>So why are they not simply buying the rights of the translations they are using?
Why do you think they haven't done that? Or rather they paid the entity that owns the rights who at some point in the past paid those translators. Generally speaking the translators gave up their rights in exchange for money long ago.
Specifically google uses, for example, UN documents which translators were paid to translate and which are publicly usable.
If I write some code for a company, get paid for that code and then the company sells that code why should I get paid again?
Or do you think google is the first automated translation service? This has been done successfully for 30+ years commercially and academically. Nothing different just because it's on the web and not on some guys PC.
>How many jobs were lost when we found out washing hands before surgery is a good idea?
Actually, I'm sure there were all sort of quack solutions to infections and whole industries making them which went out of business as a result of doctor's realizing washing hands did the trick.
Edit: Not to mention the loss of jobs for morticians (in the short term), makers of amputation implements (and other tools to deal with all those infections), nurses specializing in dealing with infections, traditional healers (as doctors were now an even better choice) and so on. Lowering infections would have impacted every single person and industry that was built around the previous high-infection status quo.
Why do you think they haven't done that? Or rather they paid the entity that owns the rights who at some point in the past paid those translators. Generally speaking the translators gave up their rights in exchange for money long ago.
Specifically google uses, for example, UN documents which translators were paid to translate and which are publicly usable.
If I write some code for a company, get paid for that code and then the company sells that code why should I get paid again?
Or do you think google is the first automated translation service? This has been done successfully for 30+ years commercially and academically. Nothing different just because it's on the web and not on some guys PC.
>How many jobs were lost when we found out washing hands before surgery is a good idea?
Actually, I'm sure there were all sort of quack solutions to infections and whole industries making them which went out of business as a result of doctor's realizing washing hands did the trick.
Edit: Not to mention the loss of jobs for morticians (in the short term), makers of amputation implements (and other tools to deal with all those infections), nurses specializing in dealing with infections, traditional healers (as doctors were now an even better choice) and so on. Lowering infections would have impacted every single person and industry that was built around the previous high-infection status quo.