Talk:The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire

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I am investigating the possibility of using the material from this book in wikipedia. At least one article, Evenks is a copy from the book. The state of the research into the copyright isssue is as follows. Mikkalai 06:31, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Copyright issues

[Foreword page says:

Acknowledgement The idea for The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire was launched by Toomas NIIMANN, who contacted the authors and raised funds. The authors are grateful for his inspiring interest and material support.

October 31, 1991

Lauri VAHTRE Jüri VIIKBERG

Ordering page says:

This web site has no affiliation with the publisher. So far I have received no requests to assist in publishing or to remove this free web version. Let's hope that this continues to be so.

Tallinn, February 2002

Webmaster

Homepage says:

Copyright notice: no part of this book may be reproduced without explicit permission from the authors (send a letter to the webmaster).

My correspondence with the webmaster ("top-posted"):


Subject: RE: The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 14:09:07 GMT
X-Posting-IP: 193.40.113.35
X-Mailer: Endymion MailMan Standard Edition v3.2.9
> Tere!
>
> Thank you very much for your answer.
>
> I was going to do insertions myself.
>
> The main issue here is copyright, especially since the book has been
> printed.
Well, it was printed in Estonian only and then the publisher just disappeared or lost his interest in the English and Russian versions. It was my initiative to set up the web version, just so the work would not be lost and the authors agreed. Years later, to our great surprise, the English version was published by NGO Red Book.
> Can you help me to contact people with whom I can discuss the copyright
> issues?
It can probably be done only through www.redbook.ee -- you should ask how to contact Toomas Niimann, the original financer of the project. Be ware, though. The guestbooks on both sites and occasional letters addressed to me seem to indicate that the site is quite dead. Perhaps if nobody replies within, say, a month, you should take my word for it that the authors have given their consent to use the material in other publications and just go on including it in Wikipedia.
> Putting the material from the book into an online encyclopedia, with proper
> references, will help in promotion of the book.
> By the way, there is also an Estonian version of wikipedia:
> http://et.wikipedia.org/ , although very small (about 2,000 articles,
> English wikipedia already has almost 200,000 articles). Could you spread a
> word about it? May be someone will be interested in writing articles in
> Estonian. It is very easy to add articles into wikipedia for anybody.
> Suur tanu!
> ;mikkalai
> '
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Indrek Hein [1]
> > Sent: Sunday, January 18, 2004 3:40 AM
> > To: mikalai karneyenka
> > Subject: Re: The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire
> >
> >
> > mikalai karneyenka wrote:
> > > I'd like to discuss the possibility of using the information
> > from this book
> > > in the free online encyclopedia http://www.wikipedia.org .
> > Small peoples are
> > > poorly represented there. See, .e.g., the pages
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nenets
> > > or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_indigenous_peoples_of_Russia
> > >
> >
> > You may freely use the Red Book material in wikipedia,
> > but you'll have to insert/edit it yourself. All four
> > authors have long since drifted to other projects.
> > I have contact with only one of them, so there's nobody
> > who can provide additional material, clarifications or
> > some such assistance.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > --
> > Indrek.Hein@eki.ee
> >

Messy. We don't know if the authors hold the copyright - they may have transferred it to the publisher, and would have in a typical US-style deal. If they did, even the site granting us permission doesn't have the right to do that. It may even have been the Estonian equivalent of a work for hire and never have been their copyrighted work - may have belonged to the financier always. I recommend using this only as source material, not as copy and paste. However, I'm way out of my depth in this case - I can see problems but don't know how severe the risks are because I don't know the local laws. It's a bad sign that the financier seems to be selling (seems to be because of the no delivery reports in the guestbook) an English version, which may mean that he believes he has the English rights to the work. It would help to know more about the contracts or other arrangements the authors had with the financier. If we know that they retained copyright, or only granted the financier copyright in one language and country, or only for a print work, we may find that the web site is able to grant us permission on their behalf. Jamesday 20:49, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)


It appears that this book was published in English in 2001 after the adoption of the Estonian Copyright Act (passed on November 11, 1992). The date on the introduction of the online version is August 20, 1993 subsequent to the passage of that act; one whould assume that the Estonian version was published after the introduction was written. It is my understanding that Estonian law is in accordance with Berne (Estonia first acceded to Berne (Berlin Act, 1908) from June 1927 and then lost independence to the USSR on August 6, 1940 and regained it on August 20, 1991). It further acceded again on October 26, 1994 to the Paris Act (1971) of the Berne Convention). This would seem to indicate that copyright in Estonia requires no formality (unlike the Universal Copyright Convention (a/k/a the Geneva Convention) of which the Soviet Union became a signatory to on May 27, 1973 (the 1952 treaty)). As well Soviet law recognized copyright of authors since 1928.

Therefore the authors, translators and/or publishers of the book would have copyright even in the absence of a declaration of copyright as Berne appears to have been in effect when the work was published in English. Copies of the original book in Estonian or the translated version would most likely have copyright information regarding whom it is necessary to contact for those rights for a GFDL license. The fact that the someone granted the right to have the book reproduced on the internet for free review does not, in itself, grant that person who runs that internet site the right to give derivative licenses.

Much of the information in the Red Book is of an encyclopedic nature, i.e. facts that are not subject to copyright protection. However the way in which these facts are put together is protected by copyright. MrDay reaches a similar conclusion so I think it is safe to say that we are in agreement regarding the result of our inquiries, i.e. without permission from the copyright holder reproducing vast excerpts of this published book is probably an infringement of copyright. If the book is copyright under Estonian law it is no doubt protected under US law as well. — Alex756 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Alex756 talk] 05:05, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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