[Commons-l] 100 years old images

[Bryan Tong Minh]

On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 12:30 PM, Rama Neko <ramaneko at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> AFAIK most countries don't have such a paragraph. Germany has one but even
>> there
>> the heirs can say it's the picture of their ancestor and then the 70 years
>> p.m.a. applies.
>
> No. "Anonymous", is this sense, has a precise meaning. It does only not mean
> "we don't know the name of the author", it means that the author
> deliberately published the work without associating his name to the work.
> This cannot be changed even if the author is later identified, it is a
> choice made by the author.
>
It indeed a choice of the author, but a revocable one (at least in the
Netherlands): In The Netherlands an author can decide to deanonimize
within the 70 years after publication (Auteurswet 1912 artikel 38.3).
It is unclear whether this applies as well if the author is identified
after his death, but from the exact reading I would say that only the
author himself can decide to deanonimize himself.

Bryan