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[lojban] Re: Do not discuss the LLG WRT copyrighted translations! (was Re: Question about the number of books)

I was also very frustrated by the discussion "Le Petit Prince: Can we legally translate it?" which took place almost exactely one year ago. I like the book very much, and a lot of work has already been done on the translation. If the project is worth beeing done, why not making it happen, legally? I thought it was easier for me, as a French-speaking person, to investigate a little bit. So, I did the following (I summarize): - contact people at the "Fondation Saint Exupery" http://www.saint-exupery.org/ - they told me that it was forbidden to publish Le Petit Prince on anything else than paper (a book), and that it was forbidden to publish the text only, without the original drawings - they told me that the rights owners were the Gallimard publisher (it will be free of rights in the US in 2034) - no usage of the text and the images can be done without permission of Editions Gallimard http://www.gallimard.fr/ 
I am in contact with Gallimard, and here is what I understood:
- for a small amount of books sold (I told them around 100, but 10 or 500 is equally a small amount) 
- for a good publishing project
- they ask 8% of the total selling price, to be paid when the contract is signed (so, in advance). The book has to contain all the original drawings, that they have on a CD. I have asked other questions about the process, especially about the rights to work as a team through the Internet on the translation, and am still waiting for an answer (all this happened last week). So, at least we know more about the stakeholders, and we know that the project is doable (unless any surprise like they won't consider Lojban as a serious project alltogether...) 
  Jérôme.
Le dimanche, 21 sep 2003, à 21:40 Europe/Paris, Robin Lee Powell a écrit : 


On Sun, Sep 21, 2003 at 08:24:21PM +0200, jexOm. wrote:

What is the problem of translating Le Petit Prince if based on a
regular contract with the rights owner?


None.  But as they haven't contacted anyone official at the LLG, I
don't expect such a contract to appear any time soon.


Do you know who they are and did you ever contact them? I did.


I tried.  I got no response.


I am not speaking of illegal work, but try to understand what the
terms and conditions of this contract could be.


Ah.  It would have been useful to say so.


So, you don't have to shout like this.


I apologize.  You were not around for the last three or four times
that a bunch of people insisted that we were well within our rights
to translate this work, that it was "fair use".  This is simply
inaccurate, and very frustrating for me.  I was more responding to
them than you, and should have made that clear.


PS : you didn't answer my question.


I'm not the best person to do so, but AFAICT we've sold about 300
CLLs and perhaps as many as 50 Level 0s.

-Robin

--
Me: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/  ***   I'm a *male* Robin.
"but I'm not stupid and people are not stupid who think samely with me"
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