On 5/9/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
On May 6, 2006, at 7:24 AM, Guettarda wrote:
If you have unpublished photographs taken by a deceased relative which you wish to use on Wikipedia, how would you license them? Assuming that you have survivor rights or permission from other heirs of the photographer, would it be possible to release them under the GFDL or cc by sa? If they were taken by, say, your grandfather, and there is nothing in his will dealing with "other stuff", would you have to get permission from all of his surviving children, or their heirs (if the children are deceased)? I'm assuming here that the photographs are otherwise unpublished, and were taken recently enough/the person was alive recently enough that they would still be covered by copyright.
My understanding is that if you're the heir, you inherit all property, including intellectual property, and can do with it as you see fit.
Yes, this is a question about inheritance law, not copyright law. Whoever inherits the copyright owns that intellectual property. The time during which the property exists is (in most jurisdictions) affected by the date that the creator died, but the existence of the property is otherwise unaffected. So the question really is, who inherited the copyrights?
(IANAL, JALS)
-- Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com