[Foundation-l] Fwd: Copyright problems of images from India

[Ryan Kaldari]

Sorry, change everywhere I said "50" to "60". I can't keep this stuff
straight :P

On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 3:09 PM, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari at wikimedia.org>wrote:

> It's actually even worse than that. Due to the URAA, thousands of works
> which are verifiably public domain in India have had their copyright
> restored in the United States. For example, all of the works of Mahatma
> Gandhi are public domain in India (since he died over 50 years ago),
> however, most of them are copyrighted in the U.S. until at least 2055 (even
> if they were never published here). Thus in order to host the files on
> Commons we have to know all of the following:
> * Who authored the work?
> * What year did the author die?
> * Was the work ever published in the United States?
> ** If so, what year?
> ** Were copyright formalities followed?
> ** Was the copyright renewed? If so what year?
> * If not, did the author die after 1945 (1996 - 50 - 1)
> ** If so, what year was the work first published in India? Was it before
> 1923?
>
> If you can't answer all of these questions, your image might get deleted.
> Welcome to the insanity of U.S. copyright laws and treaties!
>
> Ryan Kaldari
>
>
> On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 1:26 PM, Tomasz Ganicz <polimerek at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> 2011/5/10 FT2 <ft2.wiki at gmail.com>:
>> > Why would the creator's citizenship, or the place of its creation, be
>> > decisive?  The works of an Indian citizen are granted copyright under US
>> law
>> > in the United States, on a parity with the works of a US or any other
>> > citizen, even if copyright has expired or still continues in India --
>> and it
>> > is US law that governs Wikimedia.
>> >
>>
>> Not really - because both US and India signed Berne, UCC Geneva, UCC
>> Paris, and TRIPS treaties - so (with some expections) the works
>> performed by non US-citizens in India are copyrighted in USA if they
>> are still under copyright in India.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
>> http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
>> http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
>> http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29&title=tomasz-ganicz
>>
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>
>