Re: Using freetranslation.mobi to translate

[Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>]

[Petter Reinholdtsen]
> There are no terms of use that I have found available from the
> freetranslation site

[David Prévot]
> As any other work, unless properly stated compatible with $license, you
> can only only assume “Copyright $stuff, all right reserved”

Well, there are two arguments against this understanding which I
believe are both valid.  First of all, short texts (like single
sentences) are rarely copyrightable, and I only gave the translation
service short texts and got equally short text back, which would most
likely would still not be copyrightable if they started out as not
copyrightable.  If the individual texts are not copyrightable, we can
use them and there is no legal issue for us.  The combination could be
copyrightable, but only fragments of the original text were submitted
for translation and it would be a judgement call if the amount of
fragments as a whole was copyrightable.

Second, assuming the original texts were GPL2+ licensed, the
translation service created derived texts which are still GPL2+
licensed.  To distribute GPL2+ derived text they must follow the GPL2
licence and make the new text GPL2 too.  Are you claiming the
translation service violated the GPL?  How?  If the translation
service didn't violate the GPL, the resulting text would be GPL and
there is no problem for us to use the text.
-- 
Happy hacking
Petter Reinholdtsen