[sword-devel] Neural Networks and Optical Character Recognition

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

On Fri, 25 Apr 2008, Greg Hellings wrote:
> Your understanding is, I believe, slightly flawed.  There is a
> separate part of the copyright laws which allows for someone who made
> a major effort to transform a document (I know translation is covered,
> and I would imagine that paper->digital conversion is also covered)
> may copyright that transformation.

I'm not sure if you're right about this. I haven't read the US copyright
law but the Finnish law, and it gives a real copyright (author's right)
for a translation. Copyright/autor's right is for "creative work", not
for mechanical work. Finland follows the Berne conventions and other
international conventions. There is nothing about transformation, the
closest one is the database right. It is surprisingly difficult to find
information about this by googling, all I could find was "Workshop on
Electronic Text--Session VI" which states that "An enchanced electronic
copy of a print copy ... is not copyrightable."

This is quite important topic because there might be a fair amount of
material for us to use if electronic resources can not be under
copyright or some other right by just being transformed.

  Yours,
	Eeli Kaikkonen (Mr.), Oulu, Finland
	e-mail: eekaikko at mailx.studentx.oulux.fix (with no x)