[Lexicog] Using old dictionaries

[David Joffe]

Wow - thanks - gosh, I had last looked at that site some years ago 
and remember thinking then that nobody could possibly legitimately 
have compiled that many dictionaries. Now I've just taken a closer 
look again, and discovered that he has blatantly, directly illegally 
stolen copyrighted data from our own online Northern Sotho - English 
Dictionary, no doubt auto-harvested. Not only that, but he's 
published a print version based on that stolen data and is selling 
it on Amazon (he's clearly 'auto-generated' hundreds of 
dictionaries, many of them are probably also illegal with stolen 
data - plus auto-generated things like 'crossword books' with the 
data). All published with the 'Webster's' name. Plus he sells ad 
space on his online illegal version and solicits financial support. 
He even has the cheek to include "Restrictions: you are not allowed 
to harvest the pages" on his site.

I have very harsh words for these kinds of people. There is another 
similar case I know of that I don't want to mention because I don't 
want to give them 'free advertising'. What can be done to stop such 
crooks, can they really just make a killing from illegally copied 
copyrighted work with absolute impunity? I've just made some 'back 
of the envelope' calculations (based on various projections from 
known information) on the amount of income he could be earning from 
this mass-fraud, and even my most conservative estimates put it at 
'a lot', like 'more-money-than-most-of-us-can-ever-hope-to-earn' 
lot, like 'enough-to-quit-your-day-job-and-steal-dictionaries-
fulltime' lot.

 - David

(* I'm using 'steal' in the metaphorical sense, of course, as I know 
copyright violation is not technically stealing, though it literally 
does rob original authors of income.)


On 17 Dec 2009 at 19:16, langwijmijij wrote:

To:	lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
From:	"langwijmijij" <anggarrgoon at gmail.com>
Date sent:	Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:16:02 -0000
Subject:	Re: [Lexicog]  Using old dictionaries
Send reply to:	lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com

> 
>  
> > Hmm, it's hard to believe that something like that hasn't happened yet
> > -- perhaps some such precedents have already been recorded (?)
> > 
> 
> I can tell you what happened when Philip M. Parker republished a lot of 
> language materials without the permission of the authors. Everyone I 
> spoke to felt that although it was probably technically legal, it made a 
> lot of people very angry that he did not ask (even though contact 
> details for the relevant people were easily available), that he took 
> material that had fair use agreement statements that we felt he did not 
> adhere to, that he republished material without attribution or any 
> acknowledgement of the source, and he did so with sufficiently little 
> care as to what he was copying that numerous errors were introduced, 
> both from fonts and through automatically changing certain translations. 
> This meant the resulting materials were less useful to language 
> learners.
> 
> Some information here: 
> http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/elac/2008/07/copy_right_peter_k_austin.html and 
> here: http://tulugaq.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/adventures-in-font-
> mishaps-inupiaq-dictionary/
> 
> Claire

---
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