Licensing of books on iskconmedia.com

sitapati

Haribol, I just download Keno Hare Krishna Nam, and it has a front page with CC 3.0 NC-BY-ND.

A few questions:

Isn't this either in the public domain or copyright the estate of Bhaktivinode Thakura?

If it's in the public domain I don' t think that someone can relicense it like this, introducing restrictions.

Further to the issue of whether it can be relicensed in this way, ND is non-Vedic. It means that no-one can write a commentary on the work, which is a normal part of the tradition.

NC? Why not allow people to repackage it and distribute it. For example by printing a nice hard copy and sell it in a preaching center or on the street.

So the question is three-fold:

Does whoever relicensed it have the authority to do so?
Why relicense it?
Why this license?

thanks

mishra

To my understanding, a commentary can be written, the license prohibits to alter the work.
Better to announce some form of copyright on anything going on the net, do you know who has the license for Keno Hare Krishna Nam?
Why be so much worried about the "owner" in the digital world, I do not understand...

sitapati

Well why put a license on it if you're not worried about ownership? I'm not sure that you're legally entitled to put a license on. A license is a legal thing, so perhaps you should check it out.

mishra

The question should be why the "legally" entitled have done nothing to make that digital material available what to speak of properly licensed?
Are the materials changed? Is the license shown not correct? If it is correct, then itself gives certain rights.
You should know by now that is our duty as techie devotees to inundate the internet with spiritual literature and that will make more people Krishna conscious, which is a superior duty in comparison to stop preaching due to institutional failures, bottlenecks and inefficacy.

mishra

It is a current theme worlwide if digital content should be restricted or free distributed for the benefit of all, including the copyright owners. It is easy to see what stand iskconmedia has taken.

paramatma_das

sitapati:
Well why put a license on it if you're not worried about ownership? I'm not sure that you're legally entitled to put a license on. A license is a legal thing, so perhaps you should check it out.

and my question is..... why do you go to judas priest concerts? I find this much more interesting...

sitapati

Paratma das: off topic my friend. Open a new question

sitapati

Mishra: why not just upload it as it is, without the CC license? I mean, this is as a serious question.

The license you've put on is more restrictive than the one it most likely legally has - since it was authored over 75 years ago it's probably in the public domain by now (I'll check on that for you).

And the CC license is not legally enforceable, as you are not the copyright holder or author of the work.

You're obviously making a statement by putting the license on there, but it's seems a confusing one to me.

And yes, why doesn't someone else just ignore what I said and chime with a lame personal attack on me. :-)

mishra

Our purpose in including the license is to encourage sharing, people has this fear of passing digital information on...
Probably because of doubts raised by questions like this one.
Digital Vedic teachings, specially Srila Prabhupada's books, should be easily available, thats the important point.
Let the copyright holders scream if they think this is improper.
Enjoy your downloaded copy and thank you for worrying about us.

deena

admin, just wondering why you've left paramatma-das's comment here? Your standards so far have been pretty good.

admin

paramatmaji, open a new question please, yours is off topic... thank you

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