4 ms·

I think it's a workable example. When dealing with these types of issues, I've personally found it helpful to calculate a personal dollars-per-hour and then we

I think it's a workable example. When dealing with these types of issues, I've personally found it helpful to calculate a personal dollars-per-hour and then weigh potential tasks against that. Let's say a person makes or values their time at $30-$50 an hour. That's roughly a month of TimeSvr.com (or similar outsourcing services) for two hours of time. In this example, even if the person felt wronged and was willing to spend $100+ (in dollars or time) addressing the issue out of principle, they'd still be better off outsourcing the task, or perhaps writing a negative review/blog post.

bemmu 17y ago
I'm not convinced about outsourcing small tasks. If he had outsourced the task of getting that $11, he would need to explain it to another person and give that person all of the personal details etc. needed to do the task. After all this, there is still no guarantee that the task even gets done as you want. Maybe you neglected to specify something, or the other person just isn't as careful and motivated to do the task as you would be. This doesn't even count the time spent finding that person in the first place, and you also need to take into account the risk of unresponsiveness or plain failed result. Some of my failed outsourcing experiments: Task: Finding images matching a description (used asksunday.com) Result: Service ignored details of my request and gave me useless pics. Task: Create personality tests for an OpenSocial app (rentacoder.com) Result: Hired several people. Some were unresponsive and didn't do anything. Some did eventually, but there were many spelling and grammatical errors. Some tests were in foreign languages and claimed to be native level, but upon checking with native speakers this turned out to be false. Task: A content writing task (details escape me, but I directly hired some chinese outsourcing company) Result: Company copy & pasted content from other sites. The issue is probably that I haven't been careful enough in selecting the people to outsource to, or haven't paid enough to motivate serious bidders for my tasks. Successful ones: Task: Accept packages I sent from Japan and bring them to a convention center in Wien. Result: Package delivered as promised. This was the one that saved me the most effort and money. Task: Create a list of words starting with given letter combination. Result: List delivered as specified, but in the wrong format. Task: Scan books and send images to me (this was OK because I was official translator for said books) Result: Images delivered as promised.
- pbhjpbhj 17y ago
  >Task: Scan books and send images to me (this was OK because I was official translator for said books) Result: Images delivered as promised. Usually the only reprographic copying rights, over fair use exceptions, are those retained by the publisher. Authors don't generally even have duplication rights to their own works so it would be unusual for you to have those rights as a translator. More unusual if your contract allowed you to transfer that right to someone else. You probably committed copyright infringement by proxy, FWIW.
  - nitrogen 17y ago
    If someone legally authorized to translate a book doesn't have the right to translate the book, then something is horribly wrong with copyright.
    - pbhjpbhj 17y ago
      Unless I misunderstood he's talking about making copies of the translation. He'd be hired to perform a single translation, the copyright for the translation would remain with the publisher (work for hire).
      - bemmu 17y ago
        I needed a copy of the book in order to be able to translate it. It was more convenient to see it on my screen while translating than holding it in my hand.

bemmu 17y ago

I'm not convinced about outsourcing small tasks. If he had outsourced the task of getting that $11, he would need to explain it to another person and give that person all of the personal details etc. needed to do the task. After all this, there is still no guarantee that the task even gets done as you want. Maybe you neglected to specify something, or the other person just isn't as careful and motivated to do the task as you would be. This doesn't even count the time spent finding that person in the first place, and you also need to take into account the risk of unresponsiveness or plain failed result. Some of my failed outsourcing experiments: Task: Finding images matching a description (used asksunday.com) Result: Service ignored details of my request and gave me useless pics. Task: Create personality tests for an OpenSocial app (rentacoder.com) Result: Hired several people. Some were unresponsive and didn't do anything. Some did eventually, but there were many spelling and grammatical errors. Some tests were in foreign languages and claimed to be native level, but upon checking with native speakers this turned out to be false. Task: A content writing task (details escape me, but I directly hired some chinese outsourcing company) Result: Company copy & pasted content from other sites. The issue is probably that I haven't been careful enough in selecting the people to outsource to, or haven't paid enough to motivate serious bidders for my tasks. Successful ones: Task: Accept packages I sent from Japan and bring them to a convention center in Wien. Result: Package delivered as promised. This was the one that saved me the most effort and money. Task: Create a list of words starting with given letter combination. Result: List delivered as specified, but in the wrong format. Task: Scan books and send images to me (this was OK because I was official translator for said books) Result: Images delivered as promised.

pbhjpbhj 17y ago
>Task: Scan books and send images to me (this was OK because I was official translator for said books) Result: Images delivered as promised. Usually the only reprographic copying rights, over fair use exceptions, are those retained by the publisher. Authors don't generally even have duplication rights to their own works so it would be unusual for you to have those rights as a translator. More unusual if your contract allowed you to transfer that right to someone else. You probably committed copyright infringement by proxy, FWIW.
- nitrogen 17y ago
  If someone legally authorized to translate a book doesn't have the right to translate the book, then something is horribly wrong with copyright.
  - pbhjpbhj 17y ago
    Unless I misunderstood he's talking about making copies of the translation. He'd be hired to perform a single translation, the copyright for the translation would remain with the publisher (work for hire).
    - bemmu 17y ago
      I needed a copy of the book in order to be able to translate it. It was more convenient to see it on my screen while translating than holding it in my hand.