[okfn-discuss] open shakespeare

Tue May 23 15:25:26 UTC 2006

Tom Chance wrote:
> Ahoy,
> 
> On Monday 22 May 2006 14:30, Rufus Pollock wrote:
> 
>>   * Shakespeare's out of copyright but there is still some legal issues
>>to illustrate the problems of closed knowledge
> 
> 
> Which legal issues?

Lots of the sites you go to that have copies of shakespeare's texts on 
them have prominently displayed copyright signs. Now of course this may 
just be meant to cover the layout of the website etc but it also may be 
intended to cover the text itself. Remember that since shakespeare is 
public domain any modifications to it that are significant enough (and 
that hurdle isn't very high) get a new copyright. In this vein it is 
interesting to note that at least one of the gutenberg versions of 
shakespeare (they have 4 in most cases) /is/ copyrighted.

> 
>>   * Plenty of need for versioning, bugfixing etc
> 
> 
> Can you expand on this to clarify exactly what work people could do?

   1. Correcting and marking up the texts themselves (including 
alternate versions)
   2. Providing (or finding out of copyright) textual notes, e.g. what 
is a 'cup of sack' (Henry IV part I) -- this would seem perfect for a wiki
   3. Providing (or finding out of copyright) introduction, chronology etc

>>   * Nice idea of an overall package consisting of the texts,
>>commentary, search tool
> 
> 
> That would be nice. I remember various interesting Shakespeare projects that 
> popped up at one time or another. Providing a platform to deliver his work in 
> new and interesting ways is definitely worth a shot, if it doesn't exist 
> already. One thing that comes to mind is tagging - my grandmother has a nice 
> collection of books like "Shakespeare on nature" and "Shakespeare on love". 
> That would be easy to replicate.

Great example. And this brings me back to really important point that 
this should **not** be another shakespeare /website/. While there might 
be a website that would be secondary. The real aim would be to provide 
this material in a form that could easily be reused by others in their 
own project (this is the componentization part).

> Here's another nice collection of works that I make use of that adds some 
> value beyond simply having HTML versions for free:
> http://classics.mit.edu/

Good example though I note there: 'The Internet Classics Archive by 
Daniel C. Stevenson, Web Atomics. World Wide Web presentation is 
copyright © 1994-2000, Daniel C. Stevenson, Web Atomics. All rights 
reserved under international and pan-American copyright conventions, 
including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. 
Direct permission requests to classics at classics.mit.edu. Translation of 
"The Deeds of the Divine Augustus" by Augustus is copyright © Thomas 
Bushnell, BSG.'

> 
> But here's a thought - why not include this under the umbrella of Public 
> Domain Burn?
> http://www.freeculture.org.uk/PublicDomainBurn

We could do and I'm happy to do it that way though I feel that PDB 
should be more focused on getting the metadata and the raw texts rather 
than the 'packaging' (which is the focus of open shakespeare -- basic 
versions of the texts do already exist in some form or other) and PDB 
already has plenty on its plate!

Regards,

Rufus