Retyping a text
Printed From: FSI Language Courses
Category: Learning Languages
Forum Name: General Discussion
Forum Discription: Discussion about studying languages using the FSI courses. If you would like to see a specific language forum not listed below, just let us know.
URL: http://fsi-language-courses.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=269
Printed Date: 16 January 2009 at 3:13am
Topic: Retyping a text
Posted By: nieuk
Subject: Retyping a text
Date Posted: 10 January 2007 at 3:34am
Ok, so as I mentioned in smoen's thread; my state library has a few courses for the rarer languages (Lingala, Hausa, Igbo, etc.)
I went in today to see the Hungarian Reader. The material I saw is indeed, original material. But I have no realistic way of getting it. I can't borrow the material, I can't get access to a private room there to use a scanner... I can't take a scanner into the library, hah. And photocopying works out more expensive than the actual books.
I have to ask... What do you think of retyping one of the textbooks? Legally possible? If so, I have a decent grasp of Indonesian (post spelling reform, ahh) so I could retype the text that is available ("Indonesian: newspaper reader") over the course of time.. It's only 271 pages, so shouldn't be an excessive amount of time I don't think. If I do retype it, I'll photocopy the introduction, cover page, etc. just to show what source it has come from.
I'm not sure if I'll be able to do any other courses since I'll have to effectively double check the spelling of every word if I'm not familiar with the language.
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Replies:
Posted By: Kubelek
Date Posted: 10 January 2007 at 8:39am
If you have a digital camera maybe you could take photos of the pages. I've done that because i don't have a scanner. It's not that time consuming.
If they let you do that, you could split the the pages and other people could help you with retyping the text. 271 seems like an awful lot of work for one person, especially that it's a reader.
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Posted By: onebir
Date Posted: 10 January 2007 at 9:35am
Some OCR software can cope with photographed pages, and many foreign languages (eg Abby Finereader). If you don't have this, you could send the tiffs (if possible after applying jpeg compression) to someone who has (using a file transfer service)
The photos & OCR'd text could be distributed for manual checking by a group of people.
(Do the have the Indonesian Basic Course in your library too BTW? That's rare as hen's teeth...)
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Posted By: Sir Nigel
Date Posted: 10 January 2007 at 6:18pm
Although not always accurate, I use ReadIRIS's OCR feature to create an image PDF with the electronically recognised text within the file so it's searchable, copyable etc.
------------- Insurance Excuse:
The accident was due to the road bending.
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Posted By: nieuk
Date Posted: 11 January 2007 at 2:55am
I considered the digicam and thought that if I could find a quiet corner I could give it a go. I've never used OCR software before, but I'm sure I'll figure it out.
They don't have the Indonesian Basic Course in their database, which isn't to say they don't have it - all of these courses only appeared recently. They're not on show for the general public, I have to actually request them to be retrieved from the storage stack (takes them about half an hour - must be a lot of books back there, haha).
I noticed that NTIS don't have the Indonesan newspaper reader listed, but it is listed in the library databse as a FSI publication. I'll head in next week to check it out and give the digicam a go. I have a 7.2mp, so should turn out clear enough.
If all goes well I should have the Indonesian reader done in some fashion sooner or later.. and then I could maybe get some other texts on the go :)
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Posted By: onebir
Date Posted: 11 January 2007 at 2:46pm
nieuk - have you tried telling the staff there about this site?
i emailed some people at US uni language labs recently - they had FSI material, but it was password protected. they accepted it was public domain, and gave me/GDF access to the material without raising any objection. (the site should have the yoruba and luganda audio pretty soon as a result)
if you explain what you're doing to one of the (more senior) library staff - be prepared to show them the website and perhaps even the clauses in US copyright legislation that make the FSI stuff public domain - they could well react the same way. librarians WANT people to have access to information, after all, far more people will have access to the stuff if you can get it online, and there's no legal reason not to...
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Posted By: nieuk
Date Posted: 11 January 2007 at 4:21pm
I told the staff member that said I couldn't bring a scanner in.. Only normal staff though I think. Since it's only short, I'll get the Indonesian reader photographed and then I'll get in touch with some senior staff and send them the links to this site and stuff.
Where can I find the clauses for US copyright legislation?
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Posted By: onebir
Date Posted: 12 January 2007 at 4:43am
see here footnote 6 here: http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/training/Hirtle_Public_Domain.htm - http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/training/Hirtle_Public_Domain.htm
or for the actual legal clause, here; http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000105----000-.html - http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000105----000-.html
incidentally, if you want an indonesian reader for yourself, there's a free one here: http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED451705&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=eric_accno&objectId=0900000b80139aba - http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED451705&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=eric_accno&objectId=0900000b80139aba (unfortunately only vol 2 of a two volume set...)
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Posted By: nieuk
Date Posted: 12 January 2007 at 5:52pm
Thanks for the links. I'm sure I'll find the reader useful as well :D
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Posted By: DemiPuppet
Date Posted: 12 January 2007 at 7:54pm
Warning: It should be noted that the FSI works put out by the US government might not be in the public domain in Australia. As far as I can tell, Australian copyright law does not make any exclusions for foreign works being in the public domain in their country of origin. Hopefully someone can prove me wrong.
For example, the FSI works would have been under copyright in the UK, except for the exemption given in UK
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 12-6:
Where the country of origin of the work is not an EEA state
and the author of the work is not a national of an EEA state, the
duration of copyright is that to which the work is entitled in the
country of origin, provided that does not exceed the period which would
apply under subsections (2) to (5).
http://www.jenkins-ip.com/patlaw/cdpa1.htm - http://www.jenkins-ip.com/patlaw/cdpa1.htm
Other EU countries have similar provisions. Unfortunately, US copyright law does not.
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Posted By: raincrowlee
Date Posted: 12 January 2007 at 11:25pm
Well, in that case, there is the Berne Convention to consider. That's the treaty between a large number of nations that legally binds countries to respect the copyright laws of other nations. Both the US and Australia are signators.
A copy can be found http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html - http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html .
If you look at Article 7-8: "(8) In any case, the term shall be governed by the legislation of the country where protection is claimed; however, unless the legislation of that country otherwise provides, the term shall not exceed the term fixed in the country of origin of the work." The argument can be made that, since the copyright in the country of origin is non-existent, then it can't exist in any other of the signatory nations. It should, by all rights, be in the public domain.
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Posted By: onebir
Date Posted: 13 January 2007 at 2:01am
And even if FSI material is protected by copyright in Australia - unlikely given Raincrowlee's point - because the FSI acknowledges the material's public domain status, it's hard to imagine it trying to enforce copyright.
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Posted By: DemiPuppet
Date Posted: 13 January 2007 at 9:09am
The Berne Convention is "author centric" and sets minimum standards for copyright. "The rule of the lesser term" is not accepted by all signers.
Berne Article 19 states: The provisions of this Convention shall not preclude the making of a
claim to the benefit of any greater protection which may be granted by
legislation in a country of the Union.
The country's laws take precedence (Article 36). For example, in the US only foreign works in the public domain in their country of origin before 1 Jan 1996 are automatically in the public domain. Otherwise the 70 years after death rule applies. See onebir's link to the Cornell website. In the US, the copyright duration for government works is 0 days.
Even so, I don't think the US would press any claims in this case. I just feel that any third parties (such as librarians) should be fully informed.
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Posted By: nieuk
Date Posted: 14 January 2007 at 2:17am
Thanks guys.. I know Australian copyright is typically author's life plus 70 years. But I'll forward all relevant information to the head librarian to see their response. Hopefully they don't take the conservative stance and they grant me access.
If anyone else knows of any other articles/clauses that may assist, then please share :)
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Posted By: Happiness
Date Posted: 04 May 2008 at 4:37am
When will we have the Yoruba audio? I notice that it was mentioned a year ago on this thread that the Yoruba audio would be put up soon. Is it the basic or intermediate Yoruba by the way. Thank you.
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