[Commons-l] Old works in public domain vs. US Copyright Law

[Michael N Maggs]

A very good idea.

Some servers in the UK would allow us to keep many images which are 
allowable under the UK's broad FOP provisions, but which are not allowed 
in the US.  Not only public buildings but also 3D 'works of artistic 
craftsmanship' (eg any sort of 3D toy) which are on permanent display in 
an area to which the public have access (even on private property). A 
very nice way to get hold of legal photos of Barbie Dolls and the like. 
There are quite a few useful toy museums here ...

Michael Maggs


Luiz Augusto wrote:
> I'm on a similar problem at the Portuguese Wikisource due to the 
> [[:m:American non-acceptance of the rule of the shorter term]] (see on [1]).
> 
> I've proposed in a private e-mail to Anthere (not yet replied, I think 
> that she is busy in others subjects) to create a set of wikis 
> <lang>.non- us.wikisource.org <http://us.wikisource.org> hosted outside 
> of the United States ({{derivative}} from the Debian non-us software 
> repository [2]) to host works PD-old worldwide but copyrighted in the 
> USA. Can a non-us Commons media repository help on preventing to delete 
> thousands of images?
> 
> foundation-l have a discussion started today based on the same problem: [3]
> 
> [1] 
> http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Scriptorium#PD-old_non-us..._I.27m_confused 
> <http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Scriptorium#PD-old_non-us..._I.27m_confused>
> 
> [2] http://www.debian.org/mirror/list-non-US
> 
> [3] 
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-April/029741.html 
> <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-April/029741.html>
>