[Foundation-l] Copyright terms, again - Wikimedia-l

Thomas Dalton

10 Nov 10 Nov

7:33 p.m.

The servers are in the US and owned by a US organisation which has minimal overseas assets, which means US law is pretty much the only one that applies. If you want people in Serbia to be able to re-use the content, though, you need to make sure it satisfies Serbian law too. That means you need to make sure it satisfies whichever is the more restrictive in any given situation. I agree that US copyright law is a mess, but we have no choice about following it. If someone wanted to sue the WMF over copyright infringement, they would do it in the US, since the US clearly has jurisdiction and the WMF has lots of seizable assets there. Other countries may also have jurisdiction, but there isn't much point suing someone in a court that can't get hold of any of their assets. On 10 November 2010 15:42, Milos Rancic <millosh(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

We are discussing now at WM RS list about treating copyright terms for Serbian authors. Terms are: * Previous situation was 50 years after author's death. * The new copyright term in Serbia came in 2004, introducing 70 years after author's death. * That means that works which authors died in 1953 or before is something like CC-BY (as in any continental jurisdiction). So, according to Serbian copyright law, we are able to include those works in Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. However, it is mentioned that it doesn't include anything in US. However, I think that it is irrational, as I can't imagine that someone sues for copyright infringement in US for work made in some other country. However, I am fully sure that US legal system *is* irrational in relation to the copyright. May someone make it clear to us? _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Reply

Andre Engels

8:30 p.m.

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 7:01 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

My precise question is: Does US law follow local copyright laws in relation to the works published locally and by authors with local citizenship? Or not?

No, many countries apply the 'law of shorter term' (that is, works from other countries are under copyright only if they are under copyright (by time) in both countries, but the United States does not. However, if a work was already out of copyright in its homeland on January 1, 1996, it is free of copyright in the United States as well. -- André Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com

Reply

Nathan

8:03 p.m.

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

The servers are in the US and owned by a US organisation which has minimal overseas assets, which means US law is pretty much the only one that applies. If you want people in Serbia to be able to re-use the content, though, you need to make sure it satisfies Serbian law too. That means you need to make sure it satisfies whichever is the more restrictive in any given situation. I agree that US copyright law is a mess, but we have no choice about following it. If someone wanted to sue the WMF over copyright infringement, they would do it in the US, since the US clearly has jurisdiction and the WMF has lots of seizable assets there. Other countries may also have jurisdiction, but there isn't much point suing someone in a court that can't get hold of any of their assets.

I'm not sure this is a direct answer to his question, and it also confuses the issue of jurisdiction and liability; while the WMF may be "judgment proof" in Serbia, users in Serbia are not. Depending on Serbian law, users could be liable in both Serbia and the United States for infringement. I don't spend much time on Commons, but I think the Commons answer to this question is to apply the most restrictive set of copyright laws - in this case, between Serbian and U.S. law. If something is PD in Serbia but not in the U.S., then it is not considered PD for our purposes. ~Nathan

Reply

Michael Snow

9:51 p.m.

On 11/10/2010 11:27 AM, Andrea Zanni wrote:

...

2010/11/10 Milos Rancic<millosh(a)gmail.com>

We are discussing now at WM RS list about treating copyright terms for Serbian authors. Terms are: * Previous situation was 50 years after author's death. * The new copyright term in Serbia came in 2004, introducing 70 years after author's death. * That means that works which authors died in 1953 or before is something like CC-BY (as in any continental jurisdiction).

Sorry for nitpicking, but I don't understand the 1953. If you have 50 years, it should be 1960 (or 1959, if it is 50+1) As well, if you have 70 years, it should be 1940 (or 1939, if it is 70+1, and this is the case of most european countries I think). Probably there's something related to the year of the new law coming in (2004), but I do not understand.

Presumably the copyright extension only applied to works still subject to copyright when it took effect. Therefore, authors who died in 1953 would have had their Serbian copyrights expire before 2004, based on a "life-plus-50-years" term, and the works of authors who died in 1954 would remain under copyright because the "life-plus-70-years" term took effect in 2004 before their Serbian copyrights expired. So basically no additional copyrights will expire for another 14 years. Copyright extension has generally worked to create a massive dead period during which no works are added to the public domain. It's for similar reasons, albeit with a more complicated transition in its copyright regime, that the public domain in the US has been stuck at works created before 1923 for ages now. --Michael Snow

Reply

Milos Rancic

9:53 p.m.

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 20:27, Andrea Zanni <zanni.andrea84(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

2010/11/10 Milos Rancic <millosh(a)gmail.com>

We are discussing now at WM RS list about treating copyright terms for Serbian authors. Terms are: * Previous situation was 50 years after author's death. * The new copyright term in Serbia came in 2004, introducing 70 years after author's death. * That means that works which authors died in 1953 or before is something like CC-BY (as in any continental jurisdiction).

Sorry for nitpicking, but I don't understand the 1953. If you have 50 years, it should be 1960 (or 1959, if it is 50+1) As well, if you have 70 years, it should be 1940 (or 1939, if it is 70+1, and this is the case of most european countries I think). Probably there's something related to the year of the new law coming in (2004), but I do not understand.

Present law is from 2004, which has changed term from 50 to 70 years after death of the author. At that moment everything which was PD is still PD. After that, 70 years term is in power. That means that if author died 1953 or earlier, it is PD. Otherwise, we would need to wait until 2023 for those works.

Reply