@Srikant,
Sorry but I think not. US laws says differently. They are considering date of publishing. When the author died is not their concern. That is a major difference b/w Indian and US laws. Even if something is in free domain according to Indian laws, they have to satisfy some criteria to be in free domain in US, where they are stored. These criteria are mentioned in the pdf I shared by link.

Regards,
Balasankar C



2013/5/12 Srikanth Ramakrishnan <srik.ramk@wikimedia.in>
Hi, as far as my understanding goes, in nearly all cases, publication happens much before death of the author [unless published posthumously]. So, if the Author of the work died more than 60 years ago, the work will be in the Public Domain as per Indian laws. As I said, unless the work has been published after the authors death, it should ideally be in the Public Domain even as per US laws.

Am I understanding it correctly?


On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 10:20 PM, Balasankar Chelamattath <c.balasankar@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Srikanth,
I didnt quite understand what you meant by example.
An example for a work which is in public domain in India and not in US - Works by Changampuzha Krishnapillai ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changampuzha_Krishna_Pillai ).
He passed away in 1948, and hence it is 65 years after the author's death. So the books are copyright-free in India as of now (in pubic domain).
But they
  1. were not published before 1923
  2. were not in the public domain in India as of 1 January 1996 ( because criteria of "60 years after author's death" not satisfied on 1996)
Hence they are not in public domain according to US Laws. So we cannot store them in US servers.

The main problem is India considers copyright based on date of author's death and US does it based on date of publication.

Regards,
Balasankar C



2013/5/10 Srikanth Ramakrishnan <srik.ramk@wikimedia.in>
Hi Balasankar,
Can you point out specific instances and show when and where the book or publication was first published? If the works are still copyrighted in India, then they should be copyrighted in the US as well, generally speaking. The term India awards to creators is lesser than the one provided in the US under copyright laws.
Regards,


On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 10:31 PM, Balasankar Chelamattath <c.balasankar@gmail.com> wrote:
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.

The only solution to this problem is to host the servers of Indian Wikimedia services in India, 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.

Please consider this issue with maximum priority as it involves legal procedures and related headaches.

Regards,
Balasankar C


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Srikanth Ramakrishnan
Treasurer,
Wikimedia Chapter [India]


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Treasurer,
Wikimedia Chapter [India]


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