Thursday, September 10, 2009

Copyright trumps censorship in South Korea

From the 1709 blog:
"The authors of A Modern and Contemporary History of Korea have successfully sued their publisher for copyright infringement for publishing an altered version of the work. The publisher had been repeatedly ordered to revise ‘leftist’ sections by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology under the Elementary and Middle School Education Law. The Hankyoreh reports that ‘the court said that while this law could be used to order a suspension of publication if an alteration order is violated, it cannot be used to limit the right to the integrity of the work by the publisher’. The alterations have been the subject of a campaign by history teachers."
Also:
"An article in The Times suggests that Wordsworth Editions has secured an amazing coup by getting Stephen Joyce, James Joyce’s heir, to agree to a new budget edition of Ulysses. The article fails to mention that Joyce (1882–1941) is revived copyright, so anyone can publish Ulysses without Stephen Joyce’s permission so long as they cough up a reasonably royalty. OUP probably don’t pay any royalties to the Joyce estate on their edition as it was first published in 1993, after Joyce went out of copyright but before he came back in. The problem with publishing a budget edition of Ulysses may not be so much agreeing terms with the copyright owner as other costs – it’s long and notes are a must. For copyright owners like Stephen Joyce who are as concerned about controlling the manner of publication as seeing a financial return revived copyright is a small consolation."

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