[Wikipedia-l] HMSO Crown copyright FOIA Request

[Delirium]

David Newton wrote:

>So, it appears that Crown copyright material that has been published
>in 1954 or earlier is considered public domain worldwide by OPSI and
>is thus fair game for the Wikipedia to use.
>  
>
Certainly good news!  The copyright laws are rather complex, so I 
suppose it's not impossible that they could in theory lay a claim to 
more than 50 years under, say, U.S. copyright law for material published 
in the U.S.  To avoid that possibility, it may be worth archiving this 
response somewhere, since "the copyright owner explicitly told me I 
could use it" is a reasonably good defense against 
copyright-infringement claims, and at the very least would likely 
severely mitigate any damages that might ever arise.

-Mark