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LibriVox :: View topic - Quotations of Mao Tse Tung [PD?]
I would suggest the Quotations of Mao Tse Tung as the next project for libriovox volunteers.
For good or ill its is certainly the most influential book in Chinese History since the 5th century and perhaps the most influential book of the 20th century world.
It is the most widely published book in human history and was owned in more households.
The format of the book makes it relatively easy to record since chapters are shorts and its just one liners mostly.
The book itself is under 200 pages.
Also there are many good public domain resources on the web.
Anyway regardless of its literary merits its historic significance as a political document and the current influence of China in world affairs merits this project.
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That would be interesting, no doubt.
But we can only record works that are in the public domain by US law: anything published before 1923 is fine, anything published later is unlikely.
Presumably there are works by Mao that date from before 1923, but I can't lay my hands on my Chinese copy at the moment to check.
(I'm not being facetious.
I have a copy).
You seem to know your stuff, though, so if you can find something that meets our public domain requirements, please let us know!
Here's the details: http://librivox.org/wiki/moin.cgi/CopyrightAndPublicDomain
Translations are a little different, but the starting point has to be that the original work is in the public domain by US law, otherwise it's a no-go.
David
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Heres the wikipedia article on the little Red Book
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_red_book
As far as I know the English translation was done by a government agency of the PR of China "Foreign Language Press".
Since the 1980s I'm not aware of any new printings from that body.
I would think that it would be in public domain just from it being a government document and thats further strengthend by the government basically abandoning any claims for the last 30 years.
In addition just about every English translation currently availible in the web makes clear that it is in the public domain.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/
http://art-bin.com/art/omaotoc.html
http://www.terebess.hu/english/mao.html
http://www.marx2mao.com/Mao/QCM66.html
http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/classics/mao/Quote: s/index.html
If librivox does decide to the translation the Marx2Mao version seems to be the most official since its a direct copy of the Foreign Language Press version but readers may find other sites more easy to read.
Since they all come from the same translation the words should be the same.
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Jacobin,
It'll take some work to determine whether the FLP translation is in the public domain in the USA - we can't just go by the fact that it's available online.
Are you planning to record this work yourself, or suggesting that someone else should do?
Because basically, whoever wants to record it will need to put the time in to doing the copyright check.
If a LibriVox volunteer takes up the challenge to record it, or coordinate a group effort, the first step will be to get copyright clearance.
In the wiki page I linked to in my first post, there's information on how to check copyright status in the USA, including how to get clearance from the copyright team at Project Gutenberg - and that's what we'd need before giving the project the green light.
(Or the red light, in Cultural Revolution terminology).
Anyway, what happens next depends on whether anyone says: "I want to record this", and then puts the time in to doing the check.
Although Chinese things are definitely up my personal street, this isn't a work I would choose to record myself.
But that's just my own preference.
Our goal here is to record all published works that are in the public domain, and the only other criterion that comes into play is whether anyone (yet) actually wants to record the work.
David
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Hi Jacobin and David,
I think I'm right in saying that there was no intellectual propoerty law whatsoever under the Cultural Revolution, which would make it highly likely that the Foreign Language Press translation of the Little Red Book (but probably only that translation) is PD.
The FLP would have had to register the copyright in the US in the late 60s for it to be protected, and it might be unlikely that they would have done this (even if they had wanted to, quite possibly their right to do so may not have been recognised).
However, as David says, you can only be sure about this by checking, and its not really worth going to the trouble unless there's a reader/book co-ordinator ready to take it on.
Cheers,
Carl.
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