On Sun, 03 Oct 2004 18:05:43 -0700, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I personally believe that we could show a lot more courage in matters of copyright. There is a great deal of material out there that is technically protected by copyright, but which could be republished with impunity simply because there is no-one there to own the copyright. This does not mean that we go ahead and willy-nilly republish anything that strikes our fancy; that would be an act of stupidity. Some criteria would need to be followed. Anything that we would so republish (Wikisource being most affected) would need to state the possible problems right up front, and to state that we would remove the material if so requested by a person who establishes that he has the legal right to make such a request. If no-one makes a request for three years, the limitation period for civil copyright suits, the doctrine of laches may be applicable.
This is a fascinating suggestion. I have often grumbled to myself about the difficulties of identifying copyright status for untraceable or anonymous (but not explicitly licensed) content... of course there are issues of tagging / hiding questionable content so that reusers (in print, for instance) don't get bitten for using it.