatting.


Let us produce an example. In summer 2022, thanks to Prof Sacha Raoult’s kind intervention and helpful mediation, the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project received permission from the Directors of the Centre Gilles-Gaston Granger at the Aix-Marseille Université to publish a web edition of Granger’s French translation of the ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus''. During the autumn and winter of the same year, the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project’s volunteers scanned a paper edition of the book and, with a combination of OCR, manual transcribing, and proofreading, they generated the MediaWiki source code for the text, which is used by the website’s parser to generate the page’s HMTL “on the fly”; the latter, in turn, is rendered visually by web browsers. The procedure was neither easy nor simple, and it was very time-consuming; it required knowledge of the French language, understanding of MediaWiki and HMTL markup, familiarity with the logical and mathematical notation used by Wittgenstein and with the LaTeX syntax for writing and typesetting the formulae. However, this process cannot be regarded as original or creative, because it is a verbatim transcription, that is, a 1-to-1 substitution of some character or formatting feature with a corresponding character or XML tag. (The fact that, in MediaWiki syntax, XML tags are mostly replaced by other markup conventions is of no import, because that too is a 1-to-1 substitution.) Particularly in the case of the transcription of a print edition, where there is no issue of interpreting potentially ambiguous handwriting, if multiple people were to transcribe the same text, the output would have to be absolutely identical: the output, in other words, is process-agnostic, and this is enough reason to consider the transcriber’s activity as a non-creative activity. No new layer of copyright is generated by the process. In the case of Granger’s translation of the ''Tractatus'', the copyright owners gave the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project permission to publish its digital edition, but the French texts stays copyrighted and all rights on it remain reserved; however, when the copyright term will expire on Granger’s translation, the digital edition will be in the public domain too, regardless of how long the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project volunteers will live. A verbatim transcription is not of itself eligible for copyright protection and is in the public domain if the original is.  
Let us produce an example. In summer 2022, thanks to Prof Sacha Raoult’s kind intervention and helpful mediation, the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project received permission from the Directors of the Centre Gilles-Gaston Granger at the Aix-Marseille Université to publish a web edition of Granger’s French translation of the ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus''. During the autumn and winter of the same year, the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project’s volunteers scanned a paper edition of the book and, with a combination of OCR, manual transcribing, and proofreading, they generated the MediaWiki source code for the text, which is used by the website’s parser to generate the page’s HMTL “on the fly”; the latter, in turn, is rendered visually by web browsers. The procedure was neither easy nor simple, and it was very time-consuming; it required knowledge of the French language, understanding of MediaWiki and HMTL markup, familiarity with the logical and mathematical notation used by Wittgenstein and with the LaTeX syntax for writing and typesetting the formulae. However, this process cannot be regarded as original or creative, because it is a verbatim transcription, that is, a 1-to-1 substitution of some character or formatting feature with a corresponding character or XML tag. (The fact that, in MediaWiki syntax, XML tags are mostly replaced by other markup conventions is of no import, because that too is a 1-to-1 substitution.) Particularly in the case of the transcription of a print edition, where there is no issue of interpreting potentially ambiguous handwriting, if multiple people were to transcribe the same text, the output would have to be absolutely identical: the output, in other words, is process-agnostic, and this is enough reason to consider the transcriber’s activity as a non-creative activity. No new layer of copyright is generated by the process. In the case of Granger’s translation of the ''Tractatus'', the copyright owners gave the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project permission to publish its digital edition, but the French texts stays copyrighted and all rights on it remain reserved; however, when the copyright term will expire on Granger’s translation, the digital edition will be in the public domain too, regardless of how long the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project volunteers will live. A verbatim transcription is not of itself eligible for copyright protection and is in the public domain if the original is.  
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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.<ref>Of course, the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project has no intention to duplicate the WAB’s excellent work and even less to attempt to overshadow it. The scope of our project is, and is meant to be, complementary to theirs, in that we aim to make edited ''Leseausgaben'' available as opposed to “raw” source materials and our target audience is the general public as opposed to the academics. Se the following section, [[#Contracts, constraints unrelated to intellectual property, and politeness|§ Contracts, constraints unrelated to intellectual property, and politeness]], for a brief comment on “politeness” in this context.</ref>
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.<ref>Of course, the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project has no intention to duplicate the WAB’s excellent work and even less to attempt to overshadow it. The scope of our project is, and is meant to be, complementary to theirs, in that we aim to make edited ''Leseausgaben'' available as opposed to “raw” source materials and our target audience is the general public as opposed to the academics. Se the following section, [[#Contracts, constraints unrelated to intellectual property, and politeness|§ Contracts, constraints unrelated to intellectual property, and politeness]], for a brief comment on “politeness” in this context.</ref>


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.
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 can 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 faithtful reproduction of the original material and cannot, in and of itself, be copyrighted. 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.
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 faithtful reproduction of the original material and cannot, in and of itself, be copyrighted. 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 point is that, even though the WAB’s transcriptions are produced in accordance with strict rules based on the {{plainlink|[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_Encoding_Initiative TEI Guidelines]}}, in many cases the transcriber is forced to propose what we may call an interpretation. This is, in turn, not only because Wittgenstein’s handwritten texts, unlike printed texts, may be difficult to decipher on the grounds of the quality of the author’s penmanship; but also and perhaps most importantly because the transcriber must systematically decide whether or not to include some visual items in the transcription based on whether or not they are semantically relevant, and to how to encode them based on what their semantical value is—which is not always trivial. In other words, very often, more than one way of encoding the text is consistent with the rules.<ref>In Alois Pichler, “{{plainlink|[http://wab.uib.no/alois/pichler-kirchb95a.pdf Transcriptions, Texts and Interpretation]}}”, in Kjell S. Johannessen and Tore Nordenstam (eds.), ''Culture and Value. Beiträge des 18. Internationalen Wittgenstein Symposiums. 13.-20. August 1995 Kirchberg am Wechsel'', ALWG, 1995, p. 695, retrieved 20 November 2022 ({{plainlink|[https://web.archive.org/web/2/http://wab.uib.no/alois/pichler-kirchb95a.pdf archived URL]}}), Alois Pichler argues that “transcription work is essentially selective and interpretational in nature”. While this wording may be too bold, in the same paper (pp. 693–694) Pichler lists several good reasons why the WAB’s transcription cannot count as literatim transcriptions.</ref> 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 first point is that, even though the WAB’s transcriptions are produced in accordance with strict rules based on the {{plainlink|[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_Encoding_Initiative TEI Guidelines]}}, in many cases the transcriber is forced to propose what we may call an interpretation. This is, in turn, not only because Wittgenstein’s handwritten texts, unlike printed texts, may be difficult to decipher on the grounds of the quality of the author’s penmanship; but also and perhaps most importantly because the transcriber must systematically decide whether or not to include some visual items in the transcription based on whether or not they are semantically relevant, and how to encode them based on what their semantical value is—which is not always trivial. In other words, very often, more than one way of encoding the text is consistent with the rules.<ref>In Alois Pichler, “{{plainlink|[http://wab.uib.no/alois/pichler-kirchb95a.pdf Transcriptions, Texts and Interpretation]}}”, in Kjell S. Johannessen and Tore Nordenstam (eds.), ''Culture and Value. Beiträge des 18. Internationalen Wittgenstein Symposiums. 13.-20. August 1995 Kirchberg am Wechsel'', ALWG, 1995, p. 695, retrieved 20 November 2022 ({{plainlink|[https://web.archive.org/web/2/http://wab.uib.no/alois/pichler-kirchb95a.pdf archived URL]}}), Alois Pichler argues that “transcription work is essentially selective and interpretational in nature”. While this wording may be too bold, in the same paper (pp. 693–694) Pichler lists several good reasons why the WAB’s transcription cannot count as literatim transcriptions.</ref> 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 point is that the WAB’s transcriptions also make Wittgenstein’s implicit references to people and books explicit:<ref>See Alois Pichler, ''Transcriptions, Texts and Interpretation'', p. 695.</ref> embedded in the XML files 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.; here, again, the transcriber can then be said to be responsible for an interpretation, and, again, where there is a margin for interpretation (when the multiplicity of the text is not exactly the multiplicity that is needed for the transcription to be unequivocal), there is room for originality too.
The second point is that the WAB’s transcriptions also make Wittgenstein’s implicit references to people and books explicit:<ref>See Alois Pichler, ''Transcriptions, Texts and Interpretation'', p. 695.</ref> embedded in the XML files 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.; here, again, the transcriber can then be said to be responsible for an interpretation, and, again, where there is a margin for interpretation (when the multiplicity of the text is not exactly the multiplicity that is needed for the transcription to be unequivocal), there is room for originality too.
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