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[Robb_K]

We have recently created a new CB+ section of English language Scanlations (translated versions) of non-English language comics.  It started with 6 issues of The Italian superhero, "Plutos", 2 issues of Spanish superhero, "The Green Spider", and one of Spanish superhero, "El Capitán Júpiter".  Today we have added scanlations of two Dutch books translated by me, and text-formatted, assembled and uploaded with the help of crashryan and SuperScrounge, and I hope the third will be approved and uploaded tomorrow.

These books are:

(1) Star Series Issue (Episode) Nr. 1 of The digest-sized Dutch Beeldroman, "De Tweede Pimpernel" ("The Second Pimpernel"), published in 1947, by W.A. Polder, an 8-issue episodic series.  This series was written and drawn by Siem Praamsma.  It is a post WWII detective/crime/masked mystery-man crimefighting hero genre story, patterned after The Classic novel, "The Scarlet Pimpernel".  In this Episode, The 2nd Pimpernel discovers a plot of businessmen to take over war industry businesses, as part of a plot to foment an atomic Worldwide war.  I plan to translate the entire series, and upload it as a compilation scanlation in our Scanlation Section, within a few months from now.

(2) Episode Nr. 7 ("De Staalstad"("The Steel City") of the Dutch Science-Fiction series, "Fulgor - De Stratosfeervlieger/Stratosfeerpiloot", a 48-issue (episode) saga, published in 1-tier mini-book format, by Uitgeverij Walter Lehning in 1953-54, drawn by Augusto Pedrazza, and written by Pedrazza and Roberto Renzi.  In this episode, Fulgor flies to Mars, to thwart a plan of an evil Martian warlord to destroy Earth's civilisation by sending an asteroid to crash into The Earth.  I plan to translate the entire series, and upload it as a compilation scanlation in our Scanlation Section, within a few months from now.

(3) Issue Nr. 1 of the digest-sized Dutch Beeldroman, "De Moker" ("The Sledgehammer"), detective/crime masked, heroic mysteryman 10-issue individual complete-story series, published by Uitgeverij Jago in 1948, with this issue drawn by Hans Ducro.  This story has The People's heroic crimefighter, The Sledgehammer, secretly entering the criminal bank consortium Chief (most powerful banker)'s office, picking his safe, and retrieving the law-abiding's public "stolen"(by usury) money, and escaping the Paris Police by helicopter, from the top of The Eiffel Tower.  I plan to finish translating this series into a compilation and upload it to our Scanlation Section, within several months from now.

We will be reviewing and analysing these three books in our regular book review on our CB+ Forum's "Reading Group" Thread's fortnightly subthread "Three Dutch Golden Age action series" starting next Monday, April 29th.  We invite any CB+ members and other website readers to join us in reading and commenting about these books.

[MarkWarner]

I really hope "Scanilations" will finally take off. I think they are such a cool idea. So, it's a "Yes From Me"!

[Robb_K]

I really hope "Scanilations" will finally take off. I think they are such a cool idea. So, it's a "Yes From Me"!

Thanks, Mark,
The 3rd Dutch Scanlation book I've chosen for this Sunday's new Books for Review and Analysis by our Reading Group has just been uploaded by Crashryan.  It needs Administrator approval to be visible to members and other readers. So, I hope you or another administrator will be able to approve it today or tomorrow.

Thanks for your support in this new CB+ section, and with our Reading Group.  I'll soon start translating, "Bob Crack 1", another Golden Age Beeldroman (digest-size graphic novel) series from Jago Uitgevers (Publishers).

[Robb_K]

The 3rd Dutch Beeldroman Scanlation has been approved and uploaded.  That CB+ section now has 12 books translated to English uploaded.

[SuperScrounge]

I wonder how long it will be until some of those 'publishers' try selling print collections of the scanilations? 

Although I believe that Robb's translations, at least, have copyright protection.

[nzumel]

I would love to contribute my Darna scanlation, but I should note that I got many of the scans not from this site, but from Simon Santos' Video48 blog. They are watermarked. I tried to contact him to ask for permission before I started this project, but never got a response, and eventually threw up my hands and decided to ask for forgiveness instead of permission.

This is fine for me on my own, but obviously can be problematic for sharing on a third party site like CB+. If you all think it is okay, I can try to upload, here, but if not --  I completely understand.

I wonder how long it will be until some of those 'publishers' try selling print collections of the scanilations? 

Although I believe that Robb's translations, at least, have copyright protection.

I'm not a lawyer, but I believe that translations of public domain work are not in themselves PD; they are the intellectual property of the translator. So yes, Robb's translations are copyrighted.

Since this site promotes itself as "only housing content in the public domain", maybe there should be a specific disclaimer on the scanlation section? Obviously anyone who shares here doesn't mind their work being downloaded for personal use, and text on a web page never stops a sketchy "publisher", but still...

[Robb_K]

nzumel wrote:
I would love to contribute my Darna scanlation, but I should note that I got many of the scans not from this site, but from Simon Santos' Video48 blog. They are watermarked. I tried to contact him to ask for permission before I started this project, but never got a response, and eventually threw up my hands and decided to ask for forgiveness instead of permission.

This is fine for me on my own, but obviously can be problematic for sharing on a third party site like CB+. If you all think it is okay, I can try to upload, here, but if not --  I completely understand.

I don't think we should upload your translation sitting atop scanned pages with a watermark onto this website, especially given that you haven't gotten Santos' permission to upload the scans (even if we would credit him for providing the scans to us).  The best situation would be to get his written permission and scans of the stories without watermarks.

And yes, I will be donating all my translations to this website free of remuneration, as did Narfstar, crashryan, and all the other donors.

[nzumel]

And yes, I will be donating all my translations to this website free of remuneration, as did Narfstar, crashryan, and all the other donors.

I wasn't thinking about renumeration, I was thinking about copyright and IP. A person can explicitly donate their work to the public domain if they want to, but it doesn't automatically become PD without that, even if you don't get financially compensated. I would think some translators might prefer to share their work under a Creative Commons license of some sort, that's all....

[SuperScrounge]

Since this site promotes itself as "only housing content in the public domain"

IIRC there are also some fanzines that the owners allowed to be hosted here. Maybe the wording should be "most content housed here is in the public domain, with a few items that we are allowed to host" or something like that so people don't just download everything and try to sell print editions thinking they're public domain?

[The Australian Panther]

so people don't just download everything and try to sell print editions thinking they're public domain? 

We don't ask them to download and sell anything that they find here. Surely  it's on them to be sure what the publish is really PD?
Anything that isn't, we usually attach a disclaimer to, anyway. 
That said, I would think that the likelihood of anyone re-printing a fanzime is pretty low. 

[SuperScrounge]

We don't ask them to download and sell anything that they find here. Surely  it's on them to be sure what the publish is really PD?

Yeah, but there are lawyers out there that might try to argue "You claimed everything on your site is public domain and my poor, innocent, trusting client took you at your word!"

Anything that isn't, we usually attach a disclaimer to, anyway.

That's good, and my main worry.

That said, I would think that the likelihood of anyone re-printing a fanzime is pretty low.

True. Although there are the compilations, some of which have introductions, biographical information, etc. that people have created to flesh out the reprinted stuff.