[WikiEN-l] Copyright situation

[Ray Saintonge]

There is some ethical validity to respecting Iranian copyright law 
whether or not an obligation exists.  Iran's failure to participate in 
international treaties on the matter should not be a primary concern.  
Infringement of Iranian copyrights are still infringements even if US 
courts would not consider those laws.  Copyright terms in Iran (life + 
30) are still shorter than in most countries, so there would be no need 
to extend them beyond that time.  I'm not aware of any Iranian copyright 
provision regarding the depiction of women, and you admit that you don't 
know about that either.  That aspect seems like a red herring.

Ec

Fastfission wrote:

>Well the English servers are in the USA, which means they are subject
>to US law, not Iranian law. If we *were* subject to Iranian law, I'm
>betting there are a number of other Iranian laws we are already
>breaking! I don't know the Iranian laws about  depictions of women but
>I'm willing to bet they've got a few that we're well afoul of.
>
>FF
>
>On 8/8/05, Roozbeh Pournader <roozbeh at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>On 8/6/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Why not make a special tag template for this? Something along the lines of:
>>>
>>>"This image, produced by the current government of Iran, are believed
>>>to not fall under U.S. copyright laws as Iran is not a member of WIPO.
>>>Should this change, though, the usage of this image is still believed
>>>to fall under the "fair use" clause of U.S. copyright law. Use in
>>>mediums other than on the servers of the English-language Wikipedia,
>>>hosted in the United States by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation,
>>>may not be exempt from either of these requirements."
>>>      
>>>
>>There are problems with that:
>>1) I believe the Wikimedia Foundation would be breaking Iranian law by
>>distributing those material to Iran, that is, serving its pages to
>>Iranian readers. If it wishes to use the material, it should block
>>Iran from its readership.
>>2) It's not only the government, and other Iranians may wish to sue
>>the Wikimedia Foundation.
>>    
>>