# Copyright question re ancient manuscripts...



## writer123456789 (Mar 23, 2018)

I am currently trying to get a book published and am having a very difficult time because my book contains many large quotes from ancient manuscripts. The whole point of the book is to analyze and discuss these ancient writings, so I want to provide them with as much context as possible. In some instance I'm engaging in textual analysis and walking readers through how to analyze these texts. 

My publisher keeps saying that I need to reduce the size of the quotes to less than 500 words, but this make no sense for my book.

In addition, when it comes to citing these, I originally, for convenience, cited websites that host public domain translations of these works, i.e. translations what were done prior to 1923. My publisher is saying I need permission for the web hosts to use the material, but this makes no sense, as they are not the copyright holders of this material. Do i just need to cite their sources, i.e. instead of citing the website, cite the source that the website cites (assuming they have all properly and fully cited their sources).

So what exactly needs to be done when using material from 2,000 year old manuscripts such as this? Are there restrictions on how many words I can use when quote ancient manuscripts? They are telling me stuff like if the original is less than 5,000 words then you can only quote up to 10% of the material, but this makes no sense. If I'm quote a fragment of a 2,500 year old papyrus that is only 90 words long, how I can quote only 10% of that, that just makes no sense on the face of it.

Thanks


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## Bayview (Mar 23, 2018)

The issue may be that you're not looking at the original version of the old manuscripts. You're reading them in some sort of formatted version, probably? So there may be copyright attached to the formatting. If you're reading photographs of the original translation, there may be copyright attached to the photographs. And you're probably taking the word of the website that the translations were done prior to a certain date?

These are just guesses... what does your publisher say when you ask about all this? If the publisher is balking, I don't think you're going to change his/her mind by saying a bunch of people on an internet forum assured you it was okay to do what you're doing.


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## writer123456789 (Mar 23, 2018)

I guess I need to cite original books as opposed to websites, but the websites I'm citing are scholarly ones. It's just an extra layer of hassle. Now instead of citing something like the Gutenberg project page for a text I'll need to cite whatever book they scanned from, which is fine, just more work. The other issue is the complaints about quote length. I mean I have tons of books on ancient writings that contain huge quotes. I don't see how there can be a problem quoting 1,000 words from Plato in giving an assessment of the work and describing relationships between Plato's writings and those of other philosophers, for example. The whole point of my book is providing context for these works and how various ancient works relate to one another. I have to present the whole texts in order to talk about the relationships. I want the reader to be able to read text A then read text B and then discuss how they relate, etc. 

I've basically done on this on my website and gotten a lot of positive feedback and now I'm trying to do this type of thing in a published book and I'm running into these walls, which is quite frustrating.

Thank you for the feedback and advice!


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## Bayview (Mar 23, 2018)

Is your publisher complaining about the lengthy quotes because of copyright issues, or because they feel they're filler/not original scholarship?

And are you confident in the reputation/qualifications of your publisher?


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## writer123456789 (Mar 24, 2018)

So one thing I don't get is how copyright works on these ancient texts. If I'm using a text that was written by an unknown author 2,000+ years ago, and a translation that was done in the 1700s, but from a book that was published in 1980, how does that work exactly? Why would I be limited to 500 words or needing permission from the publisher? All of the content is old. How can a publisher hold copyright on work that all they did was publish? If the translation was done after 1923 I could understand but if they are just re-publishing an old translation, how do they have any right to it? Why would I need permission from them just because they re-published it?


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## Bayview (Mar 24, 2018)

writer123456789 said:


> So one thing I don't get is how copyright works on these ancient texts. If I'm using a text that was written by an unknown author 2,000+ years ago, and a translation that was done in the 1700s, but from a book that was published in 1980, how does that work exactly? Why would I be limited to 500 words or needing permission from the publisher? All of the content is old. How can a publisher hold copyright on work that all they did was publish? If the translation was done after 1923 I could understand but if they are just re-publishing an old translation, how do they have any right to it? Why would I need permission from them just because they re-published it?



As I understand it: it cost them money to publish it - formatting, printing, etc. They don't have rights to the work itself, and anyone else could go back to the 1700 translation and use THAT without anyone's permission (assuming access to the original copies) but the work involved in making the current version available to you is protected.

Have you heard the cases of celebrities who are not allowed to use paparazzi photos taken of the celebrities because the paparazzi has copyright on the image, even though the image is only valuable because of the celebrity? Copyright is weird.


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## Ralph Rotten (Mar 25, 2018)

2000 year old works are public domain...assuming you use their original format.
However, much of that stuff was translated, usually by writers & publishers, and it is the translated version that can be the copyright issue.
So ideally you should look for translations that are old enough to now be in the public domain.


And quotes >500 words do seem terribly large.


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