AFAIK, according to copyright law, the copyright of a translated book remains with the original author. Since Kawabata's original "Meijin" is not in the public domain (yet), any translations are still copyrighted, unless the translator has proof that the original author relinquished the copyright to him or her. I think that in this case, the burden of proof is upon lib.ru to prove they have permission to publish this work (from Kawabata's heirs, not from the translator).

Phelan,

I agree that removing the link is the right thing to do. This action is supporting what I believe is the general SL consensus, to disapprove of, and stand against what is loosely called 'piracy' of copyrighted books. This is a particularly bad thing for go books as with so few sold, the incentive to produce more is marginal already. SL doesn't want to cooperate in action that discourages go book authors.

Is the burden of proof on you or the community of SL deshi's to prove that this particular text infringes someone's copyright? No, in my opinion. A reasonable well-intentioned estimate of probability suggests this is copyright infringing. You cannot know for a fact, because the copyright owner may have assigned the rights in a private contract that we have no way of knowing about. That is true of all books. So a reasonable man assumes that standard copyright terms apply until shown otherwise.

'Standard copyright terms'. What does that mean? Yes, lawyers and governments being what they are there is no 'standard'. The United Nations WIPO is continually encouraging convergence, and minimum rights are covered by various international treaties (e.g. WIPO Copyright Treaty). From WIPO faq a key point is that the minimum copyright period is 50 years after the creator's death, with some countries extending it beyond that. So, a reasonable working assumption is that as Kawabata died in 1972, his copyright still extends until at least 2022.

I think it is also important to be seen to do the right thing by authors, even if someone could find some obscure legal point that allowed us to take their work. People with strong literacy and Go expertise, such as John Fairbairn or Charles Matthews have sometimes written respected pages in SL. They also happen to be copyrighted authors of other works. It is in the interest of SL not to carelessly offend the sensibilities of such people with no benefit to SL. A sweeping generalization is that copyrighted authors expect other's copyright to be respected, as well as their own.

I agree with Herman above. I think he appears to have the same point of view, just expressed in a more succinct manner.

The WIPO lists 'Russian Federation' as a contracting party to the WIPO Copyright Treaty from February 5, 2009