[Wikipedia-l] HMSO Crown copyright FOIA Request

[Ray Saintonge]

Delirium wrote:

> David Newton wrote:
>
>> So, it appears that Crown copyright material that has been published
>> in 1954 or earlier is considered public domain worldwide by OPSI and
>> is thus fair game for the Wikipedia to use.
>
> Certainly good news!  The copyright laws are rather complex, so I 
> suppose it's not impossible that they could in theory lay a claim to 
> more than 50 years under, say, U.S. copyright law for material 
> published in the U.S.  To avoid that possibility, it may be worth 
> archiving this response somewhere, since "the copyright owner 
> explicitly told me I could use it" is a reasonably good defense 
> against copyright-infringement claims, and at the very least would 
> likely severely mitigate any damages that might ever arise. 

If something is already in the public domain the copyright owner's 
permission is of no consequence.  It only matters when something is 
still protected.

As a rule, no country will grant citizens of another country greater 
copyright protection than they do to their own citizens, nor will they 
extend the rights of a foreign citizen beyond what he had in his own 
country. 

Canada is a Berne Convention country which follows the life + 50 rule.  
This means that on a worldwide basis a Canadian author's copyrights 
expire 50 years after his death notwithstanding foreign laws that would 
extend this period to 70 years.  Similarly, any foreign author could be 
freely republished in Canada 50 years after his death, but that could 
not be distributed internationaly to countries with a longer expiry period.

Ec