My literary contracts often include a special, royalty free exemption for transcription services for hearing-impaired (and audio for the blind). Outside of such a clause, it would be a statutory copyright violation. Those are very expensive to be on the wrong end of.
The reality is a copyright holder probably wouldn't muck with the bad press of pursuing that unless you and your service were taking a profit, but the blackletter on that is pretty clear.
Disclaimer: I am not an attorney, this is not legal advice. I am an author who holds well over 200 copyrights, so my bias should be obvious.
The reality is a copyright holder probably wouldn't muck with the bad press of pursuing that unless you and your service were taking a profit
I'm actually thinking about running this large-scale. Mostly because if I can find several hundred deafies who want to read something I can amortize the cost per transcript down to a penny or two, at which point it becomes not a big deal for anyone.
Cheaper to do it from India, doing it somewhat badly (there are Indians with excellent English language skills, but you can't afford them any more) and to simply ignore the legal niceties.
USA is a bad country to base this in copyright wise. Some places (even Western places) will take a more generous view of transcription like this, but not the USA.
The problem is that I'd like this to be a general-purpose transcription service that works on anything, from TV shows to song lyrics to live radio. I don't want to send my lawyers out with distribution contracts every time someone sends in a new URL.
U.S. copyright law allows "authorized" people or organizations to make Braille versions of print materials without getting a license from the copyright holder, but I don't think that part of the law extends to print transcripts. Here's the relevant code section from the federal copyright statute:Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement of copyright for an authorized entity to reproduce or to distribute copies or phonorecords of a previously published, nondramatic literary work if such copies or phonorecords are reproduced or distributed in specialized formats exclusively for use by blind or other persons with disabilities. You'd think that "specialized formats" would include written transcripts, but this code section is really all about helping people with vision issues
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The reality is a copyright holder probably wouldn't muck with the bad press of pursuing that unless you and your service were taking a profit, but the blackletter on that is pretty clear.
Disclaimer: I am not an attorney, this is not legal advice. I am an author who holds well over 200 copyrights, so my bias should be obvious.
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I'm actually thinking about running this large-scale. Mostly because if I can find several hundred deafies who want to read something I can amortize the cost per transcript down to a penny or two, at which point it becomes not a big deal for anyone.
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USA is a bad country to base this in copyright wise. Some places (even Western places) will take a more generous view of transcription like this, but not the USA.
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(The comment has been removed)
The problem is that I'd like this to be a general-purpose transcription service that works on anything, from TV shows to song lyrics to live radio. I don't want to send my lawyers out with distribution contracts every time someone sends in a new URL.
Reply
U.S. copyright law allows "authorized" people or organizations to make Braille versions of print materials without getting a license from the copyright holder, but I don't think that part of the law extends to print transcripts. Here's the relevant code section from the federal copyright statute:Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement of copyright for an authorized entity to reproduce or to distribute copies or phonorecords of a previously published, nondramatic literary work if such copies or phonorecords are reproduced or distributed in specialized formats exclusively for use by blind or other persons with disabilities.
You'd think that "specialized formats" would include written transcripts, but this code section is really all about helping people with vision issues ( ... )
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http://waxy.org/2008/09/audio_transcription_with_mechanical_turk/
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