On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 6:55 PM, David Gerarddgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/7/20 FT2 ft2.wiki@gmail.com:
Are UK legal rulings public domain? Or just US rulings?
I understand that Wikisource treats all laws everywhere as public domain; don't know about court rulings.
David is correct. English Wikisource does not have the a rule "must be PD in the country of origin", as we like the nice clear lines of PD-1923 and PD-GovEdict.
In the US, all laws (inc foreign) are public domain, and in the UK the laws may be reproduced with a few restrictions, such as not including images of seals and requiring accuracy. So modification is not permitted by UK residents (no UK vandals permitted) but it is PD in the US jurisdiction, meaning modification is permitted, and so it sneaks in the back door of the freedomdefined.org definition.
I would need to check whether UK residents are legally permitted to put their laws on Wikisource - there is a restriction that the website needs to have obtained permission, but I dont recall if it applies in this situation.
The Graves' Case is from 1869, so crown copyright has expired. (crown copyright is very different as the crown doesn't die.)
iirc Wikisource doesnt have any UK court rulings so that issue hasn't been raised. We do have a few AUS court rulings, and iirc they are still covered by crown copyright, and they might even have been contributed or improved by an Australian.
-- John Vandenberg