[Wikipedia-l] no crown copyright outside of uk - wrong it does exist outside the uk

[David Newton]

Jean-Baptiste Soufron jbsoufron at gmail.com wrote:

>Which means that English authors shall enjoy the US rights in the  
>US... and that his work is protected for the normal delay even when  
>it was published before 1954.

Crown copyright DOES exist outside of the UK, although in slightly
different forms. It exists in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a
number of other countries. The UK version does exist in name outside
of the UK, although almost certainly the duration of the copyright
would be no different than ordinary authors under the Berne
Convention.

However, given what the OPSI have said in that email we are perfectly
safe in using published UK Crown copyright materials from 1954 or
earlier in the Wikipedia. Regardless of the exact term that the laws
of each country might provide, they are the people that administer UK
Crown copyright. That means they determine how long they will enforce
the copyright outside the UK. If they, as they have, say that
published UK Crown copyright works will be public domain 50 years
after publication worldwide, not just in the UK, then they are
perfectly able to do that.