I won't deliberately avoid using works whose copyright will expire next year due to the author dying in the war in 1941. That's a moral right, not copyright. Wikimedia shouldn't take sides on moral right issues. On Oct 31, 2011 3:49 PM, "Thomas Dalton" thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 31 October 2011 15:14, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 31 October 2011 12:59, Michael Peel michael.peel@wikimedia.org.uk
wrote:
I guess we could say "yay, the content's now public domain in the UK -
please could the US change its laws so that it's also public >domain in the US so we can use it on Wikimedia", but I'm not sure that the news would reach the right audiences to say that...
Any ideas?
Thanks, Mike
A list of pre-1923 works by authored who died in 1941 can be provided. My main worry is avoiding those who died as a result of enemy action during WW2.
Do we need to avoid them for some special legal reason or just because we don't feel comfortable saying "Yay! This brilliant author got shot in the head defending his country 70 years ago so we can now copy his books with paying for them!"? If it's the latter, then we can probably word things sufficiently delicately.
I think we can do some good work building up public awareness of the public domain without getting into the complicated aspects of how it applies to Wikipedia. I would suggest just ignoring Wikipedia (apart from introducing ourselves) and talking about PD in general terms.
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