Author talk:Haile Selassie

A note that http://jah-rastafari.com/selassie-words/RasTafarI-word.asp has released all their translations (by "Haile Selassie I Press") into the public domain - which applies to everything hosted on that website except the excerpts from the autobiography. (those few texts are clearly marked "Frontline Distribution International, Inc. ©1999") - so it's a great resource for copying texts over! Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Haile Selassie} 09:02, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Interviews[edit]

Just a note that I'm not sure the interviews fall into the Public Domain. The Voice of Ethiopia was based in New York, Yugoslavia was an early signatory of the Berne convention and Hoffman's radio show Lutheran Hour was also based in the US Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Haile Selassie} 18:10, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I'd thought of that. Here's my reasoning.

For the Yugoslav Press interview, only the answers are printed, not the questions. Selassie alone would hold the copyright to his answers, so that should still be PD-Ethiopia, right?
For the voice of Ethiopia, obviously the answers are PD, but what about the questions? If the interviewer was a U.S. national, and if the interview was first published with a copyright notice (required before 1978), and if it was first published in the U.S., and if the copyright was renewed in 1976, then the questions could be copyright in the U.S. (If any of those are not true, not even the questions would be protected.) I searched here for a 1976 copyright renewal, but didn't find anything, so I think it's safe to say the entire thing is PD.
The Hoffman Show is complex. It was a radio show, so the questions and answers were not prepared in advance "in fixed form". They were simply broadcast. In the U.S. copyright only covers material "in fixed form" (written down or recorded). Certainly only Selassie can hold the copyright to his answers, but the questions? I'm really not sure how copyright holds in a case like this. I suppose I could remove the questions. . .