This leads to a legal question I've had for some time and comes up again and again regarding jurisidiction. Somebody has recently pointed out on another page that in Russia, banal (straightforward) photographs of 3-D objects do not apparently generate copyrights (whether this is true or not, I'm not sure, but let's just assume it is for the moment). In the US, such is not the case -- any 2-D image of a 3-D object is likely to generate its own copyright, however banal. So can we say that images of this sort that never leave Russia -- that is, are not republished anywhere else -- are in the public domain? I'm leaning towards "well, probably no," mainly because it would only seem to matter if we were being hosted on Russian servers and under Russian copyright laws. That is, if somebody sued someone over this in court here, they couldn't point to a Russian copyright law either way on this. On the other hand, would they even be granted standing? How much do international treaties affect us on this? WIPO, etc.? Obviously we have US laws to deal with, but who else? I know that one issue is re-use, but I think there's a more direct issue than that which I still find confusing. FF On 8/18/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 8/19/05, steve v <vertigosteve(a)yahoo.com> wrote: It's not their IP law that Jimbo was referring to, but the enforcement of their standards of official decency. I can't say that I pay much attention to it when I send packages of romance books to a friend of mine in Teheran, but still I have to wonder about the foreign-ness of a culture where Mills&Boon/Harlequin type romances are on the blacklist. -- Peter in Canberra

On 8/28/05, Laura Scudder <laurascudder(a)gmail.com> wrote: I doubt that too may little kids *want* to read Harlequins! Saucy newspaper ads are another matter, but even so, if the Iranian Government is spending the people's money on employing inspectors to check for brassiere adverts, then you've got to wonder about their priorities. However, I can't see Iranian moral crusaders being much of a threat to Wikipedia. Nor neoNazis, for that matter, though considering some of the recent posts exulting in vandalism of their Nazipedia, I'd say that they now have a powerful incentive and moral justification to mount an underhanded campaign of their own. -- Pete, awarding fifteen minutes of eternal fame to whoever coined that word "Nazipedia"

Alphax wrote: Sorry, Robert Klein used the term a couple years ago, in one of his periodic announcements of departure from WP, the complaint being that WP was allowing in too much anti-Jewish bias. I guess it's a good sign when all the partisans hate you equally... :-) Stan