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 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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