Yann Forget wrote:

Hi,

Following the discussion about stamp copyright status on Commons (and many other discussions elsewhere), I thing we need better guidelines for works without unknown or unreachable author(s). This issue keeps coming back every now and then, takes our time and fustrates users because no clear solution is in sight.

So I think we should define a general policy about these works without getting paranoid about it. They are numerous works whom the author is not known or can't ever be reached. This affects all projects, but especially Commons and Wikisource. This concerns only "minor" works. If the work is famous, then the copyright owner is known, so the question doesn't arise.

"Famous" and "minor" are not opposites. There are plenty of major works that aren't famous at all.

I will take examples to show what kind works I am talking about. According to people I had on the phone from the French Postage Stamp Museum (Musée de la Poste), the copyright for French postage stamps belongs to the drawer and the engraver. So according to them, we have to inquire about each drawer and engraver for these stamps. They are hundreds of unknown artists for French stamps only and this is obviously not a workable solution.

I think that stamps are a special case. It doesn't seem right that you would need to deal with the designer for every stamp just to publish a picture of the stamp. Using such pictures in an encyclopedia is a great example of fair use. I checked the copyright notice of an Yvert catalogue, and there was no mention there whatever of the copyrights on individual stamps, nor even is there a mention of who designed the stamps. A similar situation persists with Scott, Gibbons and Michel. I find it hard to believe that any of these publications would be running around contacting every designer for permission to reproduce his stamp. Surely some designers would object but we see no holes in what the catalogues list. These publishers have too much invested in their catalogues to be playing copyright games. We only need to know what rules they are following.

See these stamps from 1917 to 1936: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Jeux_Olympiques_1924.jpg http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:PA_Marseille_rouge.jpg http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:PA_Paris_violet.jpg http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Orphelins_5plus5.jpg This is not even the worst case, the name of the author is readable. I tried to find more about them without success. Then there are many others where the name of the author is not even known.

Most of this may be easier to find than you think. Specialized books about the stamps of a country are quite good about this subject. I have an obscenely large personal philatelic library, but I can't say for now whether I have the kind of material that you seek for France. A lot of it is in periodicals for which I have no index.

As a workable solution, I propose something like: If the drawer and the engraver are unknown or unreachable, and the work is more than X years old (70 ? 50 ?), this is similar to anonymous work, so we can publish it. So we still have to decide what are the criterias for considering the copyright owners unreachable or unknown, but I think an agreement could be reached about this.

Stamps aside, a policy of this sort would be good, but we still have people who believe in strict interpretations of the law no matter how foolish the result. I'm looking forward to the US Copyright Office report on orphan works. That would fit nicely with this.

Ec