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

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 4/27/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 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 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?
>
> That is a *brilliant* idea. Yes, please, definitely.

No, it's a completely misguided idea. I'll break it down a simple bullet points:

1) The WMF is a US based non-profit. Its activities are constrained by
US law. Period.

2) Because of Uruguay Round and other international treaties, many
works which are widely believed to only be copyrighted in jurisdiction
X have copyrights which are enforceable everywhere. The idea that you
can move to escape a local copyright is usually incorrect.

3) All but one (NTT) transit-free ISP is a US corporation, and all
international Internet providers do substantial business in the US, as
such, all are in a position where they would need to comply with a US
court order to refuse to carry traffic from a site breaking US law.
It's generally misguided to think that you can escape US regulation of
anything available to the US by simply moving equipment.

4) By establishing additional operations in another country, the
Wikimedia Foundation would risk subjecting itself to that laws of that
country. US law is very favorable to our activities, the laws of many
other nations not nearly so.


If you can actually come up with a sizable body of material which
could be legally distributed from someplace with decent connectivity
and a decent user base (keep in mind, you may end up blocked from all
places where your content isn't legal)... then by all means, grab a
copy of Mediawiki and setup a repository.  .. There is no need,
however, to have the Foundation involved in this.