I tried to talk to Peter Seibel about permission to translate for
Brazilian Portuguese "The Practical Lisp", but without success with
the message below:
I belong to the list of users lisp here in brazil (http://wiki.lisp-
br.org/LispBr) and while reading your best book on-line started the
idea that it would be very interesting to translate Portuguese and
thus provide for a lots of potential users lisp, the opportunity to
learn practical way a good language program.
So I would like your permission to translate into Portuguese Brazilian
your book online.
Regards,
Could anyone from the list help me or explain if is possible?
Thanks
Marcelino Pinheiro
masp wrote:
> I tried to talk to Peter Seibel about permission to translate for
> Brazilian Portuguese "The Practical Lisp", but without success with
> the message below:
>
> I belong to the list of users lisp here in brazil (http://wiki.lisp-
> br.org/LispBr) and while reading your best book on-line started the
> idea that it would be very interesting to translate Portuguese and
> thus provide for a lots of potential users lisp, the opportunity to
> learn practical way a good language program.
> So I would like your permission to translate into Portuguese Brazilian
> your book online.
>
> Regards,
>
> Could anyone from the list help me or explain if is possible?
Looking at the verso of the title page of my copy of /Practical Common Lisp/ I
see:
"For information on translations, please contact Apress directly at 2560 Ninth
Street, Suite 219, Berkeley, CA 94710. Phone 510-549-5930, fax 510-549-5939,
e-mail ····@apress.com, or visit http://www.apress.com."
Apress is the publisher, Springer-Verlag the distributor, hence the direction to
contact Apress directly.
Carl Taylor
CT> Looking at the verso of the title page of my copy of /Practical Common
CT> Lisp/ I see:
CT> "For information on translations, please contact Apress directly at
CT> 2560 Ninth Street, Suite 219, Berkeley, CA 94710. Phone 510-549-5930,
CT> fax 510-549-5939, e-mail ····@apress.com, or visit
http://www.apress.com."
i've tried this once:
-----
Let me check
Best regards,
Gary Cornell
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alex Mizrahi [··················@newmail.ru] Sent: Thursday, March
> 24, 2005 11:08 PM
> To: ······@apress.com
> Subject: Peter Seibel's "Practical Common Lisp"
>
> hello
>
> i would like to publish in electronic form on a web-site one (or two)
> chapters of Peter Seibel's "Practical Common Lisp" book translated into
> Russian language. the intent is to make it easier for russian-speaking
> people to get interested in the Common Lisp programming language (that
> chapter is introductory, consisting mainly of Lisp advocacy), there's no
> intent to make available whole book or its substantial part :) Peter is
> not sure if i'm able to do this and told i should contact Apress via this
> e-mail if i want to.
> so, can i put up that translation?
>
> with best regards, Alex 'killer_storm' Mizrahi.
>
-----
three years have passed..
other guys were more lucky with this, it seems..
On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:20:46 +0200, "Alex Mizrahi"
<········@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> CT> Looking at the verso of the title page of my copy of /Practical Common
> CT> Lisp/ I see:
>
> CT> "For information on translations, please contact Apress directly at
> CT> 2560 Ninth Street, Suite 219, Berkeley, CA 94710. Phone 510-549-5930,
> CT> fax 510-549-5939, e-mail ····@apress.com, or visit
>http://www.apress.com."
>
>i've tried this once:
>
>-----
>Let me check
>
>Best regards,
>
>Gary Cornell
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Alex Mizrahi [··················@newmail.ru] Sent: Thursday, March
>> 24, 2005 11:08 PM
>> To: ······@apress.com
>> Subject: Peter Seibel's "Practical Common Lisp"
>>
>> hello
>>
>> i would like to publish in electronic form on a web-site one (or two)
>> chapters of Peter Seibel's "Practical Common Lisp" book translated into
>> Russian language. the intent is to make it easier for russian-speaking
>> people to get interested in the Common Lisp programming language (that
>> chapter is introductory, consisting mainly of Lisp advocacy), there's no
>> intent to make available whole book or its substantial part :) Peter is
>> not sure if i'm able to do this and told i should contact Apress via this
>> e-mail if i want to.
>> so, can i put up that translation?
>>
>> with best regards, Alex 'killer_storm' Mizrahi.
>>
>-----
>
>three years have passed..
>
>other guys were more lucky with this, it seems..
You might have had better luck if your attorney had contacted Apress
with an offer that included paying royalties for Russian language
reproduction rights.
Ditto the OP for Portuguese language rights.
[Not saying this is in any way fair in light of Seibel's decision to
offer PCL free in English, but he apparently gave Apress control of
reproduction rights and they are in business to make money.]
George
--
for email reply remove "/" from address
GN> You might have had better luck if your attorney had contacted Apress
GN> with an offer that included paying royalties for Russian language
GN> reproduction rights.
royalties for non-commercial use? that's something new. actually i suspect
that copying introductory chapter can be considered "fair use"..
GN> Ditto the OP for Portuguese language rights.
as i've said other guys were more lucky -- they've got permission to make
Russian translation of the whole book. (however, they didn't contact Apress
directly -- they've contacted Peter who asked Apress himself). currently
partial translation is on their wiki site, they are going move it to Peter's
site when translation will be complete.
so this way Apress will have a translation for free (so later they can
publish it as a book in Russian), and some advertisiment. are you sure
people should also pay Apress money to make translation for them? :)
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Permission to translate to Portuguese PCL
Date:
Message-ID: <uwsp8kcga.fsf@nhplace.com>
"Alex Mizrahi" <········@users.sourceforge.net> writes:
> so this way Apress will have a translation for free (so later they can
> publish it as a book in Russian), and some advertisiment. are you sure
> people should also pay Apress money to make translation for them? :)
Btw, if you're looking for something to pay for, I could dig up some
documents that I'd let you translate for a fee.
Now all I have to do is figure out whether it's more competitive for me
to charge you a larger or smaller fee to do work for me than others are
charging you to do work for them. :)
On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:57:43 +0200, "Alex Mizrahi"
<········@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> GN> You might have had better luck if your attorney had contacted Apress
> GN> with an offer that included paying royalties for Russian language
> GN> reproduction rights.
>
>royalties for non-commercial use? that's something new. actually i suspect
>that copying introductory chapter can be considered "fair use"..
Non-commercial doesn't matter. Technically, aside from Fair Use, any
use is subject to licensing and potential royalty payment.
Now, education is generally considered a Fair Use ... however there
are still restrictions on the amount of copying allowed (for example,
under US law, a teacher is allowed to photocopy for students up to 50
non-consective pages or one consecutive chapter from a book. Colleges
routinely bend and break the letter of the law and some have paid huge
sums for doing so).
Copying the whole of a work under Fair Use is frowned upon under
almost all circumstances - it is a privilege reserved for public
television and a few other select purposes like translations for the
blind, etc.
The biggest problem with "Fair Use" is that it is largely undefined -
the law lists only a few minor examples such as the teacher copying
rule above. In practice, Fair Use is whatever the judge decides when
the copyright holder challenges and a spate of (IMO questionable)
decisions in the last 5 years has resulted in severely restricting its
scope.
George
--
for email reply remove "/" from address
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Permission to translate to Portuguese PCL
Date:
Message-ID: <uejbgfcxv.fsf@nhplace.com>
George Neuner <·········@/comcast.net> writes:
> Non-commercial doesn't matter. Technically, aside from Fair Use, any
> use is subject to licensing and potential royalty payment.
Well, I don't disagree with a lot of your post, and [obligatory disclaimer:]
I'm not a lawyer, but ...
US Title 17, Chapter 1, � 107, as available at
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/usc_sec_17_00000107----000-.html
says:
> In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case
> is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
> (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such
> use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational
> purposes;
That seems pretty umambiguously (to me) to say that commercial does matter.
Not how. Just that it does.
For example, it could be that a book that's educational would be something
you're more free to copy. OR it could be that since the book is intended
to be sold into the educational community, that copying it is undercutting
the very business they're in, and so you're less free to copy it. This is
almost certainly why there are other factors that have to be accounted for.
I won't presume to tell anyone what a successful legal argument is.
All I mean to say is that the answer isn't obviously "this factor
doesn't matter" or "there is no case to be made".
[some good examples probably decided by court cases elided here because]
> Copying the whole of a work under Fair Use is frowned upon under
> almost all circumstances
[I wouldn't want to be doing that. :)]
> The biggest problem with "Fair Use" is that it is largely undefined -
> the law lists only a few minor examples such as the teacher copying
> rule above. In practice, Fair Use is whatever the judge decides when
> the copyright holder challenges and a spate of (IMO questionable)
> decisions in the last 5 years has resulted in severely restricting its
> scope.
The worst of this, IMO, are the preemptive changes to technology that
effectively implement prior restraint. I've sometimes advocated the
creation of a notion of "intellectual property easement" (the ability
to sue someone who is actively inhibiting an alleged fair use for a
mechanism that permits the alleged fair use) to put the would-be fair
user back in the driver's seat being able to at least put himself or
herself at risk. The problem is that fair uses have to be discovered,
and the way things are going, they can't easily be. It's bad enough
to be open to the strict punishments if you do something bad, but now
the move is to not let you do something -- even something potentially
good -- unless it can be PROVEN potentially good in advance of
permitting it. That's quite a shift.
On 13 Feb 2008 22:13:00 -0500, Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com>
wrote:
>George Neuner <·········@/comcast.net> writes:
>
>> Non-commercial doesn't matter. Technically, aside from Fair Use, any
>> use is subject to licensing and potential royalty payment.
>
>Well, I don't disagree with a lot of your post, and [obligatory disclaimer:]
>I'm not a lawyer, but ...
>
>US Title 17, Chapter 1, � 107, as available at
> http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/usc_sec_17_00000107----000-.html
>says:
>
>> In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case
>> is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
>> (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such
>> use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational
>> purposes;
>
>That seems pretty umambiguously (to me) to say that commercial does matter.
>Not how. Just that it does.
Yes.
What I meant to convey (obviously not well) is that having a _non_
commercial use doesn't necessarily get you out of paying royalties.
Only Fair Use does.
>For example, it could be that a book that's educational would be something
>you're more free to copy. OR it could be that since the book is intended
>to be sold into the educational community, that copying it is undercutting
>the very business they're in, and so you're less free to copy it. This is
>almost certainly why there are other factors that have to be accounted for.
Absolutely. That's why determining Fair Use is so complicated.
>I won't presume to tell anyone what a successful legal argument is.
>All I mean to say is that the answer isn't obviously "this factor
>doesn't matter" or "there is no case to be made".
Not what I intended. I'm not a lawyer either but I should be more
careful when discussing laws, particularly because I do have some IP
law background (I was at one time a patent paralegal).
Alex said: "royalties for non-commercial use? that's something new."
I replied: "Non-commercial doesn't matter. Technically, aside from
Fair Use, any use is subject to licensing and potential
royalty payment."
I thought it was clear enough, but obviously it was not. Sorry for
any confusion it caused.
>[some good examples probably decided by court cases elided here because]
>
>> Copying the whole of a work under Fair Use is frowned upon under
>> almost all circumstances
>
>[I wouldn't want to be doing that. :)]
We're actually talking about derivative works in this thread, but a
complete translation could also be argued to be a complete copy.
>> The biggest problem with "Fair Use" is that it is largely undefined -
>> the law lists only a few minor examples such as the teacher copying
>> rule above. In practice, Fair Use is whatever the judge decides when
>> the copyright holder challenges and a spate of (IMO questionable)
>> decisions in the last 5 years has resulted in severely restricting its
>> scope.
>
>The worst of this, IMO, are the preemptive changes to technology that
>effectively implement prior restraint.
Also known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Sometimes
referred to as "Congress's Gift to Hollywood".
Until the DMCA, copyrights were civil law. DMCA criminalized certain
acts such as reverse engineering or circumventing DRM mechanisms and
enacted statutory penalties which include prison. With the DMCA,
copyright became criminal law.
>I've sometimes advocated the
>creation of a notion of "intellectual property easement" (the ability
>to sue someone who is actively inhibiting an alleged fair use for a
>mechanism that permits the alleged fair use) to put the would-be fair
>user back in the driver's seat being able to at least put himself or
>herself at risk.
You can sue a copyright holder to annul his rights. A fairly recent
high profile attempt to do this was against the estate of Theodore
Geisel (Dr. Seuss). It isn't tried very often because it rarely
succeeds unless the copyright in question can be shown to be
illegitimate due to some criminal activity.
>The problem is that fair uses have to be discovered,
>and the way things are going, they can't easily be. It's bad enough
>to be open to the strict punishments if you do something bad, but now
>the move is to not let you do something -- even something potentially
>good -- unless it can be PROVEN potentially good in advance of
>permitting it. That's quite a shift.
After the DMCA was passed, one of its principals said of it: "... it's
a bad law, but we felt we had to get something passed. The courts
will figure it out". ISTR this inanity coming from Patrick Leahy
but it might have been Orrin Hatch.
George
--
for email reply remove "/" from address
??>> royalties for non-commercial use? that's something new. actually i
??>> suspect that copying introductory chapter can be considered "fair
??>> use"..
GN> Non-commercial doesn't matter. Technically, aside from Fair Use, any
GN> use is subject to licensing and potential royalty payment.
as far as i understand, there should be some "damage" done by copyright
infirngement for case to be brought into court.
while copying whole book _can_ cause "damage" -- people will use the copy
instead of buying book, and so book owner won't get their profit.
but i doubt that copying _introductory_ chapter can be considered as doing
damage, because there is no real value in this chapter -- it only encourages
people to read the rest of the book, so this would be strictly a benefit for
copyright owner.
here's a quote from Copyright Act:
"In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a
fair use the factors to be considered shall include-
the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a
commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the
copyrighted work as a whole; and
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the
copyrighted work."
no negative effect, no infringement, i guess. common sense is not always
applicable to laws, though..
From: Kent M Pitman
Subject: Re: Permission to translate to Portuguese PCL
Date:
Message-ID: <uy79nebe6.fsf@nhplace.com>
"Alex Mizrahi" <········@users.sourceforge.net> writes:
> no negative effect, no infringement, i guess. common sense is not always
> applicable to laws, though..
The second sentence above is clearly true.
The first sentence, I believe, contains a number of misconceptions or,
at least, risks creating them in others.
Again, I emphasize, I'm not a lawyer, but ...
I'm pretty sure (though not 100% certain) that you're using the word
wrong. You can have infringement even when you have no negative
effect. First, I don't think "negative effect" is a term of art in
the law. People can be made to frown and that can be negative, but in
at least some cases, it doesn't constitute the kind of legal detriment
that is called damages. Second, even among damages, you can have
"actual damages" (measured by some objective metric of what happens in
the real world) and "statutory damages" (supplied by the law,
notwithstanding the state of the real world).
In the case of copyright law, last I checked anyway, if a work is
registered with the US copyright office, the court will supply
statutory damages for an infringement even if there are no damages or
they are hard to assess. I don't recall the amount of the statutory
damages, but I recall they were huge--perhaps measured in the tens of
thousands of dollars? Enough to make one take pause.
Additionally, if the work is registered with the US copyright office,
the court will make the infringer pay the attorney's fees for the
infringed, meaning the guy who is infringed can, in principle, have
his lawyer spend as much money as he wants to go after the one who is
infringing.
(Most of my detailed knowledge of this comes pre-DMCA, and I haven't
fully integrated the effects of the DMCA, but I'm comfortable in
believing that it hasn't given the would-be infringer more
rights... it's only increased the number of hammers available for
swinging at you when you're in a questionable situation.)
I don't want to be posting here giving legal advice, especially since
But what I do mean to be offering is a general sense of caution, so
that people reading along don't think this is an obvious matter.
If you want to feel comfortable that you're inside of your rights
using works that you did not create, ask a lawyer, or at minimum make
sure you have a proper legal document in hand that says what your
license of use is. If you don't know whether and how the work is
licensed to you, especially because you don't have words in your hands
from someone you know for certain is the owner telling you you can
definitely use it, the assumption that you are safe is questionable.
On 14 Feb 2008 11:44:01 -0500, Kent M Pitman <······@nhplace.com>
wrote:
>"Alex Mizrahi" <········@users.sourceforge.net> writes:
>
>> no negative effect, no infringement, i guess. common sense is not always
>> applicable to laws, though..
>
>The second sentence above is clearly true.
>
>The first sentence, I believe, contains a number of misconceptions or,
>at least, risks creating them in others.
>
>Again, I emphasize, I'm not a lawyer, but ...
>
>I'm pretty sure (though not 100% certain) that you're using the word
>wrong. You can have infringement even when you have no negative
>effect. First, I don't think "negative effect" is a term of art in
>the law. People can be made to frown and that can be negative, but in
>at least some cases, it doesn't constitute the kind of legal detriment
>that is called damages. Second, even among damages, you can have
>"actual damages" (measured by some objective metric of what happens in
>the real world) and "statutory damages" (supplied by the law,
>notwithstanding the state of the real world).
Absolutely correct. Infringement of a reserved right is statutory ...
the penalty assessed for the infringement depends on the use.
>In the case of copyright law, last I checked anyway, if a work is
>registered with the US copyright office, the court will supply
>statutory damages for an infringement even if there are no damages or
>they are hard to assess. I don't recall the amount of the statutory
>damages, but I recall they were huge--perhaps measured in the tens of
>thousands of dollars? Enough to make one take pause.
There is a statutory damages scale which the judge will apply based on
the particulars of the situation.
>Additionally, if the work is registered with the US copyright office,
>the court will make the infringer pay the attorney's fees for the
>infringed, meaning the guy who is infringed can, in principle, have
>his lawyer spend as much money as he wants to go after the one who is
>infringing.
>
>(Most of my detailed knowledge of this comes pre-DMCA, and I haven't
>fully integrated the effects of the DMCA, but I'm comfortable in
>believing that it hasn't given the would-be infringer more
>rights... it's only increased the number of hammers available for
>swinging at you when you're in a questionable situation.)
>
>I don't want to be posting here giving legal advice, especially since
>But what I do mean to be offering is a general sense of caution, so
>that people reading along don't think this is an obvious matter.
>
>If you want to feel comfortable that you're inside of your rights
>using works that you did not create, ask a lawyer, or at minimum make
>sure you have a proper legal document in hand that says what your
>license of use is. If you don't know whether and how the work is
>licensed to you, especially because you don't have words in your hands
>from someone you know for certain is the owner telling you you can
>definitely use it, the assumption that you are safe is questionable.
When in doubt, ask a qualified IP attorney.
Incidentally, "qualified" is a relative term. Any attorney can handle
a trademark or copyright issue (those who are dedicated to the
practice will just do it more efficiently), but patent attorneys are
_supposed_ to have a science or engineering background (preferably in
the technology they cover although that isn't required). Specialty IP
law firms used to require technical backgrounds for patent work. But
the law doesn't require it and, in the last decade particularly, large
general firms eager to horn in on IP have diluted the pool of _good_
patent attorneys.
George
--
for email reply remove "/" from address
On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:57:43 +0200, "Alex Mizrahi"
<········@users.sourceforge.net> tried to confuse everyone with this message:
> GN> You might have had better luck if your attorney had contacted Apress
> GN> with an offer that included paying royalties for Russian language
> GN> reproduction rights.
>
>royalties for non-commercial use? that's something new. actually i suspect
>that copying introductory chapter can be considered "fair use"..
>
> GN> Ditto the OP for Portuguese language rights.
>
>as i've said other guys were more lucky -- they've got permission to make
>Russian translation of the whole book. (however, they didn't contact Apress
>directly -- they've contacted Peter who asked Apress himself). currently
>partial translation is on their wiki site, they are going move it to Peter's
>site when translation will be complete.
Can you point me to this wiki? I'd like to check this out, though my
expectations are not too high regarding the quality of the translation.
--
|Don't believe this - you're not worthless ,gr---------.ru
|It's us against millions and we can't take them all... | ue il |
|But we can take them on! | @ma |
| (A Wilhelm Scream - The Rip) |______________|
TS> Can you point me to this wiki?
http://pcl.catap.ru/doku.php
(i hope it wasn't secret one ^__^. at least it was possible to find links to
it via Google..)
TS> I'd like to check this out, though my expectations are not too high
TS> regarding the quality of the translation.
you can always improve it yourself ;)