Audiobooks, CC licenses, and sharing the Dhamma - article about copyright

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Greetings to all,

3x big Saddhu to all those who contribute to Sutta Central. It is wonderful
that Dhamma is now spreading from Australia.

I have a question to ask about Sutta Central and copyright. But let me
introduce myself first: my name is Dalibor Pavlík and I am a Buddhist
volunteer and content creator from the Czech Republic.

I was inspired by Ajahn Sujato´s beautiful article Copy this and I also wrote
an article about Buddhism and copyright.

https://borek78.github.io/how-to-create-pandita/audiobooks-cc-licenses-and-sharing-the-dhamma.html

I would like to add another part to the article. It should be a list of authors
and translators who have used the CC-Zero (or maybe also the CC BY and
the CC BY-SA license). Perhaps the list could inspire others to use these
licenses too.

I was thinking about mentioning the Sutta Central Acknowledgment page.

https://suttacentral.net/acknowledgments

There are many translators mentioned on that page. Have they all applied
the CC-Zero license to their work? If yes, I would certainly like to mention
them in my article. If not, I would like to know which one of them used the
CC-Zero license (or the CC BY and CC BY-SA). Does anyone know that?

My best regards from the Czech Republic,
Dalibor

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Welcome to the forum @Borek :pray:t4::bouquet:!

Would Bhante @sujato be able to offer some help for Dalibor’s questions?

Appreciate any one else who could share some insight as well.

:pray:t4:

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I think most of them have not. As I understand all new translations being added are supposed to be cc0.

You can find out one by one clicking on the info icon. For example:

image
image1898×735 89.4 KB

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Click on the “i” icon in the top right corner of a Sutta page to find the publication information. Not all translations are released under a CC0 license. The segmented translations (new translations, starting with Bhante Sujato’s Sutta and Ajahn Brahmali’s vinaya translations) have a CC0 license, but for older translations, the so called legacy translations, licenses vary.

See for example:

Screenshot from 2021-08-22 18-56-55
Screenshot from 2021-08-22 18-56-551851×413 74.5 KB

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Link to Bhante Sujato article “Copy this” mentioned above, very helpful and wholesome read. :pray: :slight_smile: Thank you Bhante for writing and sharing. It deepened my view of this issue and I wholeheartedly agree with you and will help spreading this wisdom in my circles when opportunity arise. :anjal:

Thanks Borek for sharing and welcome to the forum! :slight_smile: Wish you inspiration and discernment to stick around long enough to absorb an ocean of knowledge and wisdom here. :yellow_heart:

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Hi Borek,

Great idea, thanks!

As Snowbird said, most of our legacy texts here are not in CC0. They use a variety of often informal licenses. This means that SC can use them, but there may be limitations in other cases.

There is a list of translations in progress, all of which use CC0:

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@Ficus, thank you for welcoming me to the forum.

@Snowbird @sabbamitta thank you guys for sharing with me the info about the info icon - I was not aware of that, there is a lot of very useful info there, at least for me. It is also good to know that Ajahn Brahamali´s translations are also published under CC0.

@Invo, thank you for appreciating my article. I have not used those ideas to produce an audiobook yet. Maybe it is all just too complicated. It may now work. I will try to update that website.

@sujato Ajahn, thank you for confirming Snowbird´s answer. It is also good to know about the list of translations in progress. All my best for your work!

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Yeah, @Snowbird must have posted a second before me, I didn’t see that post until now. Great, so you have all the info you need now.

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@sujato @ficus @sabbamitta @snowbird

I have created a list of SuttaCentral books that are licensed under the CC-Zero license. It is a draft only. Would it be allright to use it on my website? I am not sure it is 100% correct.

The draft is available here.

https://borek78.github.io/how-to-create-pandita/list-of-books-published-under-a-cc-license.html

I created the list from the information available on the Download page.

@sabbamitta mentioned Ajahn Brahmali´s translations. But I have not found them on the downloads page. I would certainly be keen on adding them to the list.

From the downloads page, I was also trying to download the epub files, but the download does not work at the moment. It would be helpful to have the CC-Zero translations also in some files (pdf or epub). It would be very easy to know which translations are published under the CC-Zero license.

In the future, perhaps I could also upload the files on one of my websites. I certainly would like to inform our local Buddhist community that the books are available under the CC-ZERO license and that they can be translated to the Czech language.

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The downloads page is much loved but kind of neglected. The Epubs haven’t worked for a while. Devs are dedicated to some other changes and, as I understand, a big improvement to the epub system. So I’m guessing that until the code is rewritten, there won’t be a fix.

And as you see, Bhante Brahmalli’s translation is not published there as an ebook. But it is on the site.

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Your list doesn’t include everything that has been translated by Bhante Sujato. He has completed the four Nikayas and the early parts of the Khuddaka except for the Sutta Nipata, which is still in progress. I.e. there are from the Khuddaka Nikaya: Thag, Thig, Dhp, Ud, Iti; Snp to follow as soon as it is completed.

Also, your list doesn’t show Ajahn Brahmali’s Vinaya translations.

I take it that you are only interested in English translations—so no other languages?

It is still possible that there are more translations by other translators that are published under a CC0 license. You would have to check that out in the publication information of the individual translations.

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@Snowbird Exactly, the Downloads page is very useful. It is a nice summary of what has been done. It is good to know that the developers are working on it.

@sabbamita
Fot the time being, I will probably only mention the works that are available on the Downloads page. It is easier for me to work that way.
But I will also mention that more CC-Zero translations have been done and that the info can be found on the SuttaCentral website.

Thank you guys for your replies. They were very much appreciated.

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@sabbamitta It might be useful to have a list of non-English translations licensed under the CC-ZERO license. It might inspire my readers to use the license too. But at the moment, I am not motivated enough to go through the website and create such a list. Perhaps later.

The list of English translations is more important for me. I want to make it available to our Czech Buddhist community. Perhaps some of our members will be interested to translate something into the Czech language.

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It’s actually not a summary at all. That was my point.

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“And as you see, Bhante Brahmalli’s translation is not published there as an ebook. But it is on the site.”

@Snowbird you are right, it is not a summary. I have not expressed myself very well. Not everything is there. I get it. (but it could be a nice summary :slight_smile:

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