Yes we are coming up to January 1st when things go public domain in the UK. I understand there will be a bit of a party. Fireworks and suchlike.
My list of works that go PD is a bit short at the moment and mostly focused on the your paintings thing but I hope to expand it a bit before the new year:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Geni/1941_deaths
Hi Geni & all,
When WMUK's promoted public domain day in the past, we've run into problems with explaining what this actually means for Wikimedia - since all of the projects follow US copyright law, nothing seems to change in terms of what content the Wikimedia projects can host and/or reuse. The only change that this seems to make is that UK residents can legally upload content that's also outside of US copyright law, rather than risking infringing UK copyright by doing so - which is a considerably harder point to get across to people.
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
On 31 Oct 2011, at 12:37, geni wrote:
Yes we are coming up to January 1st when things go public domain in the UK. I understand there will be a bit of a party. Fireworks and suchlike.
My list of works that go PD is a bit short at the moment and mostly focused on the your paintings thing but I hope to expand it a bit before the new year:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Geni/1941_deaths
-- geni
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
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.
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.
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.
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
On 31 October 2011 16:27, Deryck Chan deryckchan@gmail.com wrote:
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.
The language may be confusing here, "moral rights" are specific legal copyright law rights which one may defend in court in order to gain compensation. Examples include the right of attribution even though the work is free to reuse. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights_(copyright_law). In this case Wikimedia does take a stance on moral rights as we see they are maintained in the license terms.
Cheers, Fae
On 31 October 2011 16:27, Deryck Chan deryckchan@gmail.com wrote:
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.
I wouldn't avoid it but I might avoid drawing attention to the fact I'm doing it.
On 31 October 2011 15:49, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
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.
It's a legal issue, but *only* regarding French authors (at least, I'm not immediately aware of any other countries which do the same thing). As part of a general French law regarding those killed or injured in wartime (and their dependents), authorial copyrights are extended by an additional thirty years in these cases, from seventy years after death to a hundred years after death. (A side-effect of this is that the *first* cases will become PD in a few years - 1 January 2015 for those killed during 1914.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mort_pour_la_France
French law also has an odd caveat for works which were in copyright during the two world wars; the periods of these wars are not counted for calculating expiry dates, thus meaning that some works which were still in copyright in 1939, and would have expired over the next few years, will not do so for a bit longer. Per our article, this only applies for musical works - a court recently annulled it for most works - so we can just omit French composers from our calculations!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_France
On 31 October 2011 15:49, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
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.
Legal reasons are limited to France. Its mostly a PR thing. Don't want the risk of someone starting a campaign to extend copyright because someone got bombed during WW2.
On 31 October 2011 12:37, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Yes we are coming up to January 1st when things go public domain in the UK. I understand there will be a bit of a party. Fireworks and suchlike.
My list of works that go PD is a bit short at the moment and mostly focused on the your paintings thing but I hope to expand it a bit before the new year:
The most prominent British writer to die in 1941 was Virginia Woolf, so no doubt we'll see a spate of reprints by about March. Others include Hugh Walpole (prolific but mostly forgotten), P. C. Wren ("Beau Geste"), A. G. Macdonell ("England, Their England"), H. E. Marshall ("Our Island Story").
Non-fiction writers include Sir James George Frazer ("The Golden Bough") and Evelyn Underhill (a major writer on Christian mysticism).
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On 31/10/11 13:45, Andrew Gray wrote:
On 31 October 2011 12:37, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The most prominent British writer to die in 1941 was Virginia Woolf, so no doubt we'll see a spate of reprints by about March. Others include Hugh Walpole (prolific but mostly forgotten), P. C. Wren ("Beau Geste"), A. G. Macdonell ("England, Their England"), H. E. Marshall ("Our Island Story").
Just added my great grandfather, Max Plowman ("A Subletern on the Somme") to the list. :D
The copyrights is still in the family, and this has largely zero relevance to wikimedia, but I'm still happy his works are going public domain. :D
On 31 October 2011 17:19, Tim Dobson lists@tdobson.net wrote:
Just added my great grandfather, Max Plowman ("A Subletern on the Somme") to the list. :D
Interesting - I started the article about him in 2008. There was some spat
over Plowman and Orwell's line on pacifism, so I've just looked at it and the ODNB version. Fairly different (and no Orwell at all in the ODNB, something about William Blake instead). Could be a fair amount of work to do, and there are redlinks, which I always like to see.
Charles
On 31 October 2011 19:25, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
On 31 October 2011 17:19, Tim Dobson lists@tdobson.net wrote:
Just added my great grandfather, Max Plowman ("A Subletern on the Somme") to the list. :D
Interesting - I started the article about him in 2008. There was some spat over Plowman and Orwell's line on pacifism, so I've just looked at it and the ODNB version. Fairly different (and no Orwell at all in the ODNB, something about William Blake instead). Could be a fair amount of work to do, and there are redlinks, which I always like to see. Charles
In this case I think they are mostly minor artists who would be hard to write articles on.
On 31 October 2011 20:42, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 31 October 2011 19:25, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
On 31 October 2011 17:19, Tim Dobson lists@tdobson.net wrote:
Just added my great grandfather, Max Plowman ("A Subletern on the Somme") to the list. :D
Interesting - I started the article about him in 2008. There was some
spat
over Plowman and Orwell's line on pacifism, so I've just looked at it and the ODNB version. Fairly different (and no Orwell at all in the ODNB, something about William Blake instead). Could be a fair amount of work to do, and there are redlinks, which I always like to see. Charles
In this case I think they are mostly minor artists who would be hard to write articles on.
Oh, but Richard Heron Ward is namechecked in a footnote to [[John
Hospers]]'s classic *Introduction to Philosophical Analysis* in relation to his early LSD trips. Drugs, pacifism, US libertarian, I don't understand why the article doesn't exist already.
Charles
On 31 October 2011 13:45, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
The most prominent British writer to die in 1941 was Virginia Woolf, so no doubt we'll see a spate of reprints by about March. Others include Hugh Walpole (prolific but mostly forgotten), P. C. Wren ("Beau Geste"), A. G. Macdonell ("England, Their England"), H. E. Marshall ("Our Island Story").
Following on from this, I tried skimming some other countries, and got very excited when I noticed Tagore died in 1941, but on examination he's in the public domain already - India is life + 60.
Japan, Canada and New Zealand are life + 50, but I don't immediately see any exciting cases who died in 1961; Australia is in the process of transitioning from life + 50 to life + 70, and as a result no-one new will fall into the public domain this year. France is best left aside as discussed above; Germany is life + 70, which means Emanuel Lasker's books on chess will become PD, along with a handful of minor novelists.
On 31 October 2011 12:37, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Yes we are coming up to January 1st when things go public domain in the UK. I understand there will be a bit of a party. Fireworks and suchlike.
My list of works that go PD is a bit short at the moment and mostly focused on the your paintings thing but I hope to expand it a bit before the new year:
There is/was a basic Magnus Manske tool that searched interwiki to find authors who met the (death year)+X criterion for the first time in 2012 or whenever, according to jurisdiction.
To reply to both this mail and Mike's: WMUK missed participation in the business of PDD on New Year's Day 2011; but with a longer lead time for considering what to do that doesn't have to be the case for 2012. There is http://www.publicdomainday.org/ and the chapter ought to find out who is behind that, in concrete terms I think (point 1).
Point 2 is that international copyright law makes the whole business a remarkably tiresome exposition; but there is no reason at all not to document it and have a tool such as Magnus's to demonstrate some aspects of it (illustrating both the global reach of the issue, depending on what languages you read, and the strength of WP as a source of the required data). This is for general interest in terms of the author's life + criterion. There could be press interest in a well-packaged feature proposal about this area, but it would have to be put together in November, really. NB the media interest is not about the wrinkles of free content, but about filling space with something showing originality.
Point 3: American PD. The 2010 experience showed those who participated in the Telegraph story how tight the constraints are for anything to fall into the public domain in the USA. Take this as a challenge, though. The more lawyer-like amongst us could be well employed in researching the very restricted class of new PD material, to see what can be found. I certainly think, at the more specialist end of the market for discussion about free content, this is a worthy little project.
Charles
On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 1:58 PM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
On 31 October 2011 12:37, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Yes we are coming up to January 1st when things go public domain in the UK. I understand there will be a bit of a party. Fireworks and suchlike.
My list of works that go PD is a bit short at the moment and mostly focused on the your paintings thing but I hope to expand it a bit before the new year:
There is/was a basic Magnus Manske tool that searched interwiki to find authors who met the (death year)+X criterion for the first time in 2012 or whenever, according to jurisdiction.
That would be: http://toolserver.org/~magnus/PDator.php
Not sure if it's still working, especially with the current poor state of the toolserver (I know, help is on the way...)
Magnus
wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org