Commerciality of website accompanying a book

[alan23]

Hello,

A former professor of mine is writing a book and I am helping her with some of the nuts and bolts. Part of my work for this project is securing permission to publish translations of poetry on a forthcoming website containing appendices to the book.

My question concerns the case of those translations which are free to copy with attribution "for non-commercial purposes". Clearly, publishing such translations in the book itself would violate these terms, but what about publishing them on the website? The site itself will not be supported by ads and not have any e-commerce elements. It seems to me that this would make it a non-commercial site; however, the site's sole purpose is to hold supplemental material that would not fit in the book. Would this in any way affect its status as non-commercial?

Thanks for your help!

 

[quincy]

Hello,

A former professor of mine is writing a book and I am helping her with some of the nuts and bolts. Part of my work for this project is securing permission to publish translations of poetry on a forthcoming website containing appendices to the book.

My question concerns the case of those translations which are free to copy with attribution "for non-commercial purposes". Clearly, publishing such translations in the book itself would violate these terms, but what about publishing them on the website? The site itself will not be supported by ads and not have any e-commerce elements. It seems to me that this would make it a non-commercial site; however, the site's sole purpose is to hold supplemental material that would not fit in the book. Would this in any way affect its status as non-commercial?

Thanks for your help!

What is the name of your state or, if not in the US, what is the name of your country?

Translations of copyrighted works are considered derivatives of the copyrighted works. Creating derivatives is one of the exclusive rights held by a copyright holder. If you are given written permission from a copyright holder to translate their copyrighted work, you can translate it. Without permission, you could be sued and judged to have infringed.

However, if permission is granted by the holder of the copyright to translate their work and publish this translation in a book, the one granted permission must abide by all terms laid out for them by the holder of the copyright (which, as a note, could be the author of the work, a publisher of the work, someone else entirely, or several people/entities at one time).

Your website has as its apparent intent the promotion of the book written by your professor. Because your professor needs to obtain permission (usually granted in the form of a license) from all authors whose works (or significant portions of the works) will be translated and used by the professor, then it seems a relatively simple matter to at the same time acquire permission (a license) from the authors to use the works on the website as well.

I recommend both you and the professor do not use any copyrighted work or translate any copyrighted work or publish any copyrighted work without copyright permissions firmly in place - this whether the permissions may in some instances not be technically necessary.