Re: [gnome-cy] Aurfa/Krowbar - a Welsh dictionary server

[Kevin Donnelly <kevin dotmon com>]

On Thursday 18 December 2003 12:08 am, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Maw, 2003-12-16 at 22:07, Kevin Donnelly wrote:
> > The dictionary itself (Aurfa) is at http://www.dotmon.com/aurfa, and
> > currently includes items from from Termau Addysgol and Arwyddion
> > Dwyeithog, published by Bwrdd yr Iaith, and available in PDF format from
> > its site,
>
> With their permission I assume ? Aberystwyth btw also have some
> dictionaries for specific things like disabilities you might be able to
> use.

The PDFs are available for download, and have no copyright notice on them, so 
I'm assuming it'll be OK.  I'm sure they'll let me know if it's not!  As 
regards other worklists, the ideal thing would be for these all to be 
collected together - there are some health ones, and I've got permission from 
Rhoslyn Prys' brother to load in a lot of stuff he has done.

> > and an initial
> > tranche of 200 terms from Y Termiadur Ysgol,
>
> You can't simply type entries from a dictionary on mass into something
> else. The owners have a collective copyright because of the work they
> did putting it together.

Yes, this is a difficult area, but I think some pressure needs to be applied.  
That's why I have only done a sample of words, and I'll have to take them off 
if necessary.  On the other hand, I think there is at least a debate to be 
had on this, since:
- the copyright owner is a public body charged with curriculum development;
- the work they got done was publicly funded;
- the terms are intended to be widely publicised, hence the funding;
- the earlier letter from ACCAC confirmed that the terms themselves were not 
copyright;
- this is a distribution method that allows more people to use the terms, and 
is cheaper to operate than paper - you could argue that it should already be 
being done.

I did suggest in my original post to e-gymraeg that some official body should 
take up something like this - if none do, I think quite a few people would be 
interested in knowing why it should not be done unofficially.  (I also tend 
to think that ACCAC needs to give a slightly better reason for not providing 
something like this than simply saying they don't feel there is a need for 
it.)

As regards the collective copyright, this is of course true.  But again, it's 
a very grey area - if I take every tenth word out of Termiadur, am I still 
copying en masse, or am I taking a sample of words in English and using the 
officially-suggested terms for them?  If I sit down with a French dictionary 
and list all the words in the English-French section (as the Geiriadur yr 
Academi did), and then look up those words in a selection of Welsh 
dictionaries, or ask others for terms, and write those down, am I still 
copying en masse?  And is my end listing of words an en masse copying of the 
English-French listing, or is it the sort of thing that any reasonably 
competent speaker might come up with if he were asked to make an alphabetical 
list of commonly-used English terms?  If there were enough entries from 
enough sources on Aurfa, the alphabetical listings wouldn't even correspond 
to those in Termiadur, and a good few of the terms would be referenced in 
other sources as well - if I remove the Termiadur source for duplicates, is 
this still copying en masse?  It's very difficult, especially with 
pseudo-official "standardising" publications like this (privately-published 
dictionaries are slightly more clearcut, but only marginally).

As I said to Telsa, I'm not really sure what the response will be, but 200 
words from Termiadur (c.0.5% of the total) would probably fall under the 
concept of "fair use" for quoting in any case.  We shall see - I do think we 
need to take a slightly more activist approach to some of these things 
(including the promotion of free software), and I'm hoping that there will be 
enough people with some wit at official levels to see what needs to be done, 
and do it.

> Mark Nodine has a small base dictionary too that might be useful, and
> has previously given permission for its reuse.

Yes, I was going to contact him as well.

-- 

Best wishes

Kevin Donnelly

www.kyfieithu.co.uk - Meddalwedd Rydd yn Gymraeg

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