I'm pretty sure Klingon and most other languages made for fictional universes are copyrighted (or at least many of their creators claim copyright). Let's call these 'fictional languages' in order not to confuse them with languages like Esperanto which were made specifically for people to use them (and not just made to make fictional races seem more real).
These links seem to confirm the copyright situation for Klingon at least:
http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/002300.html
http://higbee.cots.net/~holtej/klingon/faq.htm#2.12
I could not find anything about this on StarTrek.com though and it does seem a bit dubious to copyright fictional words. But then, I'm not sure if we would want to be in a postion to pay legal fees to test Paramount's purported claim (not to mention all the lost effort in a Klingon encyclopedia if we decided to just pull the plug).
Also, the word 'Klingon' is a Paramount trademark.
I'm also uncomfortable with people using Wikimedia resources and the very significant promotional aspects of the Wikipedia name to construct their own languages. Erik's comparison with micronations seems to be an apt one to me (although I don't agree with his specific recommendations since they would exclude dead and many moribund languages).
So, IMO, a language must exist independent of Wikipedia and not be hindered by a claim of copyright before an encyclopedia is started in it.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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On Mon, 5 Apr 2004, Daniel Mayer wrote:
I could not find anything about this on StarTrek.com though and it does seem a bit dubious to copyright fictional words. But then, I'm not sure if we would want to be in a postion to pay legal fees to test Paramount's purported claim (not to mention all the lost effort in a Klingon encyclopedia if we decided to just pull the plug).
I don't think Paramount would have a case (at least in the UK), the fact that they're publishing and endorsing educational material would seem to give people implicit permission to use it.
We could just write to Paramount's lawyers and ask them to state one way or another.
But the fact that we've got to the stage where we see reviews of the Klingon translation of Hamlet appearing in Shakespeare Quarterly indicate Klingon as a language no-longer belongs to Paramount.
According to [[Lojban]] Dr Brown lost a courtcase on language copyright, but I can't trace the court case.
Imran
Daniel-
So, IMO, a language must exist independent of Wikipedia and not be hindered by a claim of copyright before an encyclopedia is started in it.
Well, this is another issue:
http://www.tokipona.org/ (C) Toki Pona is the intellectual property of Sonja Elen Kisa, 2001-2004. You may use these materials freely, as long as you do not compete with this site.
Given that Sonja is also the most active contributor to the Toki Pona Wikipedia that's probably not much of a big deal, though. Still, the "as long as you do not compete" clause is annoying.
Yes, I agree that conlangs are the more serious problem than natural languages. However, I don't think that there should be no criteria at all for natural languages. The three criteria that Andre proposed - ISO 639-2, more than 50 archived documents, or more than 10,000 speakers - seem reasonable, and would probably kick out most obscure conlangs, while leaving in legitimate spoken tongues, and dead languages too, if there's a written record of them (not that I care at all about those, but in the interest of wikipeace ..).
Regards,
Erik
Daniel Mayer wrote:
I'm pretty sure Klingon and most other languages made for fictional universes are copyrighted (or at least many of their creators claim copyright).
I often read that this is a common misconception. Many Klingon enthusiasts seem to be convinced that you cannot "copyright a language". Supposedly you can only copyright, for example, a text that /describes/ a language, but when I write a new text in that language, I only use the pure knowledge represented in that description of the language, not the description itself, and as we all know you can't copyright knowledge.
Now some might say, "Ah, but you can copyright ideas!" No, you can't. You can *patent* ideas. I am less sure about whether a language (which can be regarded as an encoding for information) can be patented. Sonja, how about you go patent Toki Pona, and let us know how it went ;-)
These links seem to confirm the copyright situation for Klingon at least: http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/002300.html http://higbee.cots.net/~holtej/klingon/faq.htm#2.12
The first one does challenge the copyright claim. The second one is only a copy of the first paragraph of the first.
Also, the word 'Klingon' is a Paramount trademark.
Yes, but that is irrelevant. That only means that you can't create a new product in such a way that it can be confused with the trademark. By saying that our Wikipedia is in the Klingon language, we are clearly not referring to a new product, but the good old Klingon language. It's the same as having articles about trademarked names (like companies and products).
Did you know there's a shoe-shop in London called McDonald's? Supposedly they can get away with that because a shoe-shop is difficult to confuse with a fast-food restaurant.
So, IMO, a language must exist independent of Wikipedia and not be hindered by a claim of copyright before an encyclopedia is started in it.
As far as I can tell, Toki Pona fulfills these conditions.
Timwi
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