Please take a look at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/American_non-acceptance_of_the_rule_of_the_sh... to see how American non-acceptance of the rule of the shorter term of the Berne Convention is impeding our site developments. The Meta page says: "Current U.S. copyright laws, under 17 U.S.C. 104(c) and 17 U.S.C. §104A, seem not to accept the rule of the shorter term, creating confusions for users wishing to post foreign works and putting burdens on administrators who must verify if a work is in fact copyrighted in the United States even if it has already been in the public domain in the country of original publication."

17 U.S.C. §104A makes the restored copyright automatic. Filing with the USA Copyright Office a notice of intent to enforce that person's copyright is to show formal intention. If any users can contact foreign authors or their successors to ask whether they will pursue USA copyright even if they can no longer copyright their works at home, please forward the message to permissions at wikimedia dot org, but if they cannot be easily contacted, the works are orphaned. British governmental works under Crown Copyright are known not affected by American non-acceptance of the rule of the shorter term when British Government does not pursue copyright beyond its home term abroad.

Regards,

Jusjih as Administrator in (same username in all of these sites)

1. Chinese Wikipedia 2. Multilingual Wikisource 3. Chinese Wiktionary 4. English Wikisource 5. Chinese Wikisource 6. Wikimedia Commons 7. English Wiktionary 8. English Wikipedia 9. Chinese Wikiquote 10. English Wikiquote