3.717 copyright; diary editing; collation software (77)

Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca)
Wed, 8 Nov 89 18:52:31 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 717. Wednesday, 8 Nov 1989.


(1) Date: Tue, 7 Nov 89 23:03:42 CST (31 lines)
From: Mark Olsen <mark@gide.uchicago.edu>
Subject: Bible concording

(2) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 89 09:17 EST (14 lines)
From: "Tom Benson 814-238-5277" <T3B@PSUVM>
Subject: Diary editing

(3) Date: Tue, 7 Nov 89 21:00:31 EST (7 lines)
From: db <BOYARIN@TAUNIVM>
Subject: Re: 3.712 queries (165)

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 7 Nov 89 23:03:42 CST
From: Mark Olsen <mark@gide.uchicago.edu>
Subject: Bible concording

The problem of ownership of electronic text, something that HUMANIST
has debated time and again, was raised again by Dr. Choueka's warning
that certain Biblical, Talmudic, and other Rabbinical texts were
copied "in an unauthorized way" and that the University is going to
consider prosecution. Without being overly flippant, I did not realize
that the Bible and the ancient texts of Judaism were still under copyright
protection. Who, pray tell, holds the copyright? And how has Bar-Ilan
University gained rights to those texts? The problems of protecting
copyrights and the integrity of textual databases are difficult enough,
without thinking that texts so firmly part of the public domain as the
Bible and Talmud could be protected by a single institution. This is
not to suggest that unauthorized copying of data should be permitted
or encouraged, but rather to raise the question of whether ANY text
can be considered fully in the public domain.

Another related point is the question of international law. Is it a
crime to copy an electronic text across national borders? Is this
kind of copying subject to international copyright agreements, or is
this another area of electronic text that the lawyers have not yet
sunk their claws into?

Mark Olsen
ARTFL Project
University of Chicago



(2) --------------------------------------------------------------19----
Date: Wed, 8 Nov 89 09:17 EST
From: "Tom Benson 814-238-5277" <T3B@PSUVM>
Subject: Diary editing

Bob Kraft asks about how to edit a diary so as to provide both a
readable modern text and something useful for scholarly purposes.
Would it not be possible, even with present technology, to SCAN the
diary -- as a graphic -- and to make this available along with the
edited text -- as a text. This way, readers could look at the original,
even if it were not suitable for editing in that form. Or does that
just take up too much space?

Tom Benson
Penn State
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------15----
Date: Tue, 7 Nov 89 21:00:31 EST
From: db <BOYARIN@TAUNIVM>
Subject: Re: 3.712 queries (165)

re: collation of drafts
I highly reccomend comparwrite by jurisoft (somewhere in massachusetts)
for that purpose. it's a wonderful program precisely for that.