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copyright is really freaking confusing. ignoring the whole "everyone's being strong-armed into copying america's copyright, and america's extending everything constantly just so mickey mouse won't go out of copyright", there's problems like this:
an author wrote in their will that they leave the copyright to their daughter, and after their daughter's death copyright will be donated to a certain library. instead the daughter in HER will gives the copyright to a friend, that friend sells it to a company; the library got a one-time payment on stuff that's still earning tons of money for that company. apparently this is legal.
the big problem seems to come when 1. copyright is given to heirs, 2. to companies. tons of people are having problems like, they're trying to translate a book and find out the copyright was given to the author's son, who isn't contactable. so they have no way of even asking about paying to acquire publication rights for their translation.
supposedly if you translate a work for free, and won't earn money on it, you can publish it online and you're not infringing copyright as it's counted as a "derivative work"... but as soon as you want money for it you ARE infringing. AND in terms of copyright law YOUR translation is counted as a "new work", it's copyright doesn't go out at the same time as the work you translated, because it's a "sufficiently original work". tell me, how the hell can an original/derivative work suddenly switch into a NON-original/derivative as soon as money's involved, eh?
then, even if you're reproducing the entire original book, if you just add NOTES it's counted as a new work because you've "edited it enough". so someone's republished the little house on the prairie with annotations and that's apparently fine to do.
so in the future i want to be a translator, right? well i was trying to search for how to even GET the rights to translate a book. everyone online just says "go to a publisher and ask to publish your translation with them, and they'll battle for the rights for you". what?! sorry but if you go to a "real publishing company", you'll only be earning like 10 cents per book sold. it's like slave labour. that's why translators are poor.
an author wrote in their will that they leave the copyright to their daughter, and after their daughter's death copyright will be donated to a certain library. instead the daughter in HER will gives the copyright to a friend, that friend sells it to a company; the library got a one-time payment on stuff that's still earning tons of money for that company. apparently this is legal.
the big problem seems to come when 1. copyright is given to heirs, 2. to companies. tons of people are having problems like, they're trying to translate a book and find out the copyright was given to the author's son, who isn't contactable. so they have no way of even asking about paying to acquire publication rights for their translation.
supposedly if you translate a work for free, and won't earn money on it, you can publish it online and you're not infringing copyright as it's counted as a "derivative work"... but as soon as you want money for it you ARE infringing. AND in terms of copyright law YOUR translation is counted as a "new work", it's copyright doesn't go out at the same time as the work you translated, because it's a "sufficiently original work". tell me, how the hell can an original/derivative work suddenly switch into a NON-original/derivative as soon as money's involved, eh?
then, even if you're reproducing the entire original book, if you just add NOTES it's counted as a new work because you've "edited it enough". so someone's republished the little house on the prairie with annotations and that's apparently fine to do.
so in the future i want to be a translator, right? well i was trying to search for how to even GET the rights to translate a book. everyone online just says "go to a publisher and ask to publish your translation with them, and they'll battle for the rights for you". what?! sorry but if you go to a "real publishing company", you'll only be earning like 10 cents per book sold. it's like slave labour. that's why translators are poor.
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