[posted to commons-l and wikien-l; someone may want to forward it to wikisource-l, perhaps?]
I've just run across this article, which might be of use in helping those who work on the eternal problem of determining whether or not a given 20th-century work is in copyright in the US.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july08/hirtle/07hirtle.html
Copyright Renewal, Copyright Restoration, and the Difficulty of Determining Copyright Status - Peter B. Hirtle, Cornell University
D-Lib Magazine, July/August 2008 Volume 14 Number 7/8
"It has long been assumed that most of the works published from 1923 to 1964 in the US are currently in the public domain. Both non-profit and commercial digital libraries have dreamed of making this material available. Most programs have recognized as well that the restoration of US copyright in foreign works in 1996 has made it impossible for them to offer to the public the full text of most foreign works. What has been overlooked up to now is the difficulty that copyright restoration has created for anyone trying to determine if a work published in the United States is still protected by copyright. This paper discusses the impact that copyright restoration of foreign works has had on US copyright status investigations, and offers some new steps that users must follow in order to investigate the copyright status in the US of any work. It argues that copyright restoration has made it almost impossible to determine with certainty whether a book published in the United States after 1922 and before 1964 is in the public domain. Digital libraries that wish to offer books from this period do so at some risk."
The minefield is even murkier than we thought, it seems.
2009/1/12 Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
[posted to commons-l and wikien-l; someone may want to forward it to wikisource-l, perhaps?]
I've just run across this article, which might be of use in helping those who work on the eternal problem of determining whether or not a given 20th-century work is in copyright in the US.
We don't use the copyright not renewed clause stuff and commons' general support for Must be PD in the country of origin as well as the US means we mostly dodge the issue.
On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 6:14 AM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
We don't use the copyright not renewed clause stuff and commons' general support for Must be PD in the country of origin as well as the US means we mostly dodge the issue.
We have in some cases used non-renewed that I've seen, but rarely. Only cases I'm aware of have been American books printed & published here and from American authors on American subjects; unlikely to be covered by copyright restoration which only applies to stuff first published abroad.
Shows that we have to be careful about it, though.
-Matt
That was an interesting read. Will read the full version soon. Especially since I encountered some images a while ago where it was stated that the copyright was not renewed. For people interested (and I would be glad to have more opinions) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Possibly_unfree_images/2008_December_... and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_sitting.jpg. I hope they are indeed free, but sometimes it seems/feels too easy.
Garion96
2009/1/12 geni geniice@gmail.com:
I've just run across this article, which might be of use in helping those who work on the eternal problem of determining whether or not a given 20th-century work is in copyright in the US.
We don't use the copyright not renewed clause stuff and commons' general support for Must be PD in the country of origin as well as the US means we mostly dodge the issue.
I'm not so sure that we don't use it - I can't cite chapter and verse, but I've certainly seen it invoked here and there, usually with good-faith due diligence to find renewals.
Sometimes it seems like what we need is a quasi-intelligent "PD-old" template - you plug in the known variables, date created and date published and author and country and so on, and it spits out "is therefore public domain because X and Y, under provision Z". Be horrific to maintain, though.
On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 10:03 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
2009/1/12 geni geniice@gmail.com:
I've just run across this article, which might be of use in helping those who work on the eternal problem of determining whether or not a given 20th-century work is in copyright in the US.
We don't use the copyright not renewed clause stuff and commons' general support for Must be PD in the country of origin as well as the US means we mostly dodge the issue.
I'm not so sure that we don't use it - I can't cite chapter and verse, but I've certainly seen it invoked here and there, usually with good-faith due diligence to find renewals.
Sometimes it seems like what we need is a quasi-intelligent "PD-old" template - you plug in the known variables, date created and date published and author and country and so on, and it spits out "is therefore public domain because X and Y, under provision Z". Be horrific to maintain, though.
We have fairly complex templates similar to that, though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-EU-no_author_disclosure
There was, a long time ago, a big debate about some images such as:
"File:Max-Planck-und-Albert-Einstein.jpg"
There is a long history here, but none of it seems to have mattered once it reached Commons. There seems to have been no attempt in the Commons deletion debate to look at the previous discussions or anything.
* 18:04, 1 August 2007 Nv8200p (Talk | contribs | block) deleted "File:Max-Planck-und-Albert-Einstein.jpg" (Remove image per WP:IFD) (restore) * 00:45, 7 August 2007 Xoloz (Talk | contribs | block) restored "File:Max-Planck-und-Albert-Einstein.jpg" (11 revision(s) and 1 file(s) restored: Restored by DRV, to be relisted at IfD at editorial option) * 03:50, 23 November 2007 Jennavecia (Talk | contribs | block) deleted "File:Max-Planck-und-Albert-Einstein.jpg" (Speedy deleted per (CSD i8), was an image available as a bit-for-bit identical copy on the Wikimedia Commons. using TW) (restore)
The debates at the time on en-Wikipedia were:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2007_Ju... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_August_2
But a year later we have this:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Image:Max-Planck...
Anyone here know what should be happening with this image?
Carcharoth
Just a note from a very occasional reader: one of the apparently final determinants made by User:Nv8200p before he deleted the Einstein-Planck images is that Corbis claims it as one of theirs, thus it must be copyrighted. I have found over the years that Corbis has many, many US-government produced images in its catalog that they claim they own the copyright on. They also have many images that are so old that they cannot possibly be still copyrighted (images published first in the early 19th century, for example). I once e-mailed them about this and the person who e-mailed me back said that they were claiming the copyright on the _scans_, not the images themselves.
Which is of dubious legal validity, as all of on here know.
So just a head's up on that. Corbis has no real problem in overextending their copyright claims to things that we would probably not agree with based on our own copyright policies and the goals of a free encyclopedia. As we all know, there is virtually no risk to Corbis for doing so as long as they don't sue anybody for these dubious claims (as the US Copyright Office does not seem to prosecute false copyright claims of this nature). Just because it is in a Corbis catalog does not mean it is not actually public domain -- Corbis is not careful about these things.
FF
2009/1/12 Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com
On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 10:03 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:The debates at the time on en-Wikipedia were:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2007_Ju... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_August_2
But a year later we have this:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Image:Max-Planck...
Anyone here know what should be happening with this image?
Carcharoth _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Fastfission wrote:
Just a note from a very occasional reader: one of the apparently final determinants made by User:Nv8200p before he deleted the Einstein-Planck images is that Corbis claims it as one of theirs, thus it must be copyrighted. I have found over the years that Corbis has many, many US-government produced images in its catalog that they claim they own the copyright on. They also have many images that are so old that they cannot possibly be still copyrighted (images published first in the early 19th century, for example). I once e-mailed them about this and the person who e-mailed me back said that they were claiming the copyright on the _scans_, not the images themselves.
Which is of dubious legal validity, as all of on here know.
So just a head's up on that. Corbis has no real problem in overextending their copyright claims to things that we would probably not agree with based on our own copyright policies and the goals of a free encyclopedia. As we all know, there is virtually no risk to Corbis for doing so as long as they don't sue anybody for these dubious claims (as the US Copyright Office does not seem to prosecute false copyright claims of this nature). Just because it is in a Corbis catalog does not mean it is not actually public domain -- Corbis is not careful about these things.
Corbis does it because it can. The comment about having copyright on the scans works because very few people are willing and able to challenge bullshit.
Some of the copyrights claimed by Corbis may be on material bought from another archive which in turn acquired them from a defunct newspaper. The newspaper would have had the rights to photographs which were works for hire, but it may also have used material from free-lance photographers who did not transfer copyrights. Who will have the energy to follow the paper trail?
Ec
Andrew Gray wrote:
[posted to commons-l and wikien-l; someone may want to forward it to wikisource-l, perhaps?]
I've just run across this article, which might be of use in helping those who work on the eternal problem of determining whether or not a given 20th-century work is in copyright in the US.
In other words, location of first publication is important. Systemic bias ahoy!
Andrew Gray wrote:
[posted to commons-l and wikien-l; someone may want to forward it to wikisource-l, perhaps?]
I've just run across this article, which might be of use in helping those who work on the eternal problem of determining whether or not a given 20th-century work is in copyright in the US.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july08/hirtle/07hirtle.html
Copyright Renewal, Copyright Restoration, and the Difficulty of Determining Copyright Status - Peter B. Hirtle, Cornell University
D-Lib Magazine, July/August 2008 Volume 14 Number 7/8
"It has long been assumed that most of the works published from 1923 to 1964 in the US are currently in the public domain. Both non-profit and commercial digital libraries have dreamed of making this material available. Most programs have recognized as well that the restoration of US copyright in foreign works in 1996 has made it impossible for them to offer to the public the full text of most foreign works. What has been overlooked up to now is the difficulty that copyright restoration has created for anyone trying to determine if a work published in the United States is still protected by copyright. This paper discusses the impact that copyright restoration of foreign works has had on US copyright status investigations, and offers some new steps that users must follow in order to investigate the copyright status in the US of any work. It argues that copyright restoration has made it almost impossible to determine with certainty whether a book published in the United States after 1922 and before 1964 is in the public domain. Digital libraries that wish to offer books from this period do so at some risk."
The minefield is even murkier than we thought, it seems.
The unabridged version is at http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/bitstream/1813/10884/6/Copyright_renewal...
The trimming was all from the segment on "Risk management and copyright restoration" We really *never* can be sure about the copyright status of anything, and a risk management approach may be preferable.
Ec