On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 12:27 PM, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: Add Switzerland to these two...(are there really no others?). In Switzerland "laws, decrees, international treaties, means of currency, decisions, protocols and reports by public authorities, patents and published patent applications" are all explicitly exempt from copyright. Michael -- Michael Bimmler mbimmler(a)gmail.com

On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 1:15 PM, Andre Engels <andreengels(a)gmail.com> wrote: German copyright law, §5, section 1. Laws and court rulings are in the public domain. Mathias

geni wrote: I don't think that is true. For what I precisely know, in France published laws are public domain. If some texts are public domain but not easily available, they could be hosted on Wikisource. Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres

On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 8:27 PM, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: We have projects to cater for this: Commons and Wikisource projects. Both accept legal documents in scans and text respectively. On Wikisource we have the Proofread Page extension, so that we can transcribe the text of documents. Here are a few relevant transcription projects: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:H.R._Rep._No._94-1476 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:United_States_Reports,_Volume_209.djvu http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:The_Records_of_the_Federal_Convention_o… http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:California_State_Constitution_of_1879.d… http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Carter_Presidential_Directive_59,_Nucle… http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Brundtland_Report Where we dont have images, all Wikisource projects except the German project accept text without images, such as Azeri copyright law: http://az.wikisource.org/wiki/M%C3%BC%C9%99lliflik_h%C3%BCququ_v%C9%99_%C9%… Wikisource also accepts translations, so the laws can be translated into other languages so that everyone can readily understand the laws of other nations. It would be fantastic if we had free English translations of the relevant copyright laws of all nations -- Commons would find that they can figure out the copyright status a lot easier if they had the actual texts at their disposal. This is true for most countries. Even the U.S. There are a number of transcription projects on Wikisource for U.S. court decisions, Public Laws, older editions of Constitutions, etc. where the text is not otherwise available online _at all_. Absurd. Most recently written copyright laws are very clear that laws and judicial opinions are in the public domain. add Israel and Azerbaijan to the growing list appearing in this thread. Wikisource accepts the law of _all_ countries, as it is hosted in the U.S., and the copyright office has explicitly said that anyone wanting to register a legal document for copyright purposes will need to take them to the supreme court in order to obtain a copyright. See http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Template:PD-GovEdict UK, Canada and Australia are the only three I can quickly think of where crown copyright is asserted over public laws, however the crown provides simple to fulfil reuse requirements that are essentially in place to prevent misuse. On Wikisource we have recently restored the recent laws of these nations on the assumption that U.S. law prevails while the servers are located in the U.S. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Proposed_deletions/Archives/2008-0… It would be great to have more legal opinions given on this matter; esp. from the WMF. -- John Vandenberg

2008/9/30 David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>om>: It looks like an NC license: Section 182A 182A Copyright in statutory instruments and judgments etc. (1) The copyright, including any prerogative right or privilege of the Crown in the nature of copyright, in a prescribed work is not infringed by the making, by reprographic reproduction, of one copy of the whole or of a part of that work by or on behalf of a person and for a particular purpose. (2) Subsection (1) does not apply to the making, by reprographic reproduction, of a copy of the whole or a part of the work, where a charge is made for making and supplying that copy, unless the amount of the charge does not exceed the cost of making and supplying that copy. (3) In subsection (1), a prescribed work means: (a) an Act or State Act, an enactment of the legislature of a Territory or an instrument (including an Ordinance or a rule, regulation or by-law) made under an Act, a State Act or such an enactment; (b) a judgment, order or award of a Federal court or of a court of a State or Territory; (c) a judgment, order or award of a Tribunal (not being a court) established by or under an Act or other enactment of the Commonwealth, a State or a Territory; (d) reasons for a decision of a court referred to in paragraph (b), or of a Tribunal referred to in paragraph (c), given by the court or by the Tribunal; or (e) reasons given by a Justice, Judge or other member of a court referred to in paragraph (b), or of a member of a Tribunal referred to in paragraph (c), for a decision given by him or her either as the sole member, or as one of the members, of the court or Tribunal. -- geni

In the US, actual court decisions and statutes are in the public domain, according to a seminal case called Wheaton v. Peters decided in the early nineteenth century. (Wheaton and Peters were two of the early Reporters of Decisions for the U.S. Supreme Court.) There is a host of caselaw dealing with questions such as whether the page citations for decisions are copyrightable and whether using them is fair use. There are more recent disputes concerning whether private companies may assist munipalities in codifying their ordinances in return for an assignment of copyrightability on the collection. There is thus an ample body of free material that we could republish if we chose to. However, Findlaw and similar sites are doing a reasonably good job of making caselaw and statutes available, so I don't know that there is a role here for Wikimedia at least regarding the law of the United States. Newyorkbrad On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 1:06 PM, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 5:01 AM, Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) <newyorkbrad(a)gmail.com> wrote: While not complete yet, Title 17 of the USC on Wikisource is an example of how we _can_ do a better job. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Code/Title_17 It is complimented by many of the texts of the laws as they were enacted.. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/U.S._Public_Law_105-80 ... and a house report which is often referred to to understand the spirit of the changes that were made. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:H.R._Rep._No._94-1476 -- John

geni wrote: Not okay. This is just absurd. It is ludicrous to assume that every country which is based on English law, will have jumped over the cliff after it, and balked from safeguarding itself from copyright silliness. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 7:42 AM, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: Australia updated its copyright laws long ago, but decided to keep crown protection of acts of the government. We have Wikipedia articles on these topics ... -- John

John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com>om>: A year or so ago, I had the chance to speak briefly with someone who'd been responsible for the Statute Law Database, and asked him about the publication of older (now repealed) legislation. His answer was that they do indeed plan to do so, but as it's of mainly historic interest it'll be some time. So we will get the originals, eventually... (I asked because I had been roughing out a plan for a project to do just this. If they're going to do it, it seemed excessive for me to...) -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_systems#Common_law It looks like the Republic of Ireland and parts of the US legal system are non-commonwealth countries with English-based law. They were both in the British Empire at one point, though. Nowhere else in that list jumps out at me as being non-commonwealth, although I don't pretend to have memorised a complete membership list.

2008/9/30 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com>om>: No a bunch left when they became republics. India for example. Technically the Philippines via the US. But much of what wasn't nabbed by Britain was acquired by other Europeans or later the soviets. Not sure what ethiopian law is based on these days. -- geni

2008/10/1 Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) <newyorkbrad(a)gmail.com>om>: You learn something every day! We even have an article on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_republic

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 8:12 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com> wrote: Eygpt was granted independence in 1922. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Egyptian_Copyright_Law South Africa became a republic in 1961. More can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Nations#Termination_of_members… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Commonwealth_of_Nations Perhaps, however the 1911 Copyright Act was primarily about divesting a measured amount of British power over the colonies. See they still wanted the colonies to pay their copyright dues, so they didnt let them enact any law ... the colonies still had to respect copyright, and this was at a time when international copyright was first being agreed upon. The UK signed the Berne Convention in 1887, the 1911 copyright act was when much of it was enacted, but large parts only came into force with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of _1988_, 100 years later. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literar… http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and… -- John Vandenberg