[Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain

geni geniice at gmail.com
Thu Jun 23 18:09:06 UTC 2011


On 23 June 2011 18:40, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> I think you're missing the point here. This court decision isn't about
> allowing us to ignore other country's copyright laws.

"Congress granted copyright protection to a large body of foreign works that the
Copyright Act had previously placed in the public domain. "


> Due to the URAA
> and the fact that the U.S. doesn't follow the rule of the shorter term,

Then campaign for the US to follow the rule of the shorter term.

> there are hundreds of thousands of works that are public domain in the
> country of origin, but re-copyrighted in the U.S. until doomsday
> (basically every foreign work who's copyright has expired since 1996).
> For example, the works of Mahatma Ghandi are public domain in India and
> most of the rest of the world,

There are in fact over 60 countries where depending on how they apply
the rule of the shorter term and the like the works may still be under
copyright.

Italy, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Portugal, Ukraine, Spain,
Estonia, Bulgaria, Singapore, France, Nigeria, Switzerland, Ecuador,
Finland, Andorra, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, Iceland,
Ireland, Israel, Latvia, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malta,
Montenegro,Serbia, Mozambique, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway,
Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Romania, Russia, Argentina, Slovakia,
Slovenia, Sweden,Turkey, United Kingdom, Albania, Austria, Belgium,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chile, Costa Rica,
Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominica, St. Vincent and the
Grenadines, Guatemala, Honduras, Samoa, Colombia, Côte d'Ivoire,
Mexico

> but are copyrighted in the U.S. until
> 2055 thanks to the URAA.

Hmm? Gandhi published pretty heavily during his lifetime. So most will
be in the public domain in the the US by 2043 and of course his early
stuff already is.



-- 
geni




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