On 10 February 2010 02:58, Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com wrote:
But we keep getting editors who use the PD-old template anyway as an exercise in wishful thinking. Too often, "the existence of a valid copyright is debatable" becomes a euphemism for "I've got a lousy source and haven't done enough research."
I've sometimes thought that, in an ideal world, we should just phase out PD-old and all its forms - it's often, as you say, wishful thinking, or sometimes (and I know in my early days I did this) a cover for a misunderstanding about just what the thresholds are.
So what'd we replace it with? Something functionally like...
{{copyright |date=1895 |location=Germany |author=anonymous }}
...and have it then spit out, well, "this image is free under German copyright law (sect. 473 ii) and in the United States (Title 15, 7)" or the like, with an option to click to have it generate a copyright status in Canada or France or where have you. We do *have* this data for a sizable proportion of our images, after all, and it's a bit lazy when we take all this and slap a "well, PD, I guess" rubber-stamp on it!
I doubt this is *practical* in the near term, of course, but it's a thought. Any other ideas?