[WikiEN-l] Images that are PD in their country of origin

[David Gerard]

On 10 February 2010 13:21, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk> wrote:

> I've sometimes thought that, in an ideal world, we should just phase
> out PD-old and all its forms - it's often, as you say, wishful
> thinking, or sometimes (and I know in my early days I did this) a
> cover for a misunderstanding about just what the thresholds are.
> So what'd we replace it with? Something functionally like...
> {{copyright
> |date=1895
> |location=Germany
> |author=anonymous
> }}
> ...and have it then spit out, well, "this image is free under German
> copyright law (sect. 473 ii) and in the United States (Title 15, 7)"
> or the like, with an option to click to have it generate a copyright
> status in Canada or France or where have you. We do *have* this data
> for a sizable proportion of our images, after all, and it's a bit lazy
> when we take all this and slap a "well, PD, I guess" rubber-stamp on
> it!
> I doubt this is *practical* in the near term, of course, but it's a
> thought. Any other ideas?


I think this is a brilliant idea and would deal with the problem
marvellously. And it should be reasonably easy to implement in an
incremental manner without disruption.

cc to commons-l - is there anything about this that'd be hard? Apart
from going through a zillion images. The key point is it wouldn't
disrupt anything existing.


- d.