[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Time to Seek Professional Lawyers Advice?

[Ray Saintonge]

David Gerard wrote:

>On 04/09/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Just what *is* the status of {{PD-Soviet}}? Is it bogus or not? Having
>>>a bunch of wiki users vote on legal status doesn't strike me as
>>>legally sound ...
>>>      
>>>
>>IMO, as an educated layman, {{PD-Soviet}} is bogus.
>>    
>>
>It seems a little ... odd. But the educated layman argument is another
>wiki user vote. I'm asking what the Foundation's actual stated policy
>on whether they're leaving themselves open to this or not is. That is,
>a legal opinion, and not just any legal opinion but *our* legal
>opinion. Hence asking on foundation-l.
>
>(And that would suggest writing to juriwiki-l, but that unfortunately
>seems to be a write-only list in practice.)
>
I also consider {{PD-Soviet}} suspect, despite my own more generally 
aggressive views on matters of copyright.  In the absence of a clearly 
expressed difference using the Berne Convention standards when you have 
no reliable information about the country's laws is a good starting 
point.  If soviet era copyright laws are to be ignored the burden of 
proof should be on the person trying to make this argument in relation 
to a specific piece of work.

Ec