Links to MyWikBiz, Summa Logicae Options

[Peter Damian]

I raised the issue on the RS noticeboard here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Rel...WikiBiz_deleted

There is a concerted effort to remove a link on the Summa Logicae article to a version of book III (the only version on the internet) I placed there.

The logic is that it is a 'personal website'. As I have pointed out, that logic would remove 90% of links from medieval articles, and nearly all the links on that particular article.

It was many weeks work to check the scanned in Latin version - there are currently no Latin spell-checkers on the market, and it all has to be done by eye. This seems more a vendetta against Kohs than anything else.

[Peter Damian]

And there they go, moving the precious work across

http://la.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title...&action=history

Do I mind? A little bit: it was several weeks work, and it puts me off because Google will prefer that version. My version will include many links within MWB to other medieval philosophers and medieval terms, and the net will be a little poorer. Wikisource is completely rubbish at the moment.

[thekohser]

And there they go, moving the precious work across

http://la.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title...&action=history

Do I mind? A little bit: it was several weeks work, and it puts me off because Google will prefer that version. My version will include many links within MWB to other medieval philosophers and medieval terms, and the net will be a little poorer. Wikisource is completely rubbish at the moment.

First, are they "stealing" from your labor without attribution, or is this stuff (being a transcription, really) not protected by any rights?

Second, I wouldn't be so sure that Wikisource (much less "la.Wikisource") will out-do Wikipedia Review in the search engine competition -- especially if, as I always plead with you, you enhance your pages with the semantic attributes (minimally, "keyword") that are available to you on Wikipedia Review.

Greg

[jayvdb]

And there they go, moving the precious work across

http://la.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title...&action=history

Do I mind? A little bit: it was several weeks work, and it puts me off because Google will prefer that version. My version will include many links within MWB to other medieval philosophers and medieval terms, and the net will be a little poorer. Wikisource is completely rubbish at the moment.

First, are they "stealing" from your labor without attribution, or is this stuff (being a transcription, really) not protected by any rights?

Second, I wouldn't be so sure that Wikisource (much less "la.Wikisource") will out-do Wikipedia Review in the search engine competition -- especially if, as I always plead with you, you enhance your pages with the semantic attributes (minimally, "keyword") that are available to you on Wikipedia Review.

Greg

I seriously doubt that there are any rights in the original text, however Hiroshige looks like a sock of some sort, which I think it is still a rude way of handling this. I had hoped to work with Peter Damian to bring it across with his agreement.

Wikisource vs Wikipedia Review would be an interesting battle - I expect you are right about who would win because Wikisource doesnt do much to promote itself. Rather than fight, I would prefer to link back to the original website, as I have mentioned in an earlier post on WR or WP.

Wikisource only wants to have a copy; I hope that any competition between Wikisource and other depository is friendly, as there are sources throughout the ages for everyone to have a chunk of the pie, and still some left for the next generation to digitise. Aggressive competition is only warranted against the commercial depositories who have ads, or who use proprietary formats which prevent copying, or who add assert copyright over their etexts when they are actually in the public domain.

[Peter Damian]

I seriously doubt that there are any rights in the original text, however Hiroshige looks like a sock of some sort, which I think it is still a rude way of handling this. I had hoped to work with Peter Damian to bring it across with his agreement.

This was clearly retaliation for the link from the article in Wikipedia.

Wikisource vs Wikipedia Review would be an interesting battle - I expect you are right about who would win because Wikisource doesnt do much to promote itself. Rather than fight, I would prefer to link back to the original website, as I have mentioned in an earlier post on WR or WP.

I hope that any competition between Wikisource and other depository is friendly

So would I but recent events haven't made it so.

I seriously doubt that there are any rights in the original text

Wrong, this text (both book III and books I and II) are taken from the 1974 critical edition originally begun by Boehner who, having died in 1953 is probably out of the radar, but the main work was completed by Gedeon Gal and Stephen Brown. Brown is still alive.

Note that a critical edition by definition is a synthesis of different manuscripts which in theory may not resemble exactly any primary source. Arguably copyright does exist there. The Franciscan Institute are generally very relaxed about this and gave permission for use of a digitised text for Bonaventura's works which I was involved with.

[jayvdb]

I seriously doubt that there are any rights in the original text

Wrong, this text (both book III and books I and II) are taken from the 1974 critical edition originally begun by Boehner who, having died in 1953 is probably out of the radar, but the main work was completed by Gedeon Gal and Stephen Brown. Brown is still alive.

Note that a critical edition by definition is a synthesis of different manuscripts which in theory may not resemble exactly any primary source. Arguably copyright does exist there. The Franciscan Institute are generally very relaxed about this and gave permission for use of a digitised text for Bonaventura's works which I was involved with.

Indeed; until the text is accompanied with proper bibliographic and provenance data, it isnt possible t o be certain that it is not a copyright violation. Many of the texts on Wikisource lack these important details. We are slowly fixing that problem on English Wikisource, however the German Wikisource decided that they needed to remove all etexts that did not have accompanying page scans, which also removed the legal uncertainty about their etexts.

An important distinction to make here is that the Latin Wikisource text may be infringing the copyright of the recent authors, but it is not infringing your copy.

On Wikisource we often have copyright violation discussions where there is doubt. English Wikisource has the most active forum for these discussions, and the participants there are usually very keen to remove all uncertainty, or find a replacement text, which means the discussions can remain open a long time, and many of the administrators prefer to err on the side of caution. Two examples are De Anima and Categories.

Latin Wikisource does not have many copyright discussions, and does not have a separate copyvio forum, mostly due to the active community being very small, and most of us have other projects which dominate our time. The only copyright discussion that I recall is here, where the person who published the original source claimed copyright, and we did remove the text. Sometimes it is worth investigating whether there is any serious copyright claim to be made, but in other cases it isn't feasible and the best approach is deletion or replacement.

I have initiated a discussion about this possible copyright problem.