User talk:T. Mazzei

Hello, T. Mazzei, welcome to Wikisource! Thanks for your interest in the project; we hope you'll enjoy the community and your work here. If you need help, see our help pages (especially Adding texts and Wikisource's style guide). You can discuss or ask questions from the community in general at the Scriptorium. The Community Portal lists tasks you can help with if you wish. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me on my talk page. --Benn Newman 03:55, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Categories

Hi!  The Category:The New Student's Reference Work/All articles is for NSRW encyclopedic articles only.  For navigation pages (which do not belong to the original NSRW text) create a different category (like Category:The New Student's Reference Work/TOC).  To implement this, don't use the NSRW template on non-article pages, because it adds the "All articles" category automatically; create a new template of the same form, but with different category, or, still better, extend the NSRW-IndexPage template. — Monedula 14:06, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Interpretation Act

Before you get too far into your old statutes project may I suggest that you think ahead about disambiguating this sort of thing. Each province, as well as the federal government continues to have an interpretation act. In addition such acts would be considerably renumbered with each publication of the Revised Statutes (federally in 1886, 1906, 1927, 1952, 1970 and 1985). Perhaps the version that you now have could become Interpretation Act (Canada, 1867). Today's currently active version has 46 sections instead of the 16 in your historic version. Eclecticology 21:08, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I was planning to cross the disambig. bridge if and when I got to it. Will do.--T. Mazzei 21:59, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Noting that the act is now at Statutes of Canada/1867-68/Chapter 1. —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 13:49, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Isaiah Thomas

Hi, I love all writings you are adding by Isaiah Thomas. Is it Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831) the printer/publisher? If so, do you mind if I create a bio page for him here? I just added an image of him on his Wikipedia page. - Epousesquecido 00:10, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I just did a little research, the book was printed by Thomas, but written by John Newbery, I guess he needs the bio. - Epousesquecido 00:21, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I was just about to say the same thing. Accoding to the notice in the book, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book was first published in by John Newbery of London in 1744. The first American Edition (which is the source of this work) was published by Isaiah Thomas of Worcester in 1787. Mr. Thomas later founded the American Antiquarian Society in that city in 1812. It doesn't say who actually wrote it, but I would assume Newbery.--T. Mazzei 00:32, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is John Newbery, pretty famous guy, the Newbery Medal was named after him. Are you going to do a bio. If so I will leave it alone. - Epousesquecido 00:43, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

No, I don't know anything about Thomas. Please go ahead.--T. Mazzei 00:44, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I will be happy to do the bio of John Newbery as it looks like he is the author, see A Little Pretty Pocket-Book and John Newbery, do you think you should change the author from Thomas to Newbery in the header of all those pages? - Epousesquecido 00:57, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes probably. What a pain!--T. Mazzei 01:03, 15 February 2008 (UTC). Done--T. Mazzei 01:15, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

That was quick! - I will try to do the bio tonight, if not, then tomorrow. - Epousesquecido 01:33, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Done - Epousesquecido 03:33, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Copyright on Canadian statutes

By virtue of Section 12 of the Copyright Act statues are protected for 50 years, and no longer. Your claim that these rights are extended beyond that by virtue of Crown privileges is absurd. Crown privilege is based on common law, and common law is overridden by statutes. In modern time Crown privilege has had a very limited application to such things as the conduct of foreign affairs, and the appointment of government ministers. (See Peter W. Hogg, Constitutional law of Canada, Carswell, 1985.) The government cannot randomly claim crown privilege on a whim. Common law is established though judicial decisions, and in the absence of a judicial decision that clearly recognizes Canadian Crown privileges as applicable to copyright, it doesn't apply. Do you have any Canadian cases that support your view? Or pre-1867 British ones?

Judicial decisions of federal courts are not copyrightable at all. The Supreme Court clearly stated this in CCH Canadian Ltd. vs. Law Society of Upper Canada. The courts are not government departments; treating them as such would compromise the judicial independence of the courts.

The Reproduction of Federal Laws Order is a form of licensing. Although the Order states that it does not receive authority from any statute, it would seem to derive from the government right to deal with its own properties. The order cannot create copyrights, it can only deal with copyrights that already exist. The mention therein of court decisions may be a nullity.

The comments from the government counsel are only an opinion, and nothing more. His status as a government employee carries an implied bias in his interpretation. Eclecticology 11:14, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

If you are the one making the arguments for the views they are your views. It does no good to pass the buck on to a biased government flunky who is not here to be a part of the discussion. That is the logical fallacy of depending on a person's status to make a point. As far as I am concerned he is dead wrong. We do not accept academics as absolute authorities for statements on Wikimedia projects. Lawyers should be no exception to this.

Sec. 12 does indeed allow (in your word "uphold") a reservation for crown privilege; it does not establish it. Rather the provision depends on those privileges being defined elsewhere.

The CCH case is about more than just photocopies. The Supreme Court would not likely hear the case if there were no larger principles at stake. The point at issue was not the copyright of the texts of the decisions, but the status of headnotes, case sumaries and other material added by the publishers. None of the publishers were claiming copyrights on the texts themselves.

Paragraph 9 of the decision begins: "In Canada, copyright is a creature of statute and the rights and remedies provided by the Copyright Act are exhaustive:"

In Paragraph 35: "... the reported reasons, when disentangled from the rest of the compilation — namely the headnote — are not covered by copyright. It would not be copyright infringement for someone to reproduce only the judicial reasons."

There was more to this case than simple fair dealing. Eclecticology 10:16, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Your reference to the definition of free cultural works is of little help here. That page itself admits "Please be advised that such identification does not actually confer the rights described in this definition; for your work to be truly free, it must use one of the Free Culture Licenses or be in the public domain." My position is that Canadian statutes more than fifty years old ARE in the public domain. There is no need to distracted by the language of that site.

You state "No, my opinion (and yours) is irrelevent to the central question ... however a government lawyer's opinion, and the relevant legislation is." I am willing to allow the government lawyer's as much weight as yours, but to put his opinion on a par with legislation is completely unacceptable. Government lawyers do argue cases on behalf of their employers, and lose as often as they win.

The words "Without prejudice to any rights or privileges of the Crown" that begin Section 12 do not in themselves establish any copyrights. They only reference other provisions which may or may not exist. Such practice is common in all kinds of Canadian legislation. It is incumbent upon the person claiming these exceptions to show that they indeed exist. Crown privilege is not merely subject to precedent, it is shaped by precedent. My position is that there is no precedent that establishes a crown privilege over copyright. As far as I know there has not been a single case since 1867 on the matter, and it is not up to me to prove a negative. Sure, we need to tell Wikisourcerors about the likely status of old Canadian legislation, and that means telling them that it is in the public domain.

As for the decisions themselves I have not traced back the origins of that idea, but the Supreme Court as owner of these decisions would certainly have the right to treat them as not copyrightable. Such tracing could be difficult since the CCH decision did not cite any particular authority on this point. It was though they had said, "Everybody knows that." If we are to make use of this for court decisions, I would suggest that the decisions be copied from the Court's own website rather than that of any law service company to avoid mixing in any copyright material added by those services. Thus far I am speaking with confidence only of federally established courts; I reserve opinion on quasi-judicial bodies or provincially established courts. Whether these court decisions should be copyright is a matter of POV, and doesn't advantage either side. Eclecticology 23:58, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

"It is important because it reveals that the government believes it has legally enforcable (prerogative) rights": No, it reveals the view of one anonymous government lawyer.

"By hosting these works without a disclaimer Wikisource is representing these documents as being "free", while prerogative rights are incompatible with the Wikimedia definition of a "free" work": The absence of a disclaimer doesn't represent anything. The problem is not with a disclaimer, as long as the disclaimer makes it clear that it's only some people who believe that prerogative rights apply. Prerogative rights may very well be incompatible with free works, if they apply at all. A reservation for prerogative rights may very well reveal that there is no such thing as a free work. My argument is not based on that incompatibility, it is that prerogative rights do not apply at all to the material in question.

Governments assert rights that they don't have with great regularity. "...there is the possibility, however remote, of legal action by the government": It is silly to distort the facts to such an extent that one begins to resemble one of George Carlin's childhood chums trying to invent hypothetical sins to confound the priest in the confessional. The remote likelihood of legal action by the government is always there, no matter what we do. This does not require us to put ourselves at an extreme disadvantage through paranoid interpretations of the law. It is bad enough when we are dealing with real intimidation let alone speculated intimidation.

I would take Roper vs. Streater with a grain of salt. Apart from the fact that it pre-dated The Statute of Anne, I would be suspicious of anything about prerogatives during the period of the restoration. Charles II was very keen on preserving his privileges, and could get the Lords to side with him, but not the Commons. The decision in question came from the House of Lords. The 1938 Australian case in the court of one state, has no bearing on Canada. It all suggests that the Australians are more deferent to the monarchy than we Canadians. Perhaps prerogative rights had not fallen into desuetude in Australia by 1938, but for Canada the previously comment that the Copyright Act is "exhaustive" suggests the opposite here.

Two points in that report are interesting: At p. 100--Subsequent advice from New Zealand stated that the preservation of prerogative rights was thought to have been included in the legislation ‘out of an abundance of caution, just in case there was anything that needed preservation, rather than to preserve any known right or privilege of the Crown’. This seems to most closely parallel the Canadian situation in Section 12. Also on page 101 in relation to the U.K.: The UK’s current copyright legislation, which was subsequently enacted, established a system of parliamentary copyright and restricted government ownership of copyright to works made by officers or employees in the course of their duties. While Crown prerogative is preserved generally, together with the rights and privileges of Parliament and of any person under an enactment, it is abolished in relation to Acts and measures.

I don't think that the Canadian courts would see themselves as "representatives of the Crown". To do so would compromise the independence of the judiciary and its precedence of the executive branch.

The distinction between whether court decision should be "copyright" or "copyrightable" is of little consequence to this discussion. Eclecticology 04:14, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not about to play the game of pitting my anonymous government lawyer against your anonymous government lawyer. I don't see where the logical fallacy of arguing from authority would help my "assumptions" any more than it helps yours. Repeating that you got your opinion from a government lawyer adds nothing to make that opinion valid.

There is basis for finding common ground in a disclaimer. There is certainly a paucity of case law about royal prerogatives, with an absence in relation to copyright law. The problem is not about prerogative rights over statutes; such rights do not exist and would be contrary to the accepted doctrine of parliamentary supremacy. The problem is solely with the interpretation of the opening phrase in Section 12 of the Copyright Act. The Reproduction of Federal Law Order is not a problem. It is a document with lower status than the Act.

"...the same remote likelyhood of legal action is used to disallow orphaned works, [etc.] ... we should provide a disclaimer" No argument from me on that. I've strongly supported that from the beginning. I have previously suggested criteria for accepting works whose copyright status is subject to significant uncertainties.

Saying that the Copyright Act is "exhaustive" suggests that it is self contained; one need not look outside of its text to determine what is copyright. Even international conventions would be a part of it by reference with the Act. Taking Australian cases into consideration does not make them binding. One 70-year-old decision of a foreign state court will have only limited influence. Being former colonies establishes the time when legal opinion began to fork, and Canada has a head start over Australia on that score. I don't recall presuming how the Canadian courts would rule about "desuetude", but then, neither did I presume that a decision of the "Commonwealth of Australia" was equivalent to a decision of the "British Commonwealth".

The Governor General appoints Superior, District and County Court judges by virtue of section 96 of the Constitution Act; firing Superior Court judges may be done by the Governor General "on Address of the Senate and House of Commons" by section 99. In 140 years no judge has been removed by sectin 99. The Pervez Musharef technique would be frowned upon. Eclecticology 04:28, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

OK I can live with the PD template as you presented it to me. For the legislation template I would only remove the reference to court decisions, and make that the basis for a separate template which takes into account the possible effect of the CCH case. Eclecticology 20:00, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

U.S. Patent 50617

Ah, I can see now that the links where there. Sorry about that. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 04:20, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Canada

If you'd ever like some collaboration cleaning up, importing or otherwise sorting our Canadian collection, just holler. Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: e. e. cummings‎.} 03:27, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

An Act to incorporate the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Railway Company and others

Just wondering whether it might be better for our purposes to identify these based on their short titles as defined in the Act. I know that some of the very early ones lacked such a section, but in some cases there would be no harm in supplying a short title where our title would otherwise be too long-winded. Eclecticology (talk) 18:08, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Oxford City Council Byelaws with respect to Tattooing

Thanks for your help with Oxford City Council Byelaws with respect to Tattooing. – Kaihsu (talk) 16:27, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

There are also Oxford City Council Byelaws with respect to Acupuncture, Oxford City Council Byelaws with respect to Ear Piercing and Electrolysis, etc. waiting to be worked on. Cheers. – Kaihsu (talk) 10:07, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

CotW

Great work so far on Tesla, it's much appreciated -- this will be one of our more successful CotWs in a few months; I was worried the project might be slowly dying out, but the combined efforts of four or five people have really made a difference with Tesla -- hopefully I'll see you every week! And don't hesitate to name new collaborations yourself! Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Nikola Tesla‎.} 20:00, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikisource:Patents, might be worth separating it off by country, but you should definitely list each patent there :) Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Nikola Tesla‎.} 02:08, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Done--T. Mazzei (talk) 03:16, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Placement of {{indexes}}

Wanted to discuss the placement of {{indexes}} to seek your opinion on a uniform/preferred place to utilise it. Personally I have used it in a couple of different places above {{header}}, as in Obituary: Charles Robert Darwin, or below, as in United Nations Security Council Resolution 16, and I see you using it in a third, within the template at Seventy-two resolutions. It may not matter, however, it would be nice if you could compare all three and provide an opinion of which you think looks better and works effectively. Thx -- billinghurst (talk) 02:40, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I have used all three methods in the past, however aesthetically I prefer placing it in the notes section of the header. It does not "look right" when placed immediately before or after the header--I think it is the solid border around the indexes conflicting with the borders around the header.--T. Mazzei (talk) 05:24, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Incomplete translation of sorts

It looks like you were translating (modernizing perhaps?) A litil boke the whiche traytied and reherced many gode thinges necessaries for the infirmite a grete sekeness called Pestilence. I moved it to your userspace, since it was a dead-end page and incomplete. See User:T. Mazzei/A litil boke the whiche traytied and reherced many gode thinges necessaries for the infirmite a grete sekeness called Pestilence/modern. I know this probably isn't official protocol, but it seemed like the best thing to do. Psychless 19:50, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

British North America Act, 1867

Could you look at the various "Parts" of this act to see if the word "Part" is really a part of the title for each part. As things stand the word appears for Part XI, but none of the others. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 16:32, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Synchronized newspapers

Lately, I've looked into newspapers, whole issues rather than isolated articles. You've done some from the Canada gazette. Is that something you're still working on, or did you abandon the idea? I think it would be exciting to cover the same dates in parallel for several titles. So far there seems to be no overlap in time between the titles we have. Perhaps we should start with the eventful spring of 1848? --LA2 (talk) 09:34, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I think that's a great idea, and would be willing to participate, however I must warn you that my participation in Wikisource is sporadic, especially over summer. As to the Canada Gazette, its only semi-abandoned; I think some of my more recent contributions were another work or two from the Gazette.--T. Mazzei (talk) 06:19, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Text surrounding segmented image

Many thanks for your help on implementing the text flow around THESE IMAGES. - Ineuw (talk) 19:23, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Dio's Roman History

Can you please read the message on Dio's Roman History for Volume 1? I am a teacher, and I've sectioned off the book for my class, which explains the message. Sorry to jump on you, but PLEASE don't work on the book too much. You can validate though ... that would be wonderful. - Tannertsf (talk) 19:01, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Index:A Little Pretty Pocket-book.djvu

The above has now been validated, except for the pages I Proofead earlier. Could you please validate them—then this work can be validated. --kathleen wright5 (talk) 02:09, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Validated except for the last page of the work, which had not yet been created. If you would do the honours...--T. Mazzei (talk) 05:50, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Done --kathleen wright5 (talk) 08:35, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Adding your victory to {{new texts}}?

I see that yo have proudly pronounced Pocket-book complete!! Are you going to add it to {{new texts}} ? — billinghurst sDrewth 14:07, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

This is the second time I've completed the work, as I uploaded the work intially and wasn't satisfied with the result, started migrating to Page namespace with the ultimate goal of nominating for a featured work, then lost interest for a time, and now finally completed, nearly 4 years after the initial edit. Hence the exclaimation points.--T. Mazzei (talk) 00:26, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

DD Templates

Thanks so much for making these ({{Nixon-DD}} and {{Nixon-DD-entry}}) templates! They look amazing and will really make doing all these tables much easier. Thanks again, it's really appreciated. Digipoke (talk) 18:23, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

No problem, I thought it would make life easier considering there are nearly 2000! pages of (identical) tables --T. Mazzei (talk) 18:32, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Categories

The Constitutional Act, 1791 and the Quebec Act have been placed in the category "Acts of the United Kingdom Parliament", seemingly by the {{cl-act}} template. They should be in the category "Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain". I do not know how to fix this, so I thought that I had better ask you as the creator of the pages and template in question. James500 (talk) 09:21, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Fixed--T. Mazzei (talk) 15:03, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

6 Sept?

Hi. On Page:Letter from B. Henry Latrobe, Architect (1800).djvu/4, there's a bit extra after the "Copy of a letter" note. I think the first bit says "6^th Sept", but am not sure about the second bit - "I Gow"? Any ideas? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:42, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the first bit is "6^th Sep" rather than "Sept", that date being the date the copy was made, 1800 being the year, same as the original letter. As to the second bit, I'm not entirely sure. This is a wild guess, but how about the following transcription: I think the first character should be a "1", in which case, 1 of what? If the first character in the second term is capitalized, I would guess a "C" with the next two characters being "on" and the thing that looks like a superscript "s" at the end of the word I'm guessing is actually a "t" based on the word "not" in the phrase "not only the best Italian". The fully transcribed phrase would than be "1 Cont", Cont being an abbreviation for an attachment (content or contained or contineo or some related term), the attachment being the drawings referred to in the paragraph above.--T. Mazzei (talk) 20:07, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Statute Law Revision Act 1950

In the Queen's Printer copy of this Act, in "The Public General Acts and Church Measures of 1950" (HMSO, 1950), the words "assented to" are not included in the date of royal assent which is indorsed on the Act, and there is no comma after the month. These words appear to be added by the {{cl-act}} template. I am not sure how to fix this, so I thought that I had better ask you as the creator of the pages and template in question. James500 (talk) 14:26, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I've added a parameter that allows you to remove the "Assented to" text. If you care deeply about the comma after month, I'll add another that will allow you to override the date altogether. The template was originally created to allow for easy consistent formatting of text, not to reproduce every idiosyncracy of the original document. It was created before the emphasis of the site was on reproducing documents, rather than reproducing texts (if I can make that distinction).--T. Mazzei (talk) 19:10, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Text flow advice, please?

Hello.

I am aware you have encountered and overcome these kinds of issues before, so would you please be so kind as to cat an eye over my write-up. I am in the somewhat embarrassing position of having worked out coding which works for me, but I have no idea whether it is in any way universal, robust or (worse still) entirely why it works.

No pressure if the matter turns out to lie outside your field. However if you have any feedback/reaction at all I'd appreciate the advice, thank you. MODCHK (talk) 00:47, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Annotations and derivative works

As you commented on Derivative works on Scriptorium, you might want to comment on a Request for comment on annotations and derivative works as well. This is the second stage I mentioned in the proposal. Now that the proposal has arrived at a general consensus in favour of certain derivative works, we need to work out some details. It is a little over detailed but this has been a problem in the past and it has been going on for a long time now. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 22:37, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Descriptive name required

Can we please come up with a set of better document names than Treaty 1, ... Treaty n. That isn't sufficiently descriptive to help anyone with the work either as a name or a search. Thanks. If they are a joined series, should they be subpages of a parent work? Or is it that they are chrono-lineal and have names specific for each, and then are linked as a series, and all belong on a portal? Thanks. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:07, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Treaty 1 (2, 3, etc.) is how the document is referenced both legally and colloquially. While Treaties 1 thru 11 are collectively referenced as the "numbered treaties", they are not part of a parent work but are a series of separate but related treaties between the gov't of Canada an various native groups. Blame the Canadian Government for lack of imagination. --T. Mazzei (talk) 09:57, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

You could move them to the "long title", for example Treaty 1 to Treaty with the Chippewa and Swampy Cree Tribes of Indians, Lower Fort Garry, August 3, 1871 or similar, but I guarantee that people looking for the document would be looking for the former title, and not the latter. --T. Mazzei (talk) 10:07, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Note they are also at Wikipedia under the same name (w:Treaty 1, w:Treaty 2, etc.) --T. Mazzei (talk) 11:36, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

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