Category talk:Düstur

I doubt there will be copyright issues. In case of claims, though, here are notes:

Ottoman Copyright law

• Birnhack, Michael (2011). "Hebrew Authors and English Copyright Law in Mandate Palestine". Theoretical Inquiries in Law 12 (1): 201-240.

1. Page 205: Identifies the copyright law as being the "Author's Rights Act of 1910" (Hakk-ı Telif Kanunu, 2 Düstor 273 (1910), 12 Jamad ul Awal 1328 or 22 May 1910)

Codified in the Ottoman Act of 1850 (with an 1857 amendment)

Birnhack p. 205 states the Category:Mecelle (Mejelle) did not have a copyright provision, so until 1910 there was no copyright law in the empire. Also he notes the empire was not a part of the Bern Convention.

This says that legislation (the subject of this category) was exempt from copyright and that translations had shorter terms of copyright:

2. Page 206: "legislation was excluded from protection (§ 8) [...] Translators owned the copyright in translations, a right that lasted for 15 years after the translator's death (§ 14)"

Authorship of translations The following article has some dates of birth and/or death of some of the publishers:

Strauss, Johann (2010) "A Constitution for a Multilingual Empire: Translations of the Kanun-ı Esasi and Other Official Texts into Minority Languages" in Herzog, Christoph , ed. The First Ottoman Experiment in Democracy, p. 21−51 (info page on book at Martin Luther University)

1. The Greek version : published 1869-1871, with the supplement in 1874 and the second edition in 1889-1891

• Published by Demetrius Nicolaides, with birthdate identified as 1843 (Strauss p. 29, PDF p. 31/338) while Strauss stated "he eventually died in poverty during the First World War." (Strauss, p. 30, PDF p. 32/338)

• In regards to the specifics of his authorship, Strauss stated: "However, it is not at all clear to what extent Nicolaides translated any of these texts himself (or merely reproduced translations previously published in the official press)." despite the text's claims that it was directly translated from Ottoman Turkish, and Strauss stated "We do not know where his knowledge of Ottoman Turkish actually came from." (p. 30). Some texts inside name their own translators. Strauss p. 30 identified:
• The Ottoman Reform Edict of 1856 (Islahat fermanı) was translated from the official French translation of the Ottoman government
• The notes of the edict were done by Frenchman François Belin (1817-1877)
• The Ottoman Land Law was translated by D. Rhazes, the first dragoman of Greece's embassy to the Ottoman Empire
• The Ottoman Commercial Code (Ticaret kanunu) originated from the Ottoman government's French translation

2. The Bulgarian version, with three volumes published in Constantinople/Istanbul in 1871-1873 (the fourth volume, which I have not located yet, was published in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1886 (so it would fall under Bulgarian law instead)

• One issue about authorship is, Strauss p. 33 says about Arnaudov, "of whom almost nothing is known"
• Also Strauss stated that this is essentially a translation of Nicolaides' Greek volume even though the volume claims it came directly from Ottoman Turkish as part of a team effort

WhisperToMe (talk) 07:49, 16 September 2019 (UTC)