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flutable
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Quote flutable Replybullet Topic: Finnish Graded Reader - under copyright?
    Posted: 17 May 2008 at 2:45am
Just a request to DemiPuppet and others who know more about this than I do... I have a PDF of the FSI Finnish Graded Reader, all illustrations removed.

There is no acknowledgements page, but anything that looked like it was from a 3rd party, I've removed.

Would you consider this PDF safe to post? I know people have been waiting a while for the Finnish texts.

Edit: since it was I who created the PDF, I'm wondering if I should also put a header on each page, something like "Believed to be in the public domain - you should not pay for this document" or something like that. After that I can secure the PDF so that the header can't be removed easily.

Comments anyone?


Edited by flutable - 17 May 2008 at 4:05am
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DemiPuppet
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Quote DemiPuppet Replybullet Posted: 17 May 2008 at 4:17pm
My only concern with Finnish Reader is that it might contain items that were originally written by Finnish writers and copyrighted in Finland. Before 1989, it was possible to use foreign materials without fear of being sued for copyright infringement. This all changed in 1996 under the Uruguay Round Agreement Act (URAA) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URAA.

Take a look at the Copyright Office circular 38b:

http://www.copyright.gov/circs

The material might not be in the public domain. Did the FSI author actually write the material, or did he or she just grab a bunch of Finnish short stories and articles and throw them in a book. If it's the latter, and the items were not in the Finnish public domain on 1 Jan, 1996, then they are copyrighted and a person could be sued publishing them without permission.

Note that the 1996 gave a free pass to people that were already publishing the material before 1 Jan 1996.  If the material was copyrighted, the publisher could not be sued. They just had to stop distributing the material.  So the fact that the US government or AudioForum is selling the material does not mean it is in the public domain.  It could be the copyright holder realizes they can't sue for damages and doesn't bother to press a claim.

Question to ask:

  • Was the material written by a non-US person in a foreign country? If true, it may be copyrighted. If false, the material is in the public domain because the book lacks a copyright notice.
  • If the material was created in a country outside the US, was it in the public domain of the foreign country on Jan 1, 1996? If true, it is grandfathered in and is in the US public domain.


Edited by DemiPuppet - 17 May 2008 at 4:22pm
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flutable
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Quote flutable Replybullet Posted: 17 May 2008 at 9:01pm
Thanks DemiPuppet.

The table of contents of the Graded Reader shows a large number of authors, so yes, the work is definitely a compilation of extracts from other works.

 I have contacted a representative of the author/compiler of the Reader and asked for advice on the copyright status of the individual works cited.

...but given that the Reader was published 40 years ago, I'm not very hopeful of getting a definitive answer, and so I'd say that the Reader can't be distributed here (though I think it's possible to buy it from NTIS).

Thanks again for your assistance with this; I'll provide updates here.

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Quote flutable Replybullet Posted: 20 May 2008 at 7:15am
I've just received the most delightful email from Aili Bell, the compiler of all the material in the Graded Reader, and one of the authors of the Conversational Finnish Text and Workbook. In her words "at the time [1968 and before] she was told that USA material was not under copyright". She wrote to several authors seeking permission to use their work, and gives an example of a poem originally published by Otava in 1941 - in that work, there is no copyright marker so it seems to suggest that, unless some aspect of Finnish law subsequently applied copyright retrospectively, the work is in the public domain.
 
However I will check with as many Finnish publishers as I can in order to get an "official" answer.
 
Aili and her linguist associate, Augustus Koski, spent 8 years on the "Conversational Finnish" materials. No doubt the other FSI material required a similar large amount of effort. I'm kind of humbled to think that so much of it is available here for next to nothing, and even Aili said that she was happy that the Conversational Finnish texts would soon be made available to a much wider audience. Clap
 
A final note to the people Private Messaging me Angry asking for a copy of the Graded Reader: I will release it when I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt as to its copyright status, and even then I will have to blank out any works whose copyright status I can't establish.


Edited by flutable - 20 May 2008 at 7:24am
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Chung
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Quote Chung Replybullet Posted: 20 May 2008 at 9:04am
That's great that you got some feedback from Ms. Rytkönen-Bell. I'd be curious to see how many publishers you can contact. Because of the age of some of the extracts in the reader, I wonder about which publishers are still in business or if the authors (or their estates) can still be reached.

I'm glad that you got around to working on the Finnish texts. Doing the tapes was no problem, but I couldn't do the respective textbook or workbook (I got hard copies) as I didn't and still don't have access to a scanner.

Regards,
Chung
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can000
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Quote can000 Replybullet Posted: 20 July 2008 at 11:06am

I wish somebody shared FSI Finnish Graded Reader...

I'm looking forward to it...
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flutable
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Quote flutable Replybullet Posted: 27 July 2008 at 8:04pm
The Finnish Reader is going to need a considerable amount of work; and at present I'm not able to devote much time to it.

I've finished and uploaded the FSI Finnish text and workbook, and that should hopefully keep people busy for a while. See the Member Contributions forum for details.


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Chung
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Quote Chung Replybullet Posted: 30 July 2008 at 10:20am
Thanks very much for scanning the texts that go with the audio (Now let us watch cynically as some e-Bay stores and small mail-order companies start adding kits of FSI Conversational Finnish to their inventory of FSI courses from this site. :-P)

On a more serious note, I wouldn't worry too much about getting the FSI Finnish Graded Reader online here since verifying which sections / literary extracts would be safe to post could become a time-consuming business and this site is only a voluntary effort. What you've already provided is great and makes the audio contributions truly useful.

If anyone wants a relatively cheap CD-ROM ($59) with the FSI Finnish Graded Reader, there's a site in Michigan that is selling the FSI Finnish stuff. The link is http://slp.szyszkoski.com (Of course one can spare him/herself the expense of getting the other Finnish courses that it sells since anyone could get those courses from this website and the file-sharing links provided by flutable.)

$59 isn't nothing, but it's cheaper than the alternative of buying the graded reader kit from NTIS ($165 in its catalog at http://www.ntis.gov/pdf/pr1002.pdf), WorldLanguage.com ($149) or Multilingual Books ($245)

Edited by Chung - 30 July 2008 at 11:26am
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flutable
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Quote flutable Replybullet Posted: 30 July 2008 at 8:16pm
Thanks Chung,

I had thought of putting a "you should not have paid for this document" header or footer or watermark into the PDF, but that still wouldn't stop someone from printing and then rescanning the document in order to remove any markings.

On the other hand, I've benefitted from what others have posted here, and if someone makes a dollar from my work, well, it doesn't bother me.

Putting the PDFs on a download site is only marginally more of an effort than scanning the stuff just for myself.

All I really want is the time to be able to study it!


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Chung
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Quote Chung Replybullet Posted: 05 November 2008 at 9:57pm
The text of the Finnish Graded Reader is available at ERIC.

http://fsi-language-courses.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=692

Demipuppet has included a link to the text at the bottom of this post.

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