[Wikisource-l] unz.org - new digitization/archiving effort

[Ray Saintonge]

Further to this, a key resource is the Online Books Page, 
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/serials.html This is really helpful 
for the older stuff.

Unz has a tremendous amount of more modern material, and I would have 
concerns about the legitimacy of his having the material. For example 
"The Anglo-Soviet Journal" was published in England from 1940 until 
1992, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Unz has a broken 
run of issues between 1940 and 1974.  Who would have been in a position 
to license his use of the material? Looking at the title page for the 
Spring 1965 issue the ASJ allowed reproduction of its contents, but did 
its contributors necessarily agree to this or give up their copyrights? 
It all makes me wonder how much of his material is infringing.

For ourselves, it would make sense to be careful. In the broader scheme 
of things the situation bears watching.  Do the authors of the articles 
even give a damn? I suspect that few if any with standing will ever 
complain. Those few can easily be accommodated. It makes one wonder 
about the benefit to being purists about respecting copyrights.

Ray

On 12/02/11 9:12 PM, Craig Franklin wrote:
> Agreed with Ray here, the watermarking and "licencing agreement" for 
> stuff that's public domain is a bit of a turnoff.  Otherwise, it would 
> be great to cross-reference what Wikisource has and what this site 
> has, find out what he has that we don't, and take steps to correct 
> that ;-)
>
> Cheers,
> Craig
>
> On 3 December 2011 09:58, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>     This is an interesting and useful site, but prohibiting the electronic
>     reproduction of the content, even as it applies to material that is
>     indisputably in the public domain is not on the spirit of open
>     software.
>
>     Ray
>