Possible copyright violations

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This page hosts discussions on works that may violate Wikisource's copyright policy. You may join any current discussion or start a new one.

Note that works which are a clear copyright violation may now be speedy deleted under criteria for speedy deletion G6. To protect the legal interests of the Wikimedia Foundation, these will be deleted unless there are strong reasons to keep them within at least two weeks. If there is reasonable doubt, they will be deleted.

When you add a work to this page, please add {{copyvio}} after the header which blanks the work. If you believe a work should be deleted for any reason except copyright violation, see Proposed deletions. If you are at least somewhat familiar with U. S. copyright regulations, the Rutgers copyright renewal records and Stanford Copyright Renewal Database as well as University of Pennsylvania's information about the Catalog of Copyright Entries may be helpful in determining the copyright status of the work. Google Book Search may also be useful to determine if the complete texts are available due to expired copyright. Help:Public domain can help users determine whether a given work is in the public domain.

Quick reference to copyright term

Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States

Discussions[edit]

Revisiting no-renewal for unvested works[edit]

I've started a new discussion concerning works statused as PD under the 'no-renewal-unvested' guidelines on the associated template's Talk: page. Feel free to move the discussion here if (or when) doing so is deemed more appropriate for proper consensus. -- George Orwell III (talk) 12:29, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

To*** Kern[edit]

I think the recently added translation by Mikhail Kneller is copyrighted, according to the source--Mpaa (talk) 22:27, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Right, and in any case it would need to go to its own page. I can remove it from the pages history if anyone thinks that's necessary.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:34, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Move to Wikilivres even with the latest removal, the original English translation is attributed to Dmitri Smirnov, a still living, born in 1948, Russian composer. It seems he converted Pushkins' works that were eventually? put to music from Russian to English sometime in the early eighties [1] so I don't think his translation is exactly hostable either. Seems like a work from 1825 should have a better PD English translation than the currently attributed one floating around somewhere, no? -- George Orwell III (talk) 01:23, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

It was uploaded by User:Dmitrismirnov, who has uploaded a lot of his own translations to Wikisource.

Poking at Google Books finds preciously little. Modern Russian Poetry has some stuff, The Bakchesarian Fountain has a few more (in neither case this poem), and that looks to be about it in the easily available category for Russian poetry in English.--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:16, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Added {{copyvio}}, the work is posted with {{GFDL}} which is also on the translators author page. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 10:39, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Additionally Author talk:Dmitri Nikolaevich Smirnov implies that User:Dmitrismirnov is Author:Dmitri Nikolaevich Smirnov, if the work is not prevously published it would actually make it a Wikisource translation so it should also be licensed {{CC-BY-SA-3.0}}. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 10:43, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Time Pawn[edit]

... by Author:Philip K. Dick that first appeared in the serial Thrilling Wonder Stories Volume 44, No. 1, Summer 1954.

A search of copyright.gov shows a Renewal registration for the original registration covering the contents of that issue (a periodical)

B00000490065 / 1954-06-08
RE0000112616 / 1982-01-07

Move to Wikilivres if appropriate; delete mainspace and Index: transcription if not. -- George Orwell III (talk) 04:10, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Delete. Dick died in 1982, so the work would still be copyrighted in Canada if it is copyrighted in the United States. I've realised what seemed familiar about this: it is related to the previous Wikisource:Possible copyright violations/Archives/2013-02#Small Town deletion (and probably for the same reason; not realising that the periodical itself can affect the copyright). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 14:18, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

I wish you geniuses had of had a look at this in the last six months since it was first put up as a transcription project before I fucking wasted hours transcribing this and proof reading it—unsigned comment by Coled (talk) 00:32, 22 March 2013.

For what it's worth: I apologise for not making the connection when I first became aware of this short story on Wikisource. I'll try to come up with something to prevent this particular situation from reoccuring. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 17:42, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

The something you need to come up with is to request the paid legal staff to review the accuracy of the revisions of policy, guidelines, help pages and so on that you, AdamBMorgan, and George Orwell III have been making concerning contributions to periodicals and particularly to clarify the nature of a PCW copyright which you clearly don't understand. The definition, nature and scope of a PCW copyright can be unclear but making uneducated guesses instead of consulting authoritative legal references and/or knowledgeable attorneys is neither wise nor appropriate in these circumstances. I was initially uncertain whether a PCW copyright covered exclusive rights to the individual contributions during the time period relevant here and followed the advice I offer in the preceding sentence long before making any uploads. If I'd learned the PCW copyright renewals for periodicals containing real stories corresponding to deceptive false entries in RE0000190631 did somehow give exclusive rights to these contributions to the periodical owners and they'd amazingly failed to notice the infringements over the course of almost three decades I'd have informed them and hoped some would offer me something in the nature of a financial reward for drawing their attention to this. I certainly wouldn't have thrown away such an opportunity and instead risked severe financial and other legal penalties for uploading scans in violation of US copyright law.

All stories by Philip K. Dick which I've uploaded were in their first term of copyright on January 1, 1978. I draw your attention to 17 USC 304 as it existed from that time until amendment in 1992 with a link to the source I'm using.

1992—Subsec. (a). Pub. L. 102–307, § 102(a), amended subsec. (a) generally. Prior to amendment, subsec. (a) read as follows: “Copyrights in Their First Term on January 1, 1978.—Any copyright, the first term of which is subsisting on January 1, 1978, shall endure for twenty-eight years from the date it was originally secured: Provided, That in the case of any posthumous work or of any periodical, cyclopedic, or other composite work upon which the copyright was originally secured by the proprietor thereof, or of any work copyrighted by a corporate body (otherwise than as assignee or licensee of the individual author) or by an employer for whom such work is made for hire, the proprietor of such copyright shall be entitled to a renewal and extension of the copyright in such work for the further term of forty-seven years when application for such renewal and extension shall have been made to the Copyright Office and duly registered therein within one year prior to the expiration of the original term of copyright: And provided further, That in the case of any other copyrighted work, including a contribution by an individual author to a periodical or to a cyclopedic or other composite work, the author of such work, if still living, or the widow, widower, or children of the author, if the author be not living, or if such author, widow, widower, or children be not living, then the author’s executors, or in the absence of a will, his or her next of kin shall be entitled to a renewal and extension of the copyright in such work for a further term of forty-seven years when application for such renewal and extension shall have been made to the Copyright Office and duly registered therein within one year prior to the expiration of the original term of copyright: And provided further, That in default of the registration of such application for renewal and extension, the copyright in any work shall terminate at the expiration of twenty-eight years from the date copyright was originally secured.”

Subsec. (c). Pub. L. 102–307, § 102(d), substituted “subsection (a)(1)(C)” for “second proviso of subsection (a)” in introductory provisions.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/304?quicktabs_8=2#quicktabs-8

KEEP. It's in the public domain in the United States. Request Wikisource/WMF legal staff to review recent revisions of policy, guideline and help pages concerning contributions to periodicals and some other matters. Major legal interpretations and "official Wikisource" statements of law are within the legal staff's scope of competence and authority and possibly solely within their authority.

Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 02:04, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Using what has been previously cited but reformatted for clarity and edited of all irrelevant provisos dealing with items other than the proprietorship to a specific issue of periodical vs. an individual's contribution to the class of periodicals (Note: bold-text, underlines and all-caps are mine, Italics are as codified), I'm going to try and explain this one more time. In addition, for proper reference and/or context, Public Law 102-307, as enacted (not as codified), is wikilinked just below. ..

1992—Subsec. (a). Pub. L. 102–307, § 102(a), amended subsec. (a) generally. Prior to amendment, subsec. (a) read as follows:

“Copyrights in Their First Term on January 1, 1978.—Any copyright, the first term of which is subsisting on January 1, 1978, shall endure for twenty-eight years from the date it was originally secured:
Provided, That in the case ~~of any posthumous work or~~ of any periodical, ~~cyclopedic, or other composite~~ work upon which the copyright was originally secured by the proprietor thereof, ~~or of any work copyrighted by a corporate body (otherwise than as assignee or licensee of the individual author) or by an employer for whom such work is made for hire,~~ the proprietor of such copyright shall be entitled to a renewal and extension of the copyright in such work for the further term of forty-seven years when application for such renewal and extension shall have been made to the Copyright Office and duly registered therein within one year prior to the expiration of the original term of copyright:
And provided further, That in the case of ANY OTHER COPYRIGHTED WORK, including a contribution by an individual author to a periodical ~~or to a cyclopedic or other composite work~~, the author of such work, if still living, or the widow, widower, or children of the author, if the author be not living, or if such author, widow, widower, or children be not living, then the author’s executors, or in the absence of a will, his or her next of kin shall be entitled to a renewal and extension of the copyright in such work for a further term of forty-seven years when application for such renewal and extension shall have been made to the Copyright Office and duly registered therein within one year prior to the expiration of the original term of copyright:
And provided further, That in default of the registration of such application for renewal and extension, the copyright in any work shall terminate at the expiration of twenty-eight years from the date copyright was originally secured.”

That said, I'm kind of tired of being belittled at every perceived twist and turn that in reality is just going over the same ground on stuff like this. Off course, it is within any member's right to seek independent review and arbitration but appeals to some "higher" authority or power to 'check my work' because 'I clearly don't understand' is not exactly the way to go about it. I'm not a lawyer but I do have a fair amount of experience in matters of layout, format, style, interpretation and basis behind law-like works. So you can take the following for what it's worth at face value or investigate it yourself - the "higher authority" lawyer-review is unlikely to materialize regardless of which path is chosen.

Why Reformat the Clause at all? -- because it needed to be made clear that a list of provisos (3) exist.
Why bold-text the colon : and the signaled provisos that come after them? -- to illustrate the existence of a proper, narrative-style legal standard (i.e. <colon><Capital first lettered italicized proviso><comma><Capital first letter of the first word in the condition(s) or stipulation(s) that follow>
What the frack does any of this mean? -- a proviso, in general, contains one or more conditions (or stipulations) that a certain thing shall or shall not be done, in order a.) to move to address any provisos that may follow it under the same clause as the initial proviso; or b.) that an agreement contained/outlined in another clause shall take effect and supersede the attention of the initial clause.

In short, when interpreting multiple provisos (3 in this case) listed under a single clause (Section 304(a) as it was at the time in effect), you must ascertain if the condition(s) or stipulation(s) given in each proviso, and done in an order of succession starting with the first proviso to the next as listed (or depending upon), are satisfied (or not) to be able to determine if the need to address any other proviso(s) becomes paramount (or not). If there is only one proviso under a given clause, the question of what to address &/or in what order (most likely) moves to directly to the next clause in the listed order -- but determination still hinges on the same satisfaction (or not) of condition(s) or stipulation(s) as taking place beforehand.

In Section 304(a) of the Copyright law in question, the PCW related proviso is listed First, so the condition(s) and/or stipulation(s) outlined in it must be ascertained first in order to determine if the need to even address the Second proviso at all will materialize (or not). Only after a situation where both First & Second provisos have had their respective conditions ascertained would we ever get around to the remote possibility of a need to address the Third proviso actually materializing (or not).

A simple tabled depiction of the 3 listed provisos in question, with their ascertained conditional-dependent states for each (when done in the proper order), follows.

A.	B.	C.
True moot moot	False True moot	False False True

I'm saying the state of column A exists because (re-posted)... A search of copyright.gov shows a Renewal registration for the original registration covering the contents of that issue (a periodical / PCW)

B00000490065 / 1954-06-08
RE0000112616 / 1982-01-07

Since the condition for the First proviso is "True", the conditions outlined in the the Second and Third provisos do not need to be addressed, are in effect rendered moot by the nature of law and the interpretive focus of the law "should" move directly to the next clause in the existing listed order (Section 304(b) in this case) if need be. In order for this work to have fallen into the Public Domain and become OK to host on en.WS, a default (False/Fail) of the First and Second provisos must exist in order for the Third proviso to become "True" (that state is reflected by column C in the depiction).

... and my belief the state of column A exists is further supported by the underlined & All-Cap text I added to the Second proviso to make the conditional nature of such provisos as normally interpreted by the experts more clear to the reader. Pointing out the fact we do not have any evidence that Dick a.) affixed a second copyright notice independent of the proprietor's first (PCW) to be have been able to register the work in his name as an (A)uthor in the first place; which b.) is further evidenced by the lack of any registration no. provided to refute that apparent reality to date, might be redundant in light of the 'proviso rationale' I've laid out showing the work is still under protecion, but it is relevant in the context of the All-Caps wording of the Second proviso nevertheless (in order to "be" any other copyrighted work [i.e. not a copyrighted work already addressed by the first proviso], Dick would have needed to copyright the work in addition to the proprietor's copyright in his own name... and he didn't. = failing the opening condition as outlined in the Second proviso).

There is nothing that can render the First proviso "moot" here. The First proviso's condition(s) have to be determined to be either as "True" or as "False"; there is no lawful way to usurp, preclude or negate the rights properly executed & lawfully secured in a 1st renewal-term registration for copyright extension by the proprietor of the already 1st term copyrighted periodical/issue back on January 7, 1982 (given the particulars found in this case).

Hope that spells it out for everybody in terms that can be followed by anyone and every one. Delete. -- George Orwell III (talk) 04:47, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

George Orwell III (talk) it is not and has not been my intention to belittle you. Neither do I assume some of your statements here or in discussion of "Small Town", (which I intend to seek undeletion of when I learn how to request undeletion) have been intended to belittle me, insult me or that you are intending to abuse/misuse your status as an administrator. Neither is it my intention to belittle AdamBMorgan. In my previous statement it would have been more appropriate to state "apparently don't understand" rather than "clearly don't understand" and I apologize for whatever offense that may have given. Nonetheless, Wikisource's basic policies about what is or isn't acceptable are based on what relevant US copyright law is "as a practical matter". (By "as a practical matter" I mean regardless of whether you, I or other editors agree with Congress and the courts about the validity of parts of the law.) IIRC, there is some high level WMF policy that essentially says relevant to this that basic determination of what copyright law is, is reserved to the foundation and a sort of "compulsory concensus" though I'm sure "compulsory concensus" is not how it's worded. Regardless, I believe the most responsible thing for the administrators to do when there is reasonable disagreement about what the law is regarding a major question relating to public domain, is to ask the legal staff and get what is presumably knowledgeable and authoritative guidance from WMF personnel who have the training and resources to properly research and understand the law. This concerns whether potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of works are acceptable to use on this and other WMF projects.

I've little doubt you are correct there will be no policy/guidelines/help pages review for legal accuracy by anyone from the legal staff unless administors request one. And I won't hold my breath while hoping any administrators make such a request or will even inform me of what, if anything, I'm allowed to do to try and get some legally knowledgeable people from any source involved in this discussion. Or what, if anything, I'm allowed to do to try and bring this discussion to the attention of a wider audience of editors. Heck, I wasn't even informed "Time Pawn" was being proposed for deletion. I just chanced across a blog post of some sort by AdamBMorgan which mentioned it and implied I had not uploaded "Small Town" or "Time Pawn" in good faith. However, I will attempt to defend this upload from deletion as time and other circumstances permit in hopes some administrators will look into the law and/or what is said by us and anyone else who comments and decide on the merits as they perceive them.

BTW, you can expect me to reference Copyright Registration for Single Serial Issues (the claim and the extent of the claim) and several sections of The Copyright Act of 1976 (which I believe Wikisource has a copy of and think copyright.gov has as an Appendix to Circular 92).

For the moment, to show some evidence of actual intent to defend against deletion of "Time Pawn" and because I still have a little computer access time I'll note that a search by registration number of copyright.gov shows two renewal registrations based on the original registration number B00000490065. Something that is hardly compatible with an assumption that the PCW renewal creates exclusive rights for the PCW claimant to the individual contributions which were protected by the "blanket" copyright notice or to your previous statement that an author of an individual contribution needed to obtain a seperate original registration for his or her contribution to retain ownership or to be able to renew copyright on the contribution. The normal practice for indivdual contributions to such composite works was to use a single orginal registration number for the periodical as a whole and for any seperately copyrightable material it contained. Indeed, if you do a moderate amount of searching for renewals of works from SF magazines of the 1950s you'll find instances where there was no orignal registration at the time and the Copyright Office created an original registration number (usually a TX number) for the benefit of authors who wanted to renew their copyrights and needed an original registration to renew. [I've been somewhat careless at various times and places in stating a work's copyright was originally protected by Copyright Registration Number ____ when publication with notice is what actually protected the copyright and what registration protected was the right to take legal action for infringement.

Type of Work:	Serial
Registration Number / Date:	RE0000569063 / 1982-02-18
Title:	[The Education of Drusilla Strange, and other contributions] / By Theodore Sturgeon.
Copyright Claimant:	Theodore Sturgeon (A)
Contributions:	(In Galaxy science fiction, Mar. 1954) The Education of Drusilla Strange. Pub. 1954-01-25; B00000454597. (In Galaxy science fiction, May 1954) Granny won't knit. Pub. 1954-03-18; B00000464442. (In Thrilling wonder stories, summer 1954) The Golden helix. Pub. 1954-06-08; B00000490065. (In Galaxy science fiction, Jan. 1955) When you're smiling. Pub. 1954-11-22; B00000505594. (In Luke Short's western, Oct.-Dec. 1954) Cactus dance. Pub. 1954-10-05; B00000512982.
Copyright Note:	C.O. correspondence.
Other Title:	Galaxy science fiction, Mar. 1954 Galaxy science fiction, May 1954 The Golden helix. Thrilling wonder stories, summer 1954 Galaxy science fiction, Jan. 1955 Luke Short's western, Oct.-Dec. 1954
Names:	Sturgeon, Theodore

Type of Work:	Serial
Registration Number / Date:	RE0000112616 / 1982-01-07 Renewal registration for: B00000490065 / 1954-06-08
Title:	Thrilling wonder stories. Vol. 44, no. 1, summer 1954.
Copyright Claimant:	C B S Publications, the consumer publishing division of C B S, Inc. (PCW)
Variant title:	Thrilling wonder stories.
Names:	CBS, Inc. C B S Publications

Above copied from search results by registration number for B00000490065 after clicking on All and then clicking the button to format them for Save/Print. Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 19:46, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

As far as I know, the Wikimedia Foundation does not have legal staff in the sense you seem to mean. There is Geoff Brigham, general counsel on the WMF staff, and a small team (click "see the team" for their names) but I don't think he works in this capacity. According to meta:Legal and Community Advocacy, he advises the Foundation itself, not editors on any of the projects. Nevertheless, all the contact details are on those pages if you want to try. I would actually like to see an official response on this matter myself.

I'm not following your line of reasoning as presented here. Yes, authors and publishers both made renewals. That doesn't change the wording of the law. There are cases of publishers not renewing, which defaults to the author's renewal, and then (if neither exist) puts the work into the public domain. At least, as far as I understand copyright law. To me, the duplicate renewals look like a belt-and-braces approach to maintaining the intellectual property.

These aren't duplicate renewals and have nothing to do with defaulting ownership other than both Sturgeon and CBS avoiding such defaults for the different works they renewed. Sturgeon renewed copyright registration for an individual contribution to a collective work and was able to do this because he was the copyright owner of that work. CBS renewed copyright registration for the collective work (composite work), which under these circumstances includes a non-exclusive right to use the individual contributions that are components of the composite work within rather narrow limits; CBS was able to do this because it was the owner of copyright in the collective work. Read the law at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1976 and http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1976#Legislative_History and you'll see these are entirely different things and you'll see the wording of the law which I'm making no attempt to change or miscontrue. I can go into detail later when I get computer access if necessary. Sections 101-106 and pretty much all of chapters 2-4 are probably the most important parts relating to this. Also see http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/17/4/404/notes and read relevant circulars at copyright.gov. I know the latter part of that is vague but as an administrator attempting to apply the law which is relevant to Wikisource you need to know what it is (including case law and I'm too out-of-date to recommend any specific textbooks on legal research, Shepardizing, etc. though I will suggest learning this well pretty much reguires access to a law library or maybe Lexis/Nexis and possibly some formal training through classes in a paralegal program or something of the sort). You might also want to google "contribution to a collective work". Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 14:15, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't think anybody has disputed your latest directly above. The difference, however, is both Sturgeon & CBS lawfully followed their respective paths for securing protections to each's specific class of work. If Dick is "Sturgeon" and Thrilling Stories is "CBS", how does the lack of action on Dick's part extinguish the rights lawfully secured by Thrilling Sories? If Sturgeon didn't register anything at all (exactly what Dick did), how would that supersede CBS' registration?

The hypothetical lack of a Sturgeon registration wouldn't automatically "jump" CBS's lawful registration and default the work into the Public Domain would it? So too is the case in these PCW collective works.. Nobody is questioning what you keep insisting is under question when everybody proactively secures registration for their respective class of work or works - but that logic does not apply when one or more parties did not secure and/or then waive protections; it cannot default into PD unless the work is free and clear of all claims of lawful copyright. -- George Orwell III (talk) 14:51, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

This is not just a Wikisource issue by the way. Project Gutenberg got in trouble for this sort of thing with Poul Anderson's works from the same period (via Greg Bear). See Locus for an example, or search Google. That's probably why this work isn't being hosted by PG either.

I believe you misunderstand what Greg Bear was claiming though I've no time to reread that dispute right now. And frankly, my recollection is that Project Gutenberg got in trouble much like I once got in trouble as a cashier when a man with a shotgun wanted the money in the cash register. Regardless, it's well worth noting that PG has many works from magazines which did renew PCW registrations and that everything PG hosts has to get a lawyer's OK on the PD status before it even gets to the transcribing process. IIRC, that OK is called something like a "clearance ticket" and is required in order to upload a scan. PG has no "safe harbor" like Wikisource does and could easily be destroyed by the expense of litigation even if it was in the right 99 and 44/100 percent of the time so it has rules and procedures that are far more restrictive than the law is. BTW, it may only have been one work by Poul Anderson that PG actually took down, the reason was never really explained (possibly a rare instance of an exception to a general legal presumption) but I think Bear's claimed reason was a flat contradiction of the law and speculate there was some contract breach involved which shouldn't be remedied at the expense of the innocent public instead of the negligent publisher but is or in this particular instance might be even if the circumstances aren't what the law requires. "So it goes." Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 14:15, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Just to put it "on the record", I think it is very biased to tag something like "Time Pawn" with possible copyright violation and hide it but not to quote the uploader's description of why it is PD and a brief statement of why whoever tags it disagrees or at least has doubts. The current practice gives anyone noticing the dispute little reason to consider looking into the matter and the uploader's rationale isn't even mentioned here if someone does follow the link to here. I'll not eleborate on this as I've got to get off the computer right now. More about the proposed deletion later. Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 14:15, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

About the blog post, which is here for everyone else, I meant that Coled completed the proofreading in good faith and that Coled was not the original uploader. It was only when looking back on the wording just now that I realised the "not the uploader" could be taken as "not uploaded in good faith by the uploader". I was a little down that Coled appeared to be helping Wikisource and has (potentially) lost all of his/her work; which is my fault for not having put the pieces together earlier. I'm sorry if I appeared to insult you.

(NB: I put your examples in tables to make them a little easier to read.) - AdamBMorgan (talk) 20:56, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Forgive me if I was unclear - I did not mean to infer that Authors (A) needed to register for first term copyright protections at the same time the (PCW) registration was obtained - only that if Authors wished to contest, assign, license, etc. during the (PCW) first term protections do they need to separately affix notice and register separately as an (A) author under what today is the provisions outlined Section 304(a). What you have correctly pointed out is a contributor to a periodical work that enjoys the ability to "renew" even without securing a separate first term copyright as an (A) author under what today is outlined under Section 304(c) (automatic termination of any previous assignments or licenses granted/negotiated under the first copyright term and/or any promises made regarding the 1st renewal term). Only one copyright.gov entry directly affirms the "blanket" renewal (Sec. 304(a)) while the other only cites it as a precursor (Sec. 304(c)) to the establishment of terminations (if any) at the end of the first copyright term. They are two separate actions, the latter not being something Dick practiced either way. In order to renew under Sec. 304(a), Dick needed to have practiced Sec. 304(a) at or around the time of first publication.

The problem is still your belief the lack of action on Dick's part, be it under Sec. 304(a), Sec. 304(c) or both, somehow invalidate's the (PCW) registration & renewal and makes the work automatically fall into the public domain. The only way Dick's work could have fallen into the public domain is if no (PCW) renewal took place and that is just not the case in the instance of this work. The absence of one (A) renewal does not negate the existence of the other (PCW). -- George Orwell III (talk) 21:17, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

PD-EdictGov roundup[edit]

I sent up a trial balloon earlier but didn't get any response so I figured the correct thing to is blatantly disregard w:WP:POINT :-P

Hopefully this isn't too much of a mess to follow. We've had discussions about particular licenses before with mass deletion proposed, but those have been more or less uniform. By contrast, there's a lot of different stuff going on here and many are probably PD under a different justification. If this is too much to discuss under one heading, it's fine to break it apart or do it incrementally, obvious cases first etc.

So, quick prefatory comment: I'm suspicious of treating {{PD-GovEdict}} as broadly as {{PD-USGov}}. What little I've read of it seems to suggest that exists as a legal doctrine that people should in no circumstances be denied access to instruments of law and governance. A lot of stuff that governments do doesn't fall under that.

Speeches and the like by government officials or organs[edit]

Some sort of possible composite information thing[edit]

Non-actionable treaties[edit]

Works of private persons or organizations[edit]

Non-actionable law instrument type things[edit]

Concerning the Criteria of Vocational Discernment Regarding Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in View of Their Admission to Seminaries and Holy Orders

Miscellaneous things that aren't really instruments of law or whatever[edit]

Prosody (talk) 00:27, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I think you're right about a lot of these but I need more information about this law/policy. The wording is a bit vague and I haven't found much via Google to help explain it any further. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 08:56, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Aside from the discussion below, about whether it pertains to non-US copyrights at all, I am at least convinced now that this licence does not apply to speeches, statements and similar. On the other hand, treaties might be close enough regardless of whether they are actionable or not (constitutions appear to count and they may not be entirely about rules; they can include general statements of values and aspirations, which would be vaguely similar to one of these treaties). I'm not sure about some of the other cases (although I'd say the 2008 Zimbabwean agreement is essentially a treaty, albeit an intranational one).

So:

Delete or re-license all speeches licensed with {{PD-EdictGov}}. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 21:55, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

The discussion below is largely putting the cart before the horse (but that is the way the question(s) were first introduced). In my view, the first point that should be addressed before we even begin to approach the academic or philosphical questions being addressed below is the most basic one...

Are any of these these authorized translations made into English by the same entity that created and/or first published them? If so, does that mean they cannot be copyrighted in the U.S.?

The idea that even authorized translations of "foreign" governments somehow still falls into the yet-to-be-properly-vetted-and-proved-legitimate 'Edict of Government' exclusion zone is a false notion. Simply visit the Copyright.gov search engine, select registration number and enter TX0003578346 for a prime example of the unproven "wishful thinking" long taking place now here on en.WS being contradicted in actual Copyright Office practice (well... at least as far as translations may go in all this).

UPDATE: Compendium I (Pre 1976 copyright law revision however) has a specific reference related to all this made in it HERE. Even then, the problem there is that its a caveat, mentioned as the exception to the rule and not the rule itself. Take any government work Not originally published in English but translated afterward and you have what qualifies regardless as new material which is 100% copyrightable (the rule) be it a foreign law or a foreign newspaper. There is no difference; only undue weight. -- George Orwell III (talk) 05:58, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Source of Law[edit]

The language of {{PD-EdictGov}} is supported by the link to http://ipmall.info/hosted_resources/CopyrightCompendium/chapter_0200.asp which is a University of New Hampshire site, a search for an "Official" government source finds http://www.copyright.gov/compendium/ "The Compendium of Copyright Office Practices is currently undergoing a major revision as of October 2011.". Is there a reason we are not hosting US Federal copyright laws here, particularly ones we use to justify our licensing? JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 10:54, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Compendium I, Compendium II & the yet-to-be-revised Compendium III all WERE NOT, ARE NOT & WILL NEVER BE considered prima facie evidence of the actual U.S. Federal law (U.S. Code) nor any official regulations (Code of Federal Regulations) derived from those Federal laws. Period.

It is inter-office guide book for employees of the Copyright Office designed to be an aid (a "cheat-sheet") for properly carrying out their official duties. The only reason it was ever "published" by the Government Printing Office was due to it being mentioned in passing in one or more of the Committee reports reviewing the proposed changes to the existing copyright laws and copyright office practices at the time. The only way to see what the Committees were referring to in hindsight was to 'go down to the Copyright Office and ask to see somebody's inter-office Xeroxed copy of it'. Basically, they got tired of it being "misplaced" by the office lackeys or having to accommodate every walk-in request for it so they finally slapped it all together and made it available through the usual channels for a small fee via the GPO.

In all my research to ascertain how or why the Compendiums have become such a relied upon authority & justification here in the wacky-wiki-world, I have yet to discover any significant or relevant lawful citation of it or precedent set by it in U.S. case law. Its really only mentioned or referred to in academic circles. Apparently somebody at the Wiki-Foundation took one of those classes, put 2 + 2 together and viola! the pseudo justification to host these works was born. Only its continued unquestioned use and the passage of time make it seem legitimate as a basis for anything. Other than that it is no more official U.S. Federal law than the Library of Congress' night-watchman's Official U.S. Government fire alarm response manual. -- George Orwell III (talk)

We have a few hundred documents using PD-EdictGov, there are about 120 items on Commons using the tag. Is there any stand up in court, support for it? JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 14:49, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Even more Googling still didn't find much but it did suggest that the basis of this position are two 19th century Supreme Court cases: Wheaton v. Peters and Banks v. Manchester (I've added the latter to Portal:United States copyright case law).

The book Intellectual Property Protection of Fact-based Works (Google Books link) briefly covers this, using the phrase "expressions of law cannot be copyrighted", before going on to modern circumventions. Another book, Intellectual Property Law (Google Books again), has more detail, including the idea that expressions of law are just statements of facts and therefore cannot be copyrighted.

Wheaton v. Peters only really covers the judgements of the Supreme Court itself. Banks v. Manchester seems to be the most relevant, although I have not read it all. Wikipedia has no article on it but I was actually surprised to see that Conservapedia does. A relevant quote from the end of the Banks judgement: "The question is one of public policy, and there has always been a judicial consensus, from the time of the decision in the case of Wheaton v. Peters, 8 Pet. 591, that no copyright could, under the statutes passed by congress, be secured in the products of the labor done by judicial officers in the discharge of their judicial duties. The whole work done by the judges consitutes the authentic exposition and interpretation of the law, which, binding every citizen, is free for publication to all, whether it is a declaration of unwritten law, or an interpretation of a constitution or a statute."

That was technically about US law but the wording could be extended to all laws of all nations. I don't think it has ever been really decided (at least not from my minimal not-a-lawyer Google-based research) but it seems to be defensible at least. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 17:39, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

I left a note at Commons:Template talk:PD-EdictGov, about this discusion. They don't seem to have a copyright discusion page like ours so did not see anyplace else to drop a note. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 19:01, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

No, that was specifically about laws in the United States, where State (New York) and local (New York City) laws "share" the legal-space (up to a point) with Federal laws (United States of America). One needs to remember that folks in the United States are subject to two distinct & separate legal authorities - The Federal government and its laws cover all 50 states uniformly; anything not specifically covered by Federal law & government falls to the individual States. I've always held the belief that when one "reads" the Compendium's blurb as its been applied around here that if you are not familiar with this dual legal reality here in the U.S. one might not understand that ALL governments (New York, Arizona, Hungary, Boston, Sweden, Guam, France, Dallas, Egypt, etc.) are "foreign" as far as the U.S. Federal government is concerned - it is the supreme law of the land. But even an employee of the Federal government can not & does not go home at night at the end of the work day as a citizen of Federalistan or Federalitopia - the go home as a Californian, a New Yorker, an Alaskan etc. This in essence means, while all governments are "foreign" to the Federal government and Federal law, some governments however are officially recognized by Federal law (New York, Arizona, ~~Hungary~~, Boston, ~~Sweden~~, Guam, ~~France~~, Dallas, ~~Egypt~~, etc.). Based on this nuance, I believe the term "foreign governments" was used in the Compendium as a catch-all phrase to cover entities that do not technically fall under State or local but still subject to Federal statutes (i.e. Guam, Puerto Rico, the Mohawk Nation are not States for example but still bound by some degree of federal law. They are surely familiar & recognized by the U.S. Federal system but they are still technically run by "foreign" governments).

The second key to all this is mentioned in U.S. case law - it is the term binding every citizen. For the Compendium logic to universally apply, you must be a citizen of some formally Federally recognized entity and/or subject to whatever government that entity might have via the law. It's kind of crazy to think that inclusion of the edict of government term was thanks to some Russian citizen or similar that once tried to register existing Russian statute as a work he or she claimed was the author of and, as a result, was added to the inter-office list of ' do's & don'ts ' for mid-level copyright clerks. Even if he or she happen to be a representative of the Russian government, the idea that international policies from one nation to the next concerning copyright is handled by anything other than agreement or by treaty is bordering on the laughable imho. How that ever translated to mean every U.S. citizen should have the free and unfettered access to the rules and regulations they should be aware of and abide by [including those rare instance when on holiday in the south of France], I'll never know. Its far more likely for me to think the term "foreign" wound up in there to cover some question at some point concerning Puerto Rico rather than the inclusion or exclusion of copyright protections covering Polish law. -- George Orwell III (talk) 19:08, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

George could you clarify a bit, your statement starts out "No, that" in the singular where Adam is talking about two court cases. Jeepday (talk) 10:17, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

The Banks v. Manchester case cites the earlier Wheaton v. Peters court opinion to begin to layout & then support it's ruling, which opens by re-affirming the findings, etc., originally outlined in the earlier (Wheaton) opinion just the same. Banks then goes on to make it clear that it is just as unconstitutional to try and legislatively assign and/or judicially designate copyright rights to a person or persons (i.e. artificially create a copyright assignee) that would conflict with the relationship between a government & it's citizenship as it was unconstitutional back when the high court first ruled that any person or person's Constitutional right to secure copyright based on his or her own merits cannot supersede the same relationship between a government & it's citizenship as illustrated within the Wheaton opinion. Banks v. Manchester also helped erase any remaining implied limits or lines drawn in the scope of the governance -- local, State as well as Federal -- as it related to the citizenship after the acceptance of Wheaton. The initial unconstitutionality found in Wheaton now applied to any level of government and not just the Federal-level output.

The supreme point I was trying to make clear is one should not overlook the court's usage and application of the term citizen throughout any of these case opinion. There is nothing in any case law that I know of that even remotely mentions, forget about outright supports, a redefinition that extends to include foreign governments in addition to the lawfully recognized U.S. citizenship as originally stated. To me, it seemed like Adam was going to ignore that nuance based on nothing more than something similar giving rise to that apparent effect found only in what amounts to just an inter-office cheat sheet - not actual precedent set by any U.S. case law. -- George Orwell III (talk) 00:51, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks George, that helps a lot. So there are two different concerns when applying PD-EdictGov

Governments falling under US law.
- U.S. Federal, any 1 of the 50 States & every local entity within that State
  - all covered by Wheaton v. Peters [8 Peters 591] vein of U.S. case law
  - Federal later enjoys 17 U.S.C. 105 for all works; not just edicts
Governments outside of US Law.
- Any type or level of government not mentioned in #1
  - an infered association with "public policy" principle set up in Wheaton found in Compedium II
  - no known statute, case law, proclamation, etc. supporting that association found

With #2 being the largest concern for lack of clarity or legal standing. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 10:45, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Right - sounds like you got that. <Note that I expanded the bullets in your list> There are a few more nuances that never quite added up or have no legal basis to support them as well but I don't see the need to address them right now until at least these points are digested by others first. -- George Orwell III (talk) 13:21, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

It's not that I was going to ignore anything, I just didn't pick up on the nuance of "citizen" (and I haven't read the court opinions in full). However, I do think this is the basis of the Copyright Office's assumption, that international laws are uncopyrightable as well as American laws, made when compiling their internal policy. Compendium I (linked above) is clearer on covering genuiely foreign countries, as separate from states and territories within the US, such as Canada or Australia. As you say, however, this is just an internal guide and has no weight in law. I get the impression that this has never been established in law either way. It is Schrödinger's Copyright, if you will. Until it gets challenged and a US court makes a decision, we won't know if the Copyright Office's opinion is correct or not. If I'm right about that, this changes the question from "Is this legal?" (because its legality is indeterminate at the moment) to "Which position do we want to take, assuming either could turn out to be wrong if it is ever established?" Deleting all non-US items covered by this licence would be the safest option. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 16:49, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Concur that without something else coming into support, it looks like all the foreign works with no other license will be deleted. There are a few hundred to review, so we will probably need a list, on a sub page of everything in Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:PD-EdictGov&limit=500 These will need to be reviewed, if they are foreign with another license just remove the EdictGov, if they are foreign without another license tag with {{copyvio}}, to give a chance for additional licensing to surface. And of course we will have to monitor our progress with notes on the sub page as there are bunch. I propose we give a week or so for something else to come out about foreign edicts, before starting the sub page and review. Jeepday (talk) 21:19, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Probably should limit that WhatLinksHere search to transclusions only: Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:PD-EdictGov&limit=500&hidelinks=1&hideredirs=1. - Htonl (talk) 22:32, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Let's not get ahead of ourselves - that's how the previous discussions on this matter wound up unresolved (& I'm probably the worst in this area 'cause I can't keep it under 5,000 words!).-- George Orwell III (talk) 04:56, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────┘

To the point on the inferred association made by the Copyright Office never being directly tested by the courts (paraphrased).
Well that's not entirely accurate.

While its true, to the best of my knowledge, that no foreign government has sought legal relief either way in the U.S. courts over copyright concerning their official works, many local and State governments have addressed (then readdressed) this in the courts - in spite of the 'Wheaton-Public Policy' guiding principle remaining sound. Keeping in mind that at some point in history (believe it started with the 1909 Copyright Act), the Federal government was ejected from this debate entirely with the enactment of the blanket provision covering all works authored by any Federal employee (codified today as 17 U.S.C. 105), all that the relevant court rulings managed to accomplish here was the speedied nationalization/localization of what some think was an insider's monopolistic publishing scheme, unfairly contracted out to chronicle the key areas of governance for a tidy sum in return. Nobody was rioting in the streets demanding copies of the local building codes or anything as noble as that.

Please recall; the courts said 'one could not profit from these works at the expense of limiting their access to the public' - they never said you couldn't insure to do both at the same time.... But you had to be the government, not a sub-contractor for it, to accomplish both aims satisfactorily and that is exactly the path events were taking during this era. Eventually, most local & State governments subsidized the individual's "guaranteed" access to their works by commercially distributing to those who were willing to pay for having those works available at arm's-length access (universities, law firms, corporations, etc.) instead. Both Wheaton and Peters are part of the modern day U.S. Reports for example and the prohibitive cost of an in-house Printing Office for most States or municipalities means contract-publishing is still very common today.

Also remember; it wasn't until the enactment of the 1976 Copyright Act that Federal law completely usurped local and state Common laws on copyright. This meant the whole 'affixing notice, timely registration & renewals by schedule' thing was largely done for appearance sake than any legal jeopardy or public necessity, if done at all, by the States (the nice thing about generating ridiculous amounts of content that nobody else has access to, nor the authority over, is you don't have to worry about counterfeiting & piracy stuff so much). Only the recent rise of the Internet would force these local and state actors back into what we'd consider "copyright compliance" - though the end of the recognition of Common Law copyright & the monopolies they protected by the 1976 Act had to have helped. If you look at the Copyright.gov registry today, you'll find oodles & oodles of local and state registrations for their official works - the [ironic] defense used to satisfy the 'Wheaton-Public Policy' principle being official state and local web sites host the same government content for any & all with little to no cost to Joe Publick. California is the only state to mimic the current Federal law; anything generated by the government(s) of the State of California has been legislatively waived of any possible copyright claim and released to the public domain (w/ caveats for scientific, technological, etc. advances of course).

So once again, the question of legality and policy of the copyright system falls to the relationship between any given level of government and it's citizenship. The absence of a foreign government & their official works being tested in a U.S. court for copyright infringement (or not) is of little significance and does not give rise to an "unanswered question" (imho). There is no lawfully-domestic-yet-unlawfully-foreign citizenship to speak of here (the U.S.), demanding free and unfettered access to something they really don't need to be made aware of nor have to abide by because, even if the work happens to have been created in English in the first place, the content is not made up of rules and regulations that touches them in some way regardless. The only reason for a foreign government to register anything with the U.S. Copyright Office is to secure standing ahead of suspected infringement and to deter counterfeiting, piracy, etc. (all of which would be preempted in U.S. courts by Treaties dealing with international copyright anyway if I'm not mistaken). -- George Orwell III (talk) 04:56, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

George I believe the above is primarily focused at #1 "Governments falling under US law.", but it trails the discussion on #2 "Governments outside of US Law" and includes some discussion about #2. Can you sort the arguments out so each stays separate? If non-US works survive this discussion they will at the very least have a separate version or indicator of PD-EdictGov. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 10:45, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I am sorry that this the way the discussion has developed but it necessary to fully understand the points I'm going to make by the "end" of each segment - which will fit into the #1 #2 list as a single summarized sentence (hopefully).

The above outdent, which I hope was clear enough about being the post Banks v. Manchester time-line of events, serves 2 purposes:

a.) sets up the "fork" about to come covering what can and cannot secure copyright protections by State & local governments subject to U.S. law; and

b.) partially rebukes the idea there is an unresolved question developing for foreign government's thanks to not having any court cases to base a guideline on. Compared to State & local governments on the same time-line of events, enough accumulated case law testing the 'Wheaton-Public Policy' principle has been accrued by now to further refine it while there was little to nothing on the same point developing in the courts concerning foreign governments at the same time. Folks can read into that fact however they wish.

Point b.) is self-evident, imho, and is something just to keep in mind - not to add to the development in the #1, #2 list.

Moving on to point a.), with the understanding now that most State and local governments subject to U.S. law do manage to register copyright protected works while still providing the public access to the relevant rules and regulations the must abide by both at the same time, the following is to help break down that nuance so "we" can better develop en.WS policy & guidelines at the end of the day.

To open this segment, I must point out there is no official U.S. law or Federal regulation that formally defines the term edict of government. We have come to define it based on what Compendium II, etc. has said about the term and, for the most part, the consensus in this matter to date says (paraphrased) that an edict of government is an official government generated work that touches upon what by now should be the familiar 'Wheaton-Public Policy' principle by causing some effect/affect in relation to that government's recognized citizenship.

Now to illustrate an edict in action - a State Assembly introduces, marks-up and eventually passes a bill that's content is an amendment to a previously existing law; the Governor of that State signs that enrolled legislation, enacting it into a law; soon after, the State's secretary takes the executive's endorsed bill (remember it was an amendment to existing law) and codifies the legislative language into statutory form, updating the statutes lawfully in effect as being 'now current' in the process. Typically, the electronic (on-line) set of State statutes is updated to reflect change in standing law before any formally published print version is made available to the public. When all the changes made while the State government was in session are codified, the contracted publisher replicates the "public" standing law and then usually annotates, indexes, cross-references, etc. it for printing (i.e. makes a derivative of the codified law). This now annotated State statutes for a given year or session can be registered with the Copyright Office as new material added to previously public domain content.

That said, the breakdown for the above in relation to what is and is not copyright protected can be though of as...

a bill never formally introduced into the official record.

- citizens are not expected to know and abide by something never enacted into law

- bill was historically significant? Yes=probably excluded from copyright. No=can be registered.

a bill formally introduced into the official record & marked-up in official proceedings, but never became part of enacted law.

- citizens are not expected to know and abide by something never enacted into law

- bill was historically significant? Yes=probably excluded from copyright. No=can be registered.

a bill formally introduced into the official record, marked-up in official proceedings and eventually enrolled that became part of enacted law.

- citizens are expected to be made aware of and abide by something enacted into law.