Hi all,
As most of you know, the Indian
copyright law says that a book gets relieved of copyright after 60 years
from the author's death. But this is not the case with US Law. As given
here
, of all the works published outside US, only those published before
1923 are directly in the public domain. The ones published between 1923
and 1977 without compliance to the US formalities will be in the public
domain only if they are in the public domain in their source country as
of 1 January 1996. Almost all the other categories of published works
will not be in the public domain until 95 years after publishing.
This
induces a confusion and when looked in a legal perspective, most of the
books in Indian Wikisources, are still not in public domain and hence
must be removed. This makes a huge negative impact on the hard work done
by contributors. Their contributions are wasted which may cause them to
stop contributing. In short, this may be a negative impact on
Wikimedia's image in the society.
,
so that the data we upload is stored under Indian Laws. Can Wikimedia
India Chapter do anything on this? We can plan and conduct a fundraiser
in India to raise money for the hosting expenses.