turkish book- Intibah- copyrights

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skepticalcitizen
Posts: 4
Joined: February 6th, 2021, 1:09 pm

Post by skepticalcitizen »

Hi,

I really want to narrate a classic Turkish novel- Intibah by Namik Kemal. However, while the original was published in 1876 and the author died in 1888, the book was adapted into modern Turkish by several publishing houses which hold a copyright for that reason. I was wondering if I can ask permission from the publisher (for the version that I have) to narrate the book. I am willing to pay a fee if they ask for it. There are very few Turkish works in the catalogue and this book would be a great addition.

Thanks!
Sabiha
Kazbek
LibriVox Admin Team
Posts: 6489
Joined: April 24th, 2019, 12:06 pm

Post by Kazbek »

Hi Sabiha,

We can publish only recordings of texts that are in the public domain in the US, where our servers are located, and this generally means that the text (specific edition used for the reading) would need to be published more than 95 years ago. For Turkish books, this would generally exclude publications using the modern alphabet. Even if a publisher grants a special permission to use a more recent copyrighted edition for an audiobook, we would still not be to able use it, because it would not be in the public domain.

If perchance you want to read this novel in the original Osmanli, there's a scan of the 1874 (1291 AH) edition at the Internet Archive that we could use:

https://archive.org/details/intibah00namkuoft/page/n203/mode/2up

You may be interested in our sister site https://legamus.eu/, which is similar to LibriVox, but devoted exclusively to texts which are not in the public domain in the US, but are in the public domain in those countries where copyright expires 70 years after the author's death. I believe Turkey is one of those countries, although the copyright for adaptations into modern Turkish could complicate things.

Michael
skepticalcitizen
Posts: 4
Joined: February 6th, 2021, 1:09 pm

Post by skepticalcitizen »

Kazbek wrote: June 13th, 2021, 2:57 pm Hi Sabiha,

We can publish only recordings of texts that are in the public domain in the US, where our servers are located, and this generally means that the text (specific edition used for the reading) would need to be published more than 95 years ago. For Turkish books, this would generally exclude publications using the modern alphabet. Even if a publisher grants a special permission to use a more recent copyrighted edition for an audiobook, we would still not be to able use it, because it would not be in the public domain.

If perchance you want to read this novel in the original Osmanli, there's a scan of the 1874 (1291 AH) edition at the Internet Archive that we could use:

https://archive.org/details/intibah00namkuoft/page/n203/mode/2up

You may be interested in our sister site https://legamus.eu/, which is similar to LibriVox, but devoted exclusively to texts which are not in the public domain in the US, but are in the public domain in those countries where copyright expires 70 years after the author's death. I believe Turkey is one of those countries, although the copyright for adaptations into modern Turkish could complicate things.

Michael
Well, I wish I could read old Turkish :mrgreen:
Thank you for the links! I may try narrating it on legamus.
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