About 3 months ago we created a group to collaborate on KO2001 , make flashcards of it according to the AJATT philosophy . We spared lot of hours to type , other projects like understanding basic japanese grammar and all about particles were launched , it felt really great

However I think everyone of us has realized that more and more the google group technology doesn't fulfill our needs.
Alternative projects like UJBG and AAP for instance don't have a great visibility due to KO which is currently the main project , the scope of the google group is more narrow that it was expected to be , newcomers have trouble to join ,etc....

So there is a need for a real forum http://ajattsentences.awardspace.com/
* a clear division
- copyrighted books
- manga
- books in public domain
- video (drama, movie , anime) : subtitle
-music:lyrics
- other
* independence / special access
you have to suscribe to get access to copyrighted books
each group will be totally independant : it means you ll have your own pace , your own members , your own directives. This way we can ensure both the respect of the copyright and a efficient collaboration.
Each group will have their own leaders .
CURRENTLY LEADERS ARE NEEDED : you'll have to handle invitations , check if someone who request a book does own the book , moderation , etc....
Basically you ll decide everything .
3 projects are considered active : Kanji Odyssey , All About Particles , Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar ,
KO is completed for the writing part but some checking remains to do.
Japanese for everyone JFE is complete
The only condition is to own the book . You'll have to prove your ownership with a picture of your book cover , some personal background on the shot (your head a scrap of paper on the book with your nickname ,etc....) and a quote of the book.
to join a group you have to go in the user control panel , the tab usergroup and choose edit membership . Leader of the group you want to join will receive the request. If needed send him a private message .
Of course new projects are welcome . As a matter of fact to ease initiative was one of the objective of this new organisation .
* greater visibility : with the phpBB3 technology we can create sub forums of any depth we want . The outcome ? each aspect of a problem can be clearly displayed.
* new fonctions available
-upload allowed
in this way you can freely drop your flashcards on the forum . Because the cooperation has always to be the core of the project .
- poll (for launching a new project ,etc....)
-private message for making communication easier.

This new playground should give our collaboration project a new drive .

http://ajattsentences.awardspace.com/

currently vosuba , phauna and pauline are leader on KO project
and phauna is leader on UBJG

Excellent work. I think this will help to consolidate the workload much better.

I still would like to know how the files are going to be controlled. Is it just access to the forum threads which are controlled?

Okay, I'm playing with it, now I get it, vaguely. Ghindzra, perhaps you can write a thread about how one goes about getting into the various groups and put it in the Beginner Forum and sticky it.. I'm not sure I understand it well enough to write it myself.

Nukemarine probably should be a leader in UBJG too, he is running it at the moment.

Not that my opinion should necessarily matter terribly much to you, but FWIW your policy on copyrighted works is a deal-breaker for me; either the material qualifies for fair use and the extra requirements are simply hoops to jump through, or you're still infringing copyright (and still making hoops to jump through, with a bit of a nasty taste added). The current path is one that I cannot in good conscience support or participate in.

If you've negotiated independent agreements with the respective copyright holders, of course, the above does not apply.

(Not a lawyer in this topic either, not legal advice)

~J

I am sorry to be not spot on topic but:
Is there anybody interested in starting/advancing this project in/to Chinese? I have already done quiet a good part of Assimil-Chinese with Ease I+II, including making .ogg files for most of the sentences.

woodwojr Wrote:Not that my opinion should necessarily matter terribly much to you, but FWIW your policy on copyrighted works is a deal-breaker for me; either the material qualifies for fair use and the extra requirements are simply hoops to jump through, or you're still infringing copyright (and still making hoops to jump through, with a bit of a nasty taste added). The current path is one that I cannot in good conscience support or participate in.

If you've negotiated independent agreements with the respective copyright holders, of course, the above does not apply.

(Not a lawyer in this topic either, not legal advice)

~J

I'm very much aware of this issue.....
That's why I've never been satisfied with google group.....
This is currently the best technicaly that I can do . There is a restricted and independent access for each book . You have to understand that even professional solution aren't 100% trustworthy : just take a look to the impressive list of ebooks and software torrent ....
Cooperation is about trust . If you can provide reliable proof of your ownership (in the current case : picture of your book , personal background , quote .... maybe we'll add sale ticket . That's far enough.) I think you can be deemed trustful. Someone who is really willing to bypass securites will always be able to do it anyway. Where's there's will there's a way.
In the worst case if an editor feels his copyright is breached we'll drop the book concerned as each project live independently . If they want to go further user rights have also been acknowledged especially the right to make a private copy. If editor had provided electronic version in the first place such a fuss wouldn't be needed. And clearly some security have been established that will prove our will to abide by copyright rules .As a token of good will a databank of ownership proof will be saved on the server for each user and each book.

Last but not least : the copyrighted books is just a small part of the scope of the forum.AJATT sentences : I think the goal is obvious : provide sentences for AJATT philosophy . It's far broader than copyrigthed books . And once you've established a community cooperation is easier . Begin with coopyrighted books because they're more likely to arouse excitation but I have good hope that lyrics , games script , etc... will have their project too.

I should note that my primary complaint is the "authentication" process, rather than the possibility that copyright may be infringed.

Additionally, though I am still not a lawyer (and this is still not legal advice), my impression is that by doing this you actually increase your potential liability--this kind of secured access shows an active knowledge of the possibility of infringing content, making it easier to argue that the operators were engaged in willful infringement (with all of the additional damages that implies). In the US, at least, my impression is that you're safer if you can maintain a genuine ignorance of the status of your hosted material together with a few other actions or policies. A good starting place might be this Wikipedia article, with links to the US Copyright Office's summary.

~J

woodwojr Wrote:In the US, at least, my impression is that you're safer if you can maintain a genuine ignorance of the status of your hosted material together with a few other actions or policies.

Doesn't this conversation make that impossible..?

And safer for what?
I'm sorry but you make it sound like your doing something you know is wrong and try to cover it up so you can deny everything.

And how could anyone argue that people, who would go this far trying to protect the copy righted material while studying online together, would intentionally breach the copyrights.

Taking the copyrights seriously and showing responsible attitude is the one and only thing that can make the whole idea fly.
making it shady and dishonest looking would only sink the whole boat before it would ever get out of the harbor..

I'm sorry but I don't really follow what you're suggesting.. Making the whole thing open and claiming that we don't know anything about any copyrights..?

No intention of sounding provocative here. Just wondering your reasoning..

I don't see any legal problem with this (but I am not a lawyer). The purpose of "securing" the access is in no way intended to hide illegal activity, but rather to prevent it! All people are doing is accessing a digital form of some material from books that they own. It has been shown that its perfectly legal to shift the format of materials, for instance copying your audio CDs to an iPod. The only questionable thing about it is the sharing of a single file that is stored on a computer server. The legality of such a thing can only be decided by a court of law, and then only if a lawsuit were brought by the copyright holders. Even in such a situation, I think the court would clearly find this to be fair use.

What I liked:
Downloading Tae Kim's sentences. Awesome. Shows the potential.

What I don't like:
The webhosting. It redirected me a couple of times.
The "incompleteness" of it all.
The whole copyrighted book thing. See, it would be very easy for one person to have the book, download the sentences, then share it with everybody else.

I don't think you would need to go through all those steps to protect copyrights. You can put the stuff up as torrents and avoid any issues at all. It would be fine to host a tracker and use torrents to distribute this stuff, since nothing "copyrighted" would be hosted on the site. Plus I doubt anybody would care you'd be so small.
(Ok, so I could care a little less about the copyright of sentences. Big deal.)

My guess is that there won't be any people who will -after having proven ownership of the books- share it with the wide world. There are many reasons not to do it, but I think one of them that we keep in mind that if such a thing is done, it might impede sales of the respective book -> publishers will think twice of making more of these type of books -> no more learning material for us.

Thanks for making all this, I really think it will make things a lot easier to manage. Question though, I was a member of the KO project in google groups, I went to the new project forum and saw my handle was listed as a member in the KO. Does that mean I already have an account for the new forum? I created a new one before I noticed this with the same handle though.

I have to agree with Woodwojr. I don't think copyright infringement will become less of a crime because you are only distributing the material to people you 'trust'. In Zarxrax's example, it would be like you copied the cd onto your computer and then sent it to a friend because he said('proved') he had the cd also. Either way you are distributing copyrighted material no matter how you justify it to your conscience.

cracky Wrote:I have to agree with Woodwojr. I don't think copyright infringement will become less of a crime because you are only distributing the material to people you 'trust'. In Zarxrax's example, it would be like you copied the cd onto your computer and then sent it to a friend because he said('proved') he had the cd also. Either way you are distributing copyrighted material no matter how you justify it to your conscience.

Wow, do you think that would actually be a crime? You and your friend both buy the same music CD, and then you rip your cd to your iPod. Your friend then says "i suck at computers, can you just send me your mp3s?" The RIAA has really done a good job with all their lawsuits if people are actually starting to think this way.

I think the best approach would be to directly contact the owners of the copyright. As long as you provide resources that cannot replace the original and serve to increase the product's popularity, I think they may agree. There's no way that I would download sentence collections from your site unless I had the original and the availability of the resource you are seeking to share would encourage me to buy the product.

If you need help in writing Japanese emails to the copyright holders then I would be willing to contribute.

When it was just a small group of us finishing up KO for our own use, I didn't have a problem, but this idea is uncomfortably large. Sorry. Good luck with it, though.

Zarxrax Wrote:Wow, do you think that would actually be a crime?

I don't believe so, but I do think you could be held liable.

(Criminal copyright infringement and the garden variety have different cutoff points. Being civilly liable is wholly orthogonal to being criminal.)

Quote:You and your friend both buy the same music CD, and then you rip your cd to your iPod. Your friend then says "i suck at computers, can you just send me your mp3s?" The RIAA has really done a good job with all their lawsuits if people are actually starting to think this way.

I can't find the relevant citations at the moment, but I believe this has been actionable since before the RIAA started its campaign. The idea is that you are, by the doctrine of first sale, permitted to do pretty much whatever you want for private use with your own copy of a copyrighted, purchased work, but that this does not extend to copies owned by other people, even if they are bit-for-bit identical to your own.

Demonstrating a preponderance of evidence that the copy is from someone else is left as an exercise for the plaintiff.

Not lawyer, not dispensing legal advice.

~J

wrightak Wrote:I think the best approach would be to directly contact the owners of the copyright. As long as you provide resources that cannot replace the original and serve to increase the product's popularity, I think they may agree. There's no way that I would download sentence collections from your site unless I had the original and the availability of the resource you are seeking to share would encourage me to buy the product.

If you need help in writing Japanese emails to the copyright holders then I would be willing to contribute.

you know I ve pondered a LOT about this problem as this forum is the outcome of a several weeks thinking.... Of course I come up with the same idea . But how can you prove it doesn't replace the original ?????
Of course it's not as comfortable as handling a book but that's all ... Even if it's not as handy as ripping a CD it's still a copy.
In the past we've been thinking about suppressing the translation.... but will it be enough for an editor ? it's more crippling legal owner of the book than anything else.
What about official electronic edition ? they're no more less likely to be released as warrez torrent ..... and obviously the editor doesn't give a version "light" to the user.
What about this VERY WEBSITE ????it works the same way : flashcards of the book . What's worse there's no limited access whatsoever . Could you seriously allege that it hinders RTK book sales ?


But ,as everyone involved in this project I think, I m a person of good will. So if you have more insight about this problem please tell me more . I ll do everything that I can do to ensure that we can carry on freely this collaboration (conditioned that it doesn't make the collaboration pointless ).

I'm not sure about exactly what you're doing but if you're collecting sentences from various sources, in order not to replace the original, surely you can just sample it in small chunks and make sure that the sum of the chunks doesn't make the whole.

Having a collection of sentences from a book doesn't seem to be a substitute for a book in my opinion. At least this is the case with novels. For text books full of example sentences (like Kanji Oddyssey) this may not be the case.

Indeed, having example vocabulary and sentences for a novel would encourage me to buy the novel because then I'd have the study resources made for me. There's no way that reading a selection of example sentences would replace the experience of reading the novel though.

I think text books are an exception because small excerpts from them are valuable by themselves. However, novels, comics and other resources are a different matter.

I'm not sure about the legal aspects but I think you're best bet is to have a sensible conversation with the writers of the books. If I was the writer of Kanji Oddyssey, I might say no. If I was the writer of a novel, I'd definitely say yes. If I was Heisig with RTK 1, I'd think carefully but probably say yes.

what difference do you make between RTK1 and KO2001 ? in both cases we are not talking about sampling (which would be pointless) , it covers the whole book . Except for the order of stroke (which is quickly dropped ) everything in the book is on the website .

I think I 'm going to ask to the administrator of this website if he contacted Heisig before building up RVTK.

He contacted Heisig to get permission for the website.

Well I just sent him a mail about the best way to get permission from the editor....