[Foundation-l] [Wikimediauk-l] [Fwd: Royal Society Digital Journal Archive]

Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax at gmail.com
Wed Sep 27 05:42:56 UTC 2006


geni wrote:
> On 9/26/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> ... so are we allowed to upload them to Commons while we're waiting?
>>
> 
> wikisource would be more logical for the most part. You should be sure
> something is public domain where you are and in theUS before uploading
> though and in the UK currently caselaw that I know about says it
> isn't.
> 

Yes, Wikisource is the more appropriate place for the /transcribed/
journals; my question was whether we could upload the PDFs to Commons
since they're media files.

However I'm hesitant to act without clarification about the copyright
status; is a scan of a journal article written in 1665 eligible for
copyright? Several things come to mind here:

1. Who was the copyright holder, the author or the journal?
2. If it's the author, they're all long dead so {{PD-old}} applies
3. Per Bridgeman v. Corel, a "slavish copy" of a work in the public
domain creates no new copyright.
4. Bridgeman made a big fuss out of the fact that under UK law, the
reproductions /would/ be protected. The court's response was:

"While the Court's conclusion as to the law governing copyrightability
renders the point moot, the Court is persuaded that plaintiff's
copyright claim would fail even if the governing law were that of the
United Kingdom."

5. I'm in Australia, downloading something from the United Kingdom, and
uploading it to a server in the United States. Since there are
conflicting copyright laws at work here, which one applies?

-- 
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
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