How does copyright law work with material that doesn’t exist in copyrighted form?
I would guess that the status of a publicly available uncopyrighted translation is affected by whether or not a copyrighted translation exists, but I don’t know anything about the law. Kent Larsen 1.09.07 | 11:24 am | comment permalink | John: My apologies. I forget that copyright law isn’t widely known or obvious. I should have explained a basic or two about how it works. There is no longer any requirement for the author or translator to do anything to copyright a work. Copyright exists from the moment that a work is created, so it is not possible to have an “uncopyrighted” work or translation. I should observe here that translations are more complicated than most works because both the author and the translator own them. To publish or distribute a translation, you need the permission of both the author and the translator. Technically, the translator doesn’t need the author’s permission to translate a work. BUT without the author’s permission he can’t do anything with the translation
