[Foundation-l] Copyright terms, again

[Thomas Dalton]

The servers are in the US and owned by a US organisation which has
minimal overseas assets, which means US law is pretty much the only
one that applies. If you want people in Serbia to be able to re-use
the content, though, you need to make sure it satisfies Serbian law
too. That means you need to make sure it satisfies whichever is the
more restrictive in any given situation.

I agree that US copyright law is a mess, but we have no choice about
following it. If someone wanted to sue the WMF over copyright
infringement, they would do it in the US, since the US clearly has
jurisdiction and the WMF has lots of seizable assets there. Other
countries may also have jurisdiction, but there isn't much point suing
someone in a court that can't get hold of any of their assets.

On 10 November 2010 15:42, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> We are discussing now at WM RS list about treating copyright terms for
> Serbian authors.
>
> Terms are:
> * Previous situation was 50 years after author's death.
> * The new copyright term in Serbia came in 2004, introducing 70 years
> after author's death.
> * That means that works which authors died in 1953 or before is
> something like CC-BY (as in any continental jurisdiction).
>
> So, according to Serbian copyright law, we are able to include those
> works in Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.
>
> However, it is mentioned that it doesn't include anything in US.
> However, I think that it is irrational, as I can't imagine that
> someone sues for copyright infringement in US for work made in some
> other country. However, I am fully sure that US legal system *is*
> irrational in relation to the copyright.
>
> May someone make it clear to us?
>
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