Hi, to continue this "fairly easy" series of threads, I'm looking for material under CC-BY-SA or similar (not -NC or -ND) that is easier than Wikipedia. Maybe things meant for children. It might be necessary to consider translations if there's not much around.

I'm reading the translation of Le Petit Prince by 大久保ゆう (CC-BY), but the original is still in copyright in the US, so that would limit what I could do with it on the internet.
http://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/001265/card46817.html

Stuff written by Edogawa Ranpo (江戸川乱歩) is in the public domain as of this year, apparently - though I'm not 100% sure on that, it's what some googling tells me. I've read one of his books and it was not difficult, though there are obsolete terms and such that had to be explained in footnotes.

Thanks for the suggestion. It seems I can almost read that.
His original works are public domain in Japan by life+50, in the UK by the rule of the shorter term, and I think in the US by published before 1964 and not renewed (but rather hard to be sure about the last one).
http://www.aozora.gr.jp/index_pages/person1779.html

Japanese fairy tales/children stories
http://hukumusume.com/douwa/index.html

吾輩は猫である by Natsume Sōseki. There are 3 links to chose from to read it. Second link has furigana if that is your interest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Cat

(2016-05-03, 10:46 am)RawrPk Wrote: Japanese fairy tales/children stories
http://hukumusume.com/douwa/index.html

This stuff is "all rights reserved" as far as I can see. Am I missing something?

Quote:吾輩は猫である by Natsume Sōseki. There are 3 links to chose from to read it. Second link has furigana if that is your interest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Cat

I think this is pretty hard... probably not even the easiest thing by Sōseki.

Apparently Japan will have to extend copyright to life+70 because of the TPP. I would hope they don't pull things back out of the public domain that have already gone into it, but that has been done before and I wouldn't discount the possibility. Does anyone know what's going on with that?

(2016-05-03, 11:15 am)HelenF Wrote:

(2016-05-03, 10:46 am)RawrPk Wrote: Japanese fairy tales/children stories
http://hukumusume.com/douwa/index.html

This stuff is "all rights reserved" as far as I can see. Am I missing something?

Quote:吾輩は猫である by Natsume Sōseki. There are 3 links to chose from to read it. Second link has furigana if that is your interest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Cat

I think this is pretty hard... probably not even the easiest thing by Sōseki.

Sorry I didn't read the free licence portion. Just gave some links to stories that are readily available to the public.

(2016-05-03, 11:15 am)HelenF Wrote:

(2016-05-03, 10:46 am)RawrPk Wrote: Japanese fairy tales/children stories
http://hukumusume.com/douwa/index.html

This stuff is "all rights reserved" as far as I can see. Am I missing something?

I don't see how they can be, they are traditional stories. The translations of stories from and into other languages, the audio recordings, and the site layout can be copyrighted, of course. Though copyrighting your audio recording or your translation doesn't prevent anyone else from doing their own audio recording or translation. When we're talking about the Japanese folktales,  you can't just go copyrighting a traditional story. These stories pre-date the copyright law itself and are certainly in the public domain.

If you prefer to find a 'clean source' so to speak that is clear about which copyrights are actually being claimed, then perhaps just use hukumusume as a list of titles?  I suppose there is reason to be careful as maybe a claim could be made that the site's version is a particular 'translation' from antiquated to modern Japanese. I don't think such a claim can be made, but I'm not a lawyer of any kind much less a Japanese copyright lawyer.

Even though there's almost no difference between hukumusume's version and other versions, at least for those stories that I've heard or read other versions of, I suppose it doesn't hurt to be careful.

I was confused too as to why traditional Japanese stories from 100+ years ago would still have copyright but it makes sense for the audio and translations to possibly be in copyright.

The plot of a 100+ year old story is clearly not in copyright, but the exact way it's written is. E.g. Librivox, being very careful, say you have to read from a confirmed public-domain version, not from a more recent edition, even if they seem to be almost exactly the same (any small thing can prove it was read from the wrong version). There's going to be a much bigger difference for these.

Of course there's nothing preventing someone slapping a "All rights reserved" or "Copyright 2016" at the bottom of every page of a website.  That doesn't necessarily mean they own the rights to anything, or that parts of the website aren't covered under fair use.

A lot of the audio on that website is actually done by other websites, which may actually be copyright free.

Most of the audio seems to be done by people that do professional voice work (as I recall from following the links upon a time), and providing the stories for free gives them exposure. That doesn't remove their copyright, but they might allow the work to be used with attribution elsewhere. They probably wouldn't let it be used without attribution, at a guess.
 
Not to say that there might not be some recordings that were just released altruistically into the public domain, within hukumusume or elsewhere, just that the site isn't a packed with them.

I reckon hukumusume does have copyright on their version of the text.

There are people around who record audiobooks for the public domain, the main ones I've seen being Japanese Classical Literature at Bedtime, and ekzemplaro who is an extremely hard-working Japanese reader on Librivox. But that does depend on the original text being in the public domain first.

I'm sure there are people who would be willing to negotiate, but it's not like I can do that at my current Japanese level. So if there's no licence sticker, it's for personal use only.

SomeCallMeChris, thanks for the info.

(2016-05-03, 11:18 am)HelenF Wrote: Apparently Japan will have to extend copyright to life+70 because of the TPP. I would hope they don't pull things back out of the public domain that have already gone into it, but that has been done before and I wouldn't discount the possibility. Does anyone know what's going on with that?

The TPP is still being debated, and that got pushed back to June (and there's an Upper House election then, too.) It's not a done deal, but it's not dead either.
If you just want to get ALL THE BOOKS anyway, then there's always the aozora bunko github:
https://github.com/aozorabunko/aozorabunko
You can download the entire website at once and then you don't have to worry about the TPP. Much. Maybe.

Ah, I see, the text of the TPP was agreed in February, but now each of the countries has to decide whether to join it for real.

Getting the books is only part of the problem. I'm worried that if I make something nice with one of these books, it might become illegal to distribute later.