On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 1:02 PM, Vishnu <visdaviva@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thursday 25 September 2014 11:19 AM, Rajesh Ranjan wrote:

On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 9:49 AM, Anivar Aravind <anivar.aravind@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 9:55 PM, Vishnu <visdaviva@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Ravi,

On the copyright question AFAIK...  it is the manner in which a certain content is expressed (e.g. analyzed, compiled, paginated, represented, etc..) the author could claim copyright, as there is a certain basic amount of creative labour that went into it. So Govt. of Karnataka could rightfully copyright these works, which it has now released under CC-BY-SA 3.0. A useful thing to read in this context would be this [1].

As Ravi pointed 11th Century Kannada literature is already public domain . There is no point in re-licensing it as CC-BY-SA .

Digitization does not create fresh copyright . While thanking Govt for their efforts to make it available , please dont create fresh copyright on it . And while looking at details, There was no  point of time  in which govt of Karanataka had copyright on this content .

This effort is almost in same lines of  Open access initiative of rare public domain books by Kerala Sahitya academy happened almost same time last year (http://www.keralasahityaakademi.org/online_library/index.html) . They havnt claimed any undeserving copyright on these books . SO it is better if people involved canm correct Govt of Karanataka at this point itself showing kerala example to avoid further ambiguities surrounding license .

~ regards

Anivar

I agree with Ravi and Anivar!

I am not an expert of licensing, but the thing that is already in public domain, licensing the same under CC-BY-SA 3.0 is one way limiting the public availability of the same content. 

Rajesh and Anivar,

Purely from a copyright POV, it is important to recognize the idea - expression divide. The content per-se in this case may be public domain, but it is the expression of it that is copyrighted as I stated above. Especially, as I understand, the copyright act in India has bare minimum requirements for creative labour.

But I am willing to be better educated on this.

In US copyright The Bridgeman v. Corel [1]case established, and several other courts have followed, the principle that a "slavish copy" does not have enough originality to warrant copyright protection. Skill in making that copy, no matter how great it is (and we all know how difficult it can be to make a good copy), also is not by itself "original" enough to warrant copyright protection. we only need to care about the US law in this case because content hosted is in wikimedia servers in US . AFAIK this does not have  much conflicts with indian law too. 

Licensing this under creative commons is a copyright claim of public domain works  even though spirit behind licensing is different. So my only point is whoever working on this please correct it at this point itself by giving proper credit (as Open access initiative of  kannada old classics ) by pointing examples like kerala sahitya academy's last year efforts.

In india we anyway need to get more public institutions and libraries to release digitalized /scanned version of PD works . So the each example we set at this point have impacts over all these decisions. So please correct the mistakes at this point .

If public institions  who release PD books in digitalized form needs credit for their efforts do it via press coverage or via GLAM

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp.

~ regards
Anivar

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