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Latest comment: 9 years ago56 comments12 people in discussion
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
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)Reply
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).
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)Reply
Why would an English translation of a law be covered by {{PD-EdictGov}}? Swedish laws are written in Swedish. Although you can find English translations of some laws (for example [1]), the translations are not laws themselves, and the original Swedish text takes precedence if there is a difference somewhere. --Stefan2 (talk) 22:16, 18 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
┌─────────────────────────────┘
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)Reply
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)Reply
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.
- the rationale for copyright exclusion is based in the 'Wheaton-Public Policy' principle.
any secondary legislation generated by the Executive as a result of delegated authority found in the enacted law.
- citizens are expected to know and abide by something enacted into law.
- the rationale for copyright exclusion is based in the 'Wheaton-Public Policy' principle.
the codification of the enacted law into statutory form and merged to reflect a standing code.
- citizens are expected to know and abide by something enacted into law.
- the rationale for copyright exclusion is based in the 'Wheaton-Public Policy' principle.
judicial testing of the application or the interpretation of a standing code.
- citizens are expected to know and abide by something stricken out of the law as well.
- the rationale for copyright exclusion is based in the 'Wheaton-Public Policy' principle.
official publication of a standing code.
- citizens are expected to know and abide by the rules and regulations governing them.
- the rationale for copyright exclusion is based in the 'Wheaton-Public Policy' principle.
publication of derivatives based on the official publication of a standing code.
- citizens are expected to know and abide by the rules and regulations governing them.
- copyright exclusion based in the 'Wheaton-Public Policy' principle remains for officially published standing code.
- any and all additions made to the official standing code be they authorized by the gov't or made by a third party can be registered and secure copyright protections.
Given the above nuances, we can further modify the #1, #2 bullet-list (below) too better define the various points falling under each point expanded upon from the discussion(s) to date. --- George Orwell III (talk) 02:05, 13 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks George, that reads well. I like the bullet list also. Why did you strike out "covered by Wheaton v. Peters [8 Peters 591] vein of U.S. case law" under "U.S. Federal"? As I understand it both 17 U.S.C. 105 & Wheaton v. Peters work to prevent copyright for these. Jeepday (talk) 11:01, 13 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
I've amended it to better reflect the Wheaton principle is not invalidated at the Federal level, merely superseded by a more expansive (i.e. better) provision in the law, found directly in the current statutes of the United States. Thanks for pointing out the possible confusion. -- George Orwell III (talk) 20:00, 13 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Is there evidence of wide spread interpretation of allowing Wheaton & Compendium II to grant copyright prohibition to "Governments outside of US Law"? Is the lack of court challenges because no one is republishing these works? Jeepday (talk) 11:32, 13 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Any interpretation should be approached from another direction. Currently we try to base inclusion/exclusion of Foreign Gov't works based on U.S. law, but this is counter intuitive compared to the adherence to the Copyright Laws of foreign nations and the international Treaties with them that "other" nations tend to follow. If a foreign government wants to release their works into the public domain (or not), they should be outlining as much in their own national copyright laws (just like the U.S. Federal government has). And we have dozens and dozens of examples of Nations both explicitly & implicitly placing their government works in the public domain. None of this Compendium-base c-rap is even necessary if we stick to that approach.
Its not that government works similar to the output of the U.S. Federal government aren't being produced world-wide - they are just being "registered" at home (if at all) and not the U.S. Copyright Office (why in blazes would they? Most being recognized members of Berne, URRA, etc., "registering" at home basically provides them with the same protections as registering in the U.S. ever could but is being secured by treaty rather than by U.S. law). So it does seem to be true that nobody is "publishing" these works for normal distribution in the U.S. (again, why in blazes would they? It's not their citizenship!). The chances of a rogue publisher pirating official government works of a foreign nation here in the U.S. and actually making enough money to even cover expenses is just not very likely (well pretty stupid actually).
I can see the best thing now is to show the Copyright Office's own Congressional testimony. If I remember right, I believe they even cast a long shadow of doubt on the application of anything in the Compendium starting with the age of the Internet, but it is been some time since that so I may be wrong. More later. -- George Orwell III (talk) 20:00, 13 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
As far as I have understood, the extra compensation provided by 17 U.S.C. 412 demands that the copyright holder has registered the work with the US copyright office, even if it is a foreign work. For this reason, there may be a reason to register a non-US work in the US, provided that you have reason to expect that you will need to sue someone in the US. I would assume that laws mainly are interesting in the source country of the law and that copyright violations mainly take place in that country, so registration in the US may be unimportant. --Stefan2 (talk) 22:09, 18 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
Muench v. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publ. Co. says that the Compendium gets Skidmore deference, that is, “an agency's interpretation may merit some deference whatever its form, given the ‘specialized experience and broader investigations and information’ available to the agency.” Given that an actual court will give it deference, I don't see why we should be second-guessing it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 12:12, 26 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
It goes on to say... "The Copyright Office's Circulars and Compendium II should be afforded this lesser deference, or Skidmore deference, so long as the Copyright Office's interpretations do not conflict with the express statutory language of the Copyright Act." 2010 WL 1838874 (S.D.N.Y.), p.6 of PDF.
More important is another citation found in the same case opinion (footnote 8 on p. 11 of the PDF):
FN8. As the Court of Appeals noted in Morris, “ ‘the Copyright Office has no authority to give opinions or define legal terms, and [...] its interpretation on an issue never before decided should not be given controlling weight.’ “ Morris, 283 F.3d at 505 (quoting Bartok v. Boosey & Jawkes, Inc., 523 F.2d 941, 946-47 (2d Cir.1975)). Nevertheless, the court found the Copyright Office's interpretation of the Copyright Act set forth in Circular 62 as applied to the registration procedures of serials to be “persuasive.” Id. And, as discussed above, Circular 62 provides that the registration of a serial by a claimant who owns all of the rights in the constituent parts will extend to the constituent parts. Id. at 506. <highlighting by GO3>
So not only is the prior reference limited to only the Compendiums' interpretation of contributions made to serials - NOT edicts of government - but the ruling outright cites the role of the Copyright Office (& it's Compendium's) as NOT having any authority whatsoever to give opinion or define legal terms AT ALL. I'm afraid that supports rather than dismisses the previous discussion(s) far above resulting in the Wheaton principle summary outline below dealing with what are & are not properly interpreted statutes of Copyright Law for us to follow. -- George Orwell III (talk) 23:07, 26 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Bullet item guideline
A running bullet-list of points summarizing developments of the above discussion(s). Please make changes to phrases, wording, etc. as desired but explain or comment on them in the discussion - not here.
Governments falling under US law.
U.S. Federal
covered by Wheaton v. Peters [8 Peters 591] vein of U.S. case lawSuperseded see next bullet at this level
any work generated during official proceedings that ultimately factors into the establishment of a recognized "Edict"
Federal currently enjoys 17 U.S.C. 105 for all government generated works - past, present & future - not just "Edicts". PD
any 1 of the 50 States & every level of government within that State
all levels of State government covered by Wheaton v. Peters [8 Peters 591] vein of U.S. case law.
any government work generated during official proceedings that ultimately factors into the establishment of a recognized "Edict". PD
any historically significant government work inside the scope outlined directly above. ?
Governments outside of US Law.
Any type or level of government not mentioned in #1
an inferred association with "public policy" principle set up in Wheaton found in Compendium II
no known statute, case law, proclamation, etc. supporting that association has been found.
any government work generated during official proceedings that ultimately factors into the establishment of a recognized "Edict". ?
all government works outside of the scope outlined directly above. ?
any historically significant government work inside the scope outlined directly above. ?
Edict of Government
no known U.S. statute, case law, proclamation, etc. formally defining the term has been found.
loosely based on usage found in Chapter 2 of Compendium I/II
Edicts for Governments outside of US Law
Barring a successful argument in #Source_of_Law that changes #Bullet_item_guideline the current licensing of these works with {{PD-EdictGov}} is in question. At Wikisource we have a history of leaning to delete where there is questionable copyright status. In this case though we have multiple unrelated works of some notability (where notability indicates opportunities for notice, not to grant any special status), and there are no known challenges to the common interpretation. Does silence grant copyright prohibition on these works? Jeepday (talk) 11:24, 13 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Should Wikisource continue to host Edicts for Governments outside of US Law, based only on PD-EdictGov?
Note:If the community decision is keep, we can add a country parameter to the template to facilitate future issue resolution.
Absolutely we should. Laws are laws. It is the proper application, and in earlier days it is fairly apparent that there was less rigour in the application of the licence. PD-USGov is about anything from a public servant of the United States. Edict of Gov is about official declarations of state from the Government, which is a smaller set in that it is not anything from a public servant, and addresses something that is a public release that specifically addresses legal requirements. — billinghurstsDrewth11:53, 13 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Assuming that the template, based on Compendium and practise/case law, is deemed good enough for the needs of Wikisource (and I assume it will), or some case law regarding foreign laws is added to this debate, or some evidence 'foreign' is commonly used as a euphemism for 'territories of the U.S.', I see no reason to exclude edicts of foreign governments in their official form (I am less sure about translations not issued by a foreign government). The Compendium is merely stating that case law indicates there is an incredibly high bar for edicts to obtain copyright - so high that the Copyright Office will go to court instead of registering the copyright of an edict. The Compendium is clearly aware of other nation-states, and liberally used 'foreign' for a range of purposes (use browser find tool on http://www.copyrightcompendium.com/), and never appears to use it in a sense that is limited to the governments of U.S. territories and other strange cases within the United States. Most of the recent case law in the U.S. has reiterated that a) edicts are authored by the people, and b) a law is a fact, and not an expression - it is the only valid expression, and therefore becomes fact once enacted. (Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress Int'l, Inc.) John Vandenberg(chat)02:27, 22 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Low hanging EdictGov fruit
While the debate about foreign laws seems to have got bogged down, I can't find any any support for speeches and government miscellanea under these terms. Their continued presence is likely to encourage the addition of more works under this licence. Should we at least (a) delete all such works, and (b) remove PD-EdictGov from any author pages (except for those of judges and similar officials)? - AdamBMorgan (talk) 19:53, 25 June 2013 (UTC)Reply
or; (c) put off making any sudden moves or permanent changes until this October (the month that a little birdie has told me the finished revisions become released as the Compendium of Copyright Office Practices, III to the public). In my view, we would be doing more harm than good by changing what we've been doing until now in light of the possibility of more clarity being provided by this new edition either way (though I agree this [sticking] point has been lingering a bit too long now for my own comfort too).
fwiw... I've suggested a sub-title to help promote the coming edition and while they found "new & improved!!! INTERNET now included..." funny enough to warrant a reply from an actual human being instead of the typical government BOT, they said it didn't have a chance of passing the preliminary submission stage :( George Orwell III (talk) 05:49, 28 June 2013 (UTC)Reply
┌────────────────────────────────────┘
UPDATE: It seems the U.S. Copyright Office did not escape the recent government shutdown & budget cuts - missing the original October 2013 release date for the new Compendium in the process. I've been searching almost daily for any new information since. Today, I found some.
According to this recap of a November 20th, 2013 event, the new target date for the revised 1st draft of the Compendium of Copyright Office Practices has been "set" for January 2014.
“
... [Maria] Pallante announced that the beta version of the new Compendium of Copyright Office Practices, a project managed by Legal Advisory Board Member Mary Rasenberg, will be available for comments in January 2014.
Comment I am concerned about the confusion that is existing around this proposal. The confusion seems to be whether this is an existing licence, and whether the licence is being appropriately applied. From what I am seeing, we look to identify from authoritative sources the scope of the licence, and explain the use of the template, and then review its use appropriately. Works where it has been misapplied can then be deleted by grouping if that is clearly determined. Summary ... Keep the licence, review the works. — billinghurstsDrewth08:02, 28 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
Seems like you did not follow the logic-tree above outlining why this license never should have been created in the first place and why its application since that mistake has largely been an over-reach in interpretation (plus it's authority was never based on actual U.S. law - neither by case law nor in codified statute, again, as outlined above). Hopefully the next Compendium will provide further clarity here, but even if the parts mentioning this area remain exactly the same as they are now - there is no lawful basis to keep the license. Works by foreign governments or their officers are no different in the eyes of U.S. law than the works created by other foreign organizations or individuals. Period. After Title 17, either the treaties with the nation/nationality in question & the U.S. dictate copyright protections or any waivers from such protections (CC-By-, etc.) do -- not the Copyright Office's internal practices on copyright registration. -- George Orwell III (talk) 00:37, 9 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
I'm a bit puzzled by the lack of any mention in this discussion that the various Compendiums must cite some legal authorization for their publication before they can be published by the U.S. Government Printing Office. That legal authorization should shed some light on the origins of current copyright law in the U.S. I'm also puzzled by the lack of analysis by legal scholars in this discussion, as there appear to be several who have edited in Wiki. This discussion appears to involve only a very small number of well-intentioned persons who do not appear to be particularly well informed about U.S. copyright law or the U.S. court system, and that seems dangerous. For example, there does not seem to be any appreciation here of the legal status of U.S. territories like Guam (they have been described as "foreign" governments, despite the fact they have U.S. courts resident, which have much broader powers than do most local government courts). Isn't there some way to broaden the discussion and invite persons with copyright law expertise into it before a momentous decision is made, possibly in error? I came to this page via the Mt. Laurel doctrine decision, which is still identified as a candidate for deletion from Wikipedia as a copyright violation, which is utterly preposterous! Labeling American court decisions as candidates for deletion while this discussion continues does a great disservice to Wikipedia and to its readers. With all due respect, it appears you folks are in way over your heads. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 17:47, 21 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
That's just it - the sections in the Compendium refereing to edicts do not cite any authorities based in the Copyright Law. Yes the compendium itself exists because of regulations in the CFR authorized by law - but the question here is limited to the narrow scope of a section or two within the compendium.
And to be clear, if your article was really a candidate for deletion, the deletion notice would be at the top of the article. The only thing pending deletion is the Edict of Government banner itself - not the articles that have applied it to date. We'll straighten the license situation out once a consensus has been reached. -- George Orwell III (talk) 18:15, 21 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
One more thing - you didn't link the court decision that brought you here but if it is indeed a U.S. court decision & not a court exclusive just to territory of the U.S. you should be using the {{PD-USGov}} license anyway. -- George Orwell III (talk) 18:46, 21 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
I guess this is an analogous case to the one described in [2] (Dreier, Thomas. Overview of Legal Aspects in the European Union. Pp. 21 (last paragraph)–23), which states that legal texts deemed free in Germany are still copyrighted in France. --Eleassar (talk) 21:27, 19 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Still Pending
It looks like the "Compendium III of Copyright Office Practices" is still pending release. a final release but the Public Draft was made available in late August 2014. Closure of this topic is in some part dependent on the guidence offered by the US Copyright office. Jeepday (talk) 00:01, 10 April 2014 (UTC) Updated by GO III on November 17, 2014.Reply
To quote the public draft:
313.6(C)(2) Government Edicts
As a matter of longstanding public policy, the U.S. Copyright Office will not register a government edict that has been issued by any state, local, or territorial government, including legislative enactments, judicial decisions, administrative rulings, public ordinances, or similar types of official legal materials. Likewise, the Office will not register a government edict issued by any foreign government or any translation prepared by a government employee acting within the course of his or her official duties. See Banks v. Manchester, 128 U.S. 244, 253 (1888) (“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”); Howell v. Miller, 91 F. 129, 137 (6th Cir. 1898) (Harlan, J.) (“no one can obtain the exclusive right to publish the laws of a state in a book prepared by him”).
There is a limited exception to this rule. Section 104(b)(5) of the Act states that works first published by the United Nations or any of its specialized agencies, or first published by the Organization of American States are eligible for copyright protection in the United States. See 17 U.S.C. § 104(b)(5).
A work that does not constitute a government edict may be registered, even if it was prepared by an officer or employee of a state, local, territorial, or foreign government while acting within the course of his or her official duties. For example, the Office may register a tourist magazine written and published by Arizona’s department of tourism or a map created and published by the public transit authority for the city of Detroit. Likewise, the Office may register annotations that summarize or comment upon legal materials issued by a federal, state, local, or foreign government, unless the annotations themselves have the force of law. See Chapter 700, 717.1.
The "problem" is not so much between the various levels of local, state & Federal governments within the U.S. and the U.S. copyright law but the remaining "foreign" government entities falling outside that group. The CO does not specifically give us clarification or even an example of a foreign government employee's work NOT being subject to the Copyright Laws just as any other foreign author's work would be subject to - they merely state that they won't register such works (e.g. you can't really seek copyright infringement when it occurs unless your work is properly registered by the CO to begin with).
Denying registration in effect denies the legal standing for a foreign government (not foreign citizens) to pursue action against the U.S. Government [the Copyright Office specifically] via any U.S. court proceeding normally available to individual U.S. citizens & non-citizens alike. That said, I think we should be looking to treat edicts of foreign governments just like any other work that's produced by an individual foreign author or entity.
Not being able to register a work here in the U.S. does not equal being 'free from any all copyright protections' nor does it let works fall arbitrarily into the public domain either. Lastly, 'no registration' should not mean works of those specific type are free and clear enough of protections in order to be hosted here.
They won't register such works because they and their legal expertise believe they aren't copyrightable in the United States. I think they give sufficient clarification; the rules (about court cases and laws and administrative rulings that have the force of law) apply the same to foreign governments as they do to state governments.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:45, 18 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
This is probably the only case where I will go out of my way to regurgitate any and all of the above even when others won't; so, to that, I repeat [to you] again...
... "The Copyright Office's Circulars and Compendium II should be afforded this lesser deference, or Skidmore deference, so long as the Copyright Office's interpretations do not conflict with the express statutory language of the Copyright Act." 2010 WL 1838874 (S.D.N.Y.), p.6 of PDF.
More important is another citation found in the same case opinion (footnote 8 on p. 11 of the PDF):
FN8. As the Court of Appeals noted in Morris, “ ‘the Copyright Office has no authority to give opinions or define legal terms, and [...] its interpretation on an issue never before decided should not be given controlling weight.’ “ Morris, 283 F.3d at 505 (quoting Bartok v. Boosey & Jawkes, Inc., 523 F.2d 941, 946-47 (2d Cir.1975)). Nevertheless, the court found the Copyright Office's interpretation of the Copyright Act set forth in Circular 62 as applied to the registration procedures of serials to be “persuasive.” Id. And, as discussed above, Circular 62 provides that the registration of a serial by a claimant who owns all of the rights in the constituent parts will extend to the constituent parts. Id. at 506. <highlighting by GO3>
The Copyright Office is not the legal authority nor the final interpretive body here -- the U.S. law & U.S. courts are. The fact that this particular conundrum hasn't been tested in the courts in any meaningful way to date does not insure our continued hosting of the works in question authored by others -- without any sort of consent on their part nor supportive case law to back that up -- is actually "lawfully compliant" in any way shape or form. Nor should anyone read any further into what amounts to inter-office guidance at best at the same time either; especially when the courts have said as much [footnote 8 above] regarding the Copyright Office & their Compendiums. The registration issue comes down to having the proper standing to pursue copyright infringement [if need be] in the U.S legal system. Not having the registration for the work in the claim of copyright violation is a huge [intentional?] hurdle to successfully prosecuting something like that. This does not infer the hurdle doesn't exist for others or that it is impossible to clear altogether.
Plus there is no way the Copyright Office in of and itself can disassemble &/or nullify the automatic copyright protections and rights afforded to authors or creators -- bestowed upon them, in good faith, at the moment of creation by the statutes of U.S. Law -- regardless of any subsequent formal registration with the Copyright Office taking place or not; with any past deference given to that compendium in some sort of legal setting having taken place or not. The bottom line is until there is a ruling narrowly dealing with the specifics of the issue at hand handed down by the U.S. courts, we are obligated to apply the same standards we already believe to be beholden to and that is the [U.S.] law in force and in effect as it relates to the wiki-project(s) concerned with such matters.
The Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution provides that "[n]o person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." This Due Process right mandates that citizens have notice of what the law requires of the citizenship [and of the government for that matter]. This is the legal basis behind the principle that everyone subject to U.S. law have unfettered access to the laws governing them, whether those laws are local, state or federal. Restricting public access to laws, either by precluding copying in printed or electronic form without the citizen having to seek permission and perhaps pay a royalty fee, constitutes a Due Process violation.
This is why there is increasingly less and less of a hosting issue when it comes to the sub-divisions the U.S. & their respective governments [the 50 States plus the recognized territories of the U.S]; they are all subject to the laws they should know and have to abide by and they all should have as much ease and access to those laws as possible according to the case-law precedents to date -- most of which ruling in accordance with that same Constitutional principle & rationale behind them. And, since "our" servers are in Florida, one should consider Wiki__ part of the U.S. citizenship -- "we" are subject to the full force and effect of U.S. law (its the primary reason we can host certain source files locally instead of being in possible CopyVio when hosted on Commons).
At the same time, "we" are not legally subject to foreign laws; works authored by foreign governments have no legal force nor effect upon the people (or citizens) currently subject to U.S. law. Sure, a work by foreign government might have the all force of law plus that of the Jedi at "home" but in no way could anyone expect for it to have the equivalent legal force or standing upon the citizenship of the U.S. Again, citizenship of the U.S. is subject only to the full force and effect of U.S. law. There is no Constitutional mandate to know "things" that might be considered a law somewhere else and those same subjects of U.S. law surely are not compelled nor required to lawfully abide by whatever those "things" might be believed to be either. Thus, there is no expectation of free and unfettered access to "things" the U.S. citizenship do not lawfully need to know nor are expected to abide by - there is no "impact" on the constitutional-governance relationship for parties of the U.S. either way when it comes to "things" in force in some other country.
A foreign work is a foreign work is a foreign work; period - be it authored by a foreign company or a foreign entity; be it an individual that is foreign or a government body that is foreign - they are all foreign works when it comes to the U.S. law (not the Copyright Office's registration policy).
The best once can hope for is that a treaty or series of treaties between the U.S. and whoever the foreign government in question might be have copyright related agreements already in place that may provide us with some guidance here. Otherwise, I just don't believe we can host those works in good conscience never mind lawfully. -- George Orwell III (talk) 10:13, 18 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
To be less curt; the Copyright Office has said this is what the law means. The onus is now on you to provide a competent legal authority that disagrees with them, not demand a higher authority before you'll accept that. They have lawyers who are studied in the subject, and we shouldn't be dismissing that, even if a judge could, in theory.
It's been at least 3700 years since the birth of the principle that the laws should be made available to be known to everyone; I have little sympathy for polities that still don't understand that. There is a multinational audience of Wikisource, and even from the narrowest perspective, Americans have been known to travel abroad from time to time, and can be expected to familiarize themself with the laws of the places they are travelling to. I have absolutely no conscience issues with publishing these materials.--Prosfilaes (talk) 13:07, 18 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
You should have left well enough alone until something new came to light. All that did was re-hash the 3 previous related sections (now merged into one) and [re]presented as if new clarity or something had been provided. I recognized it immediately.
Back to the basics... where again can we find the part in the actual U.S. law excluding an author or entity of an original work, published or unpublished, foreign or national, from the copyright protections and rights normally established by simple creation of such works if not at the time of first publication of them? Of course > nobody can. Just like one won't find the term edict of government defined anywhere in the U.S. Code either -- never mind within the Copyright portions.
The lack of any such statutory authorization means the Copyright Office is not capable of lawfully stripping said author(s) of their statutorily granted copyright protections and rights. Denying them registration is not the same as stripping away those established rights; only Congress or the Court's can do that. Its true agencies such as the Copyright Office carry a bit of legal weight; but, at best, in civil proceedings tops -- no where near the full force or effect actual Federal law. I don't believe the type of works in question here are so basic or so embedded in well-known fact that anyone believes that is the justification for being "non-copyrightable" right? I wouldn't think so but please chime in if you do.
Regulations need to be based in the law to have any force or effect and can never be anything other than in compliance with the law - never the equivalent of them (better known as a Parallel Table of Authorities). That's also why I wiki-linked to a place that starts dealing with both the Skidmore & Cheveron deferences, which is where I'm guessing this is all going go once again. :(
One more thing on perspectives, if Commons can't host certain works because they are still protected in their home countries but "we" can by hosting the same file here locally, does that mean when the opposite might be true, the principles of morality, civility, ethics, diligence, fairness and the like no longer apply to us? -- George Orwell III (talk) 14:02, 18 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
I don't care what you think the law says. You could, for example, say that the Supreme Court has no right to overturn Congress's laws, and while that it is a reasonable reading of the US Constitution, it is one that completely and totally ignores reality. The Supreme Court has no statutory authorization for what it does; does that mean that we ignore them, or do we recognize the reality on the ground? The courts have ruled that law is not protectable by copyright, and the Copyright Office has interpreted that. As legal authority, they may not trump courts, but they trump any interpretations from people here.
When you rehash the last few sections, the response is likely to be a rehash of the last few sections.
I don't know what you mean by "when the opposite might be true", but the pompous invocation of "morality, civility, ethics, diligence, fairness and the like" is completely inappropriate for a discussion. We aren't making stump speeches here; you actually have to make a case instead of casting aspersions. As I said, for 3700 years, there has been a principle that law is something to made available to everyone; I believe the application of law made to protect the profits (and sometimes privacy) of authors to laws in an effort to keep them from being known is an immoral thing, and see no reason to voluntarily subject myself to the those restrictions.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:39, 18 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
I'm re-hashing again because I can't understand why in blazes you would post what amounted to a 'better-late-than-never', 'na-na, na-na, boo-boo ~ I can post better than you do', [re]affirmation of what -- to me-- seemed to be satisfactorily settled for some time now. The only question(s) left [in my mind] until you bumped this up was where exactly some folks wanted to draw the edict-uncopyrightable line when it came to foreign fishing licenses, political speeches, trade-union agreements, indigenous treaties, minister's web-blogs, economic summit pacts, floor-statements, newspaper editorials, tv & radio interviews and similar seemingly pseudo-official productions by [foreign] government officials to some (basically- stuff that my Congressman might get way with by submitting remarks into the Congressional Record or inserting them into a Committee Report). Any justification drawn using that type of false equivalency with the PD-USGov exemption is still complete & total bullsh!t btw.
Recap: the thing with the sub-divisions of local U.S. state governments was rationally worked over, point by point, until it felt acceptable to the handful still following the discussion. The other argument over un-copyrightable, straight statutes, regulations &/or decrees wasn't really an issue upon the closer inspection of the works themselves; the discussion was 'shelved' as a result. It turned out nearly all the additions in question didn't/wouldn't have >official< translations in English [being] provided; not without 3rd parties getting involved, or the contributions already enjoyed some sort of statutory waiving of protection in their nation of origin but nobody ever bothered to question that. AdamBMorgan might have more to say on this but he's on wiki-break at the moment. What's left to deal with is still listed above.
I'm still curious however. Are you even looking at the remaining works at the top-most level of this sub-section? Did you / Do you see any truly "compendium" compliant foreign statute, regulation or decree up there anywhere, maybe? I sure didn't - ∴ I wondered why the post yesterday. I realize now you weren't intentionally drudging-up that point again; you just thought you solved an already settled matter & I assumed you were picking at healing scabs by it. I should've known better by now. -- George Orwell III (talk) 15:05, 19 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
The post that starts this sub-section says "Closure of this topic is in some part dependent on the guidence offered by the US Copyright office", so obviously Jeepday didn't think it was closed. I think you've argued louder then everyone else, but I don't see that you've convinced anyone else. If the consensus goes against me, I'm happy to let it drop, but I don't see any sort of consensus here.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:12, 21 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Right, the post that starts this [sub]-section says... a.) b.) c.) and so on... but there has been a good number of previous discussion on this, here and elsewhere, that I'm nearly certain that you've not participated in or maybe even just skimmed over. The same probably goes for other folks including us.
I realized as much yesterday, again, unless you believe any of the roundup articles pending deletion listed at the [top]-section fall into the same rationale for exclusion as -- what [I believe] has been the consensus for months now -- for:
certain U.S. non-federal (local state and other subdivisions of government) works are excluded from copyright because 'citizens should have free and unfettered access to the laws they are expected to abide by'; and
certain foreign national government works are excluded from copyright because 'their U.S. federal gov. equivalents (PD-USGov) are un-copyrightable as part of public policy' (the unsettled caveat [that I can recall] here was if that meant further sub-divisions of the foreign national government or not & believe only 'national' was in the majority before discussion faded off)
even a general yes or no to the roundup list will help clarify your position and allow Jeepday to make further deletions
But in order to better a.) stop folks from unintentionally or otherwise changing directions or repeating covered ground; and b.)end this debate once and for all by building consensus & having it reside in one place and one place only, I started to setup that consensus building page where all the background and archived stuff to date could be brought, reviewed by all and finalized.
Two television interviews with the president of Armenia. Commons has {{PD-AM-exempt}} – for works of folklore; communications on daily news or on current events that are press information; official documents (laws, decisions, decrees, etc.) as well as their official translations; state emblems and signs (flags, coats of arm (armorial bearings), medals (decorations), monetary signs, etc.); results obtained by technical means without the intervention of human creative activity.Commons:Commons:Copyright_tags#Country.2FRegion_specific_tags which may be relevant and if others think that it is we will need to add the licence. — billinghurstsDrewth06:42, 10 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
@billinghurst, it looks like you are questioning the copyright of these works and at the same time offering a Commons License that would cover them. By default unchallenged questions of copyright = delete, but you have offered a quality rebuttal, and no one seems to have an issue with the license you offer. Unless you have other concerns, I would say go ahead and bring the commons license over, and add it to the works. Jeepday (talk) 21:39, 20 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Virginia Woolf Incorrect Copyright Info
Latest comment: 9 years ago8 comments5 people in discussion
After going through much of this month's proofread, I decided to hop on over to Virginia Woolf's author page. I noticed that many of the books are marked "Under US copyright until X" by the {{copyright until}} template. However, this isn't correct for the few I checked. While true that works made before 1923 are in the public domain in the US, this does not mean that works after 1923 are not. All of her works published before 1964 are now in the public domain. I searched the US Copyright Office to check some, such as Mrs. Dalloway and A Room of One's Own. There are recent versions under copyright, but the originals were not renewed and do not fall under the post-1964 automatic renewal umbrella. The recent versions are under copyright because of new material (forewords, etc.) and edits to the original material, but the original text does not actually fall under the banner of copyright.
"The copyright in a derivative work covers only the additions, changes, or other new material appearing for the first time in the work. Protection does not extend to any preexisting material, that is, previously published or previously registered works or works in the public domain or owned by a third party.
As a result, it is not possible to extend the length of protection for a copyrighted work by creating a derivative work. A work that has fallen into the public domain, that is, a work that is no longer protected by copyright, is also an underlying “work” from which derivative authorship may be added, but the copyright in the derivative work will not extend to the public domain material, and the use of the
public domain material in a derivative work will not prevent anyone else from using the same public domain work for another derivative work."
Also see the Commons page which has a good summary of why the original text is now public domain.
Of note, the 70 year after death rule would apply for Britain, which means the copyright on the original works expired in 2011. I do not know about renewals on these works for Britain, but I'm referring to US copyright overall in this post. It seems that we're blocking ourselves from working on some great texts. As it stands, I haven't changed any of the page as I wanted to point this out first. If I have made a mistake, please feel free to point it out. The Haztalk18:36, 8 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
I've looked through them and all the renewals seem to be valid. I can't tell if they were initially registered within the required thirty days but the years match. Without further information, I would say they are all under copyright, although the specific licence is not correct (they are under copyright due to renewal, not the 1923 cut-off). I might be wrong. I've added the renewal numbers for the moment if anyone wants to double check. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 19:16, 8 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. I just looked at the renewal you gave for Mrs. Dalloway. It was in 1953 which means it would have been valid for 47 years (until 2000). I'll add that the new, longer copyright term (95y total) does not apply as it was published before 1964, so the term still remains 75y if the renewal was filed in the 28th year which it was. Circular 15The Haztalk19:58, 8 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
URAA renewal complicates matters, and as they were UK published works, unless we can demonstrate that they are published within 30 days in the US, then they will remain foreign works, and pretty much out of bounds until 95 years post-publication`. How existing renewals and and URAA are going to interplay is just another nightmare, and just going to be too hard for base amateurs like us to resolve. — billinghurstsDrewth00:21, 9 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
Template:Edit conflict Virginia Woolf was an English writer. Thanks to w:URAA, all of her post-1922 books are copyrighted in the United States for 95 years from publication regardless of whether they were renewed or not, since they were copyrighted in the UK in 1996.
You also seem to ask whether the books were renewed in the UK or not. The UK abolished renewals quite a long time ago (in the w:Copyright Act 1842 I think), and renewals have not been needed in the UK since then. --Stefan2 (talk) 00:31, 9 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
According to the copyright office, URAA doesn't apply here because they were already registered in the United States. If they had missed the original renewal, the URAA wouldn't have allowed them to renew because it was already registered under US copyright law. My original issue was that they had 75 year terms (even if URAA), not 95. However, while those recent publications discussed the 75 year total term for anything before 1964, the next part states that all works published after 1922 and renewed before 1978 automatically had the renewal extended 20 years to be 95 years total. This summary of a part of the 1998 act has cleared it up for me:
Copyrights already in their second term on January 1, 1978: The duration of the copyright term has automatically been prolonged to last for a total of 95 years. No further renewal registration is necessary.
Um, but URAA does restore the copyright to non-US works which weren't renewed, even if they were registered for copyright in the US. This does at least happen if the US registration was more than 30 days after publication in the UK. I'm not sure what happens if the US registration predates that, though, as some parts of US law consider registration to count as "publication". --Stefan2 (talk) 01:05, 9 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
I am confused about the US copyright status of the English translation of the poem L'après-midi d'un faune by Bloomsbury Group artist Roger Fry. Would someone with clearer understanding of US law please review the tags I posted there, and come up with a suitable US tag? Although it became public domain in 1984, I think the URAA might have put it back in copyright in the US, and it may have to be taken down from Wikisource. --Hroðulf (talk) 09:24, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
This is complicated but British law might be the main problem rather than American. In 1995 UK statutory instrument SI 1995/3297 harmonised British copyright with Europe, which both extended the copyright period to 70 years pma and retroactively revived copyrights that had entered the public domain. So Fry's work The Poems of Mallarmé would have been in the public domain in 1985 but back under copyright from 1995 to 2005 in the UK and the rest of Europe. That's when the URAA becomes an issue. The URAA would only have brought the translation back into copyright if it was in copyright in its home country in 1996 (the URAA was the US response to the international community pressuring them to get into line on international copyright law, similar to the British SI). If it had been in the public domain in the UK in 1996, it would not have been affected by the URAA. However, as it had been brought back into copyright in the UK one year earlier, the URAA also brought it back into copyright in the US. Then a completely separate US law extended the copyright term to 95 years from publication, so it is probably still under copyright in the United States. The posthumous publication would have probably only affected the copyright if it had been published after 2004 (70 years pma). I'm not sure if I've got all of that right, so Im going to attach a {{copyvio}} and copy this thread to Wikisource:Possible copyright violations. Please note that the original French version is in the public domain so, if your French is up to it, a Wikisource translation is still possible. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 17:59, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
As mentioned, I not 100% sure about my summary. Several different laws are interacting here and I'm not sure if I got them all straight in my head. If I did get them right, then I think this is is a copyright violation in the US but could be ported to Wikilivres (and, as mentioned, would not affect a different, even user made, translation). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 18:03, 4 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
Works by British authors who died after 1925 published after 1922 that weren't published in the US within 30 days are going to be in copyright in the US. (With the exception of Crown Copyright.) (In 2019, 95 years from publication will be the prevailing rule, but due to grandfathering it's easier to remember before 1923 is in the public domain.)--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:07, 7 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
That is about right. The EU countries increased to 70pma at different times, but the UK happened to do it on January 1, 1996, which coincided with the URAA date, so that law change affected its status in both countries. On December 31, 1995, it was PD in both countries, and on January 1, 1996, it was copyrighted in both. It has since re-expired in the UK from the sounds of it, but not the U.S. (will be 2032 for it to re-expire there). The 1956 UK Copyright Act actually had a term of 50 years from publication for posthumous works, so it may have originally expired in 1987, though that is now moot. The only chance for it to be PD in the U.S. was if it was also published in the U.S. within 30 days of its publication in the UK, as that would disqualify it from the URAA. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:36, 17 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for your thoughtful analysis.
When did the Fry translation expire in the UK? My French isn't good enough to appreciate the tone of the original, but it is a beautiful translation. If the UK expiration is not in doubt, it will be easy to move it to http://www.wikilivres.ca/
Since it has re-expired in the UK, does that permit Wikisource to host it?
If Chatto & Windus had a New York agent, or routinely exported to the US, (and we could find records) then that would help th 'published in the US within 30 days' issue, would it not? Does anyone know if they did?
I would love to see a user-contributed English translation on English Wikisource. I am afraid that if I were attempt it, it may put off someone with more expertise tackling it. Is there a message board where we can request a translation?
The Fry translation expired by 2007 in the UK; Wikilivres is life+50, so it should be completely okay there.
The English Wikisource includes files that are PD in the US, and UK expiration is not relevant there.
I don't know that shipping copies to the US would be sufficient to make it published in the US. In any case, I don't see any evidence that there were American copies. The Library of Congress lists "London, Chatto & Windus, 1936." in their entry and WorldCat doesn't reveal any other US libraries holding copies of the 1936 edition (with many holding copies of the 1951 American edition[3][4]). If you want, I can check the UNLV copy of the 1951 edition sometime in 2014, but I doubt that will help any.
We could create Wikisource:Request for translations, but I don't think that there's enough translators here to make that effective. I think if you don't do it, no one else will. With poetry, I would stress more about the literal translation then the poesy, but I think that's still quite useful, especially for students with some French.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:36, 21 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Mao Zedong's work
Latest comment: 10 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Hello all,
Mao's work here all have the {{PD-CN}} tag. However, some of them (e.g. On Guerrilla Warfare) were not created on the behalf of Chinese government nor translated on the behalf of which. Since Mao's copyright is not expired before 2026 (50 years from 1976) or 2046 (70 years from 1976), should {{PD-CN}} still apply to those? -Mys 721tx (talk) 21:35, 13 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago10 comments4 people in discussion
Is there any justification for this law except Edict-gov? If not I'm inclined to issue an informal writ of mandamus, a cease and desist order or an estoppel to prevent further work on placing this law on Wikisource. ResScholar (talk) 10:19, 22 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
If the Edict-gov license is the only license applicable, and that license is being cast into doubt by the discussions above, I think it would be better to stop progress on the work until a decision on the license's use has solidified. ResScholar (talk) 20:12, 22 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
While I agree about the "Edict-gov" license pitfall completely here, one of the points behind nullifying it was to investigate where the nation-in-question's copyright law actually stands on any given type of government work, suspected or otherwise, and build from there. If its PD/released by the attributed government by law there, than its OK to host here.
So if one can believe what is found locally under Article 10, the "lack of applicable license" is more a matter of not having the valid & proper licesnse banner already in place more so than being disqualified by [inter]national copyright law(s) or worse, falling under the last resort of scoundrels - the Edict of Gov't "standard".
You still need to "tag" any work added to en.WS reflecting that info relating to copyright status - the matching banner did not exist for Ukraine is all.
Latest comment: 9 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion
I can't find that much information on communist Czechoslovak copyright law, but it looks like both Czech Republic and Slovakia do death+70 with no weird exceptions so the original was probably under copyright in home countries as of 1996 and remains under copyright to date. Prosody (talk) 23:32, 27 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
Consider that one of the subjects of Charter 77 is the "Freedom of public expression," and the fact that this was a public manifesto. Note that the Czech version already has a PD tag.
Charter 77 was meant to be xeroxed and distributed by samizdat as widely as possible. None of the signatories were at all concerned about copyright. There's plenty of places on the web to read an English translation. Google it.
Censoring a public manifesto, which itself protests censoring. Wikilawyering at its finest.
We are not censoring works by choosing what does and doesn't go in our collection, especially by content-neutral means of explicit licenses. Even as an implicit copyright license, public manifestos are problematic because the cost of a license that allows derivative works is that your political opponents can take what you did and rework it for their needs. If we're serious about open content, we need to know that the authors of this work wouldn't sue about that, and that's incredibly hard to say without an explicit license. I'd say that most implicit licenses implicitly have the JSMIN clause in it--"The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil."--and for the same reasons open content organizations don't accept the JSMIN license as free, we can't accept these implicit licenses as free.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:31, 8 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
A justification worthy of Husak's regime. One of the anonymous authors might sue ?? That would be like Thomas Jefferson suing the colonies (or suing anyone, for that matter) for printing the Declaration of Independence. But whatever. I guess it'll have to be banned from Wikipedia till 2047. Vaclav Havel is turning in his grave. Either that, or laughing hilariously. I must admit that I got a good chuckle myself, at the irony of it.74.67.93.11620:56, 8 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
One further thought: Are the New York Times, and all the other papers that published the original and the "authorized translation" in English, in jeopardy of a lawsuit ??? Ridiculous... 74.67.93.11621:33, 8 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
This Louise and Aylmer Maude translation of the famed Leo Tolstoy work may have been copyright-free in the United States for a few years. If its first publication date was in 1928 or 1929 by Oxford University Press, and it wasn't published simultaneously in the United States, it wouldn't have been registered in the U.S. either. But once the URAA took effect in the U.S. (in Dec. 1994), its copyright would have been restored, regardless of whether it was registered. Because the copyright of this work would have been in force in 1996 in Great Britain (the translators died some time after 70 years prior to 1996).
And even if I'm wrong about it not being registered, it wasn't renewed. There is a renewal on some Tolstoy works by those translators, but the renewal specifically points to extraneous material by other authors.
Let's say I'm wrong about the 1928 or 1929 date. The Wikisource author page and the War and Peace work title page says it was translated 1922-23. That would still just allow us to present that portion of the work published before 1923 (at least until 2018).
The earliest occurrence I can find of this translation is in the Oxford University Press translation of The Works of Tolstoy.
Fortunately this appears to be a Gutenberg cut and paste job, and little effort of our contributors will be blighted by removing this translation. ResScholar (talk) 08:05, 28 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
This Google Book says it was published in 1922. But I do see the "1922-23" references out there as well, with three volumes mentioned, but also that the Maudes revised their work in reprintings -- so it may be there is a 1922 and a 1923 version. Or, probably more likely, books 1 and 2 were from 1922, and the last one was from 1923. The URAA did not take effect until Jan 1, 1996 (the same day the UK restored to 70pma; it had previously been PD in the UK as well). The question then is if it was published in the U.S. simultaneously, at least the third volume in 1923. Oxford did have New York offices, but most references seem to just say London. This one mentions both New York and London, though. Hrm. Carl Lindberg (talk)
Latest comment: 9 years ago10 comments4 people in discussion
There is no evidence that this is, in fact, in the public domain. It also doesn't appear to be significant enough to be included on Wikisource. --Jakob (talk) 13:29, 5 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
The easiest way is to provide a link to the song posted at the school site with it’s copyright notice posted online. Next requires contact with someone who is legally entitled to represent the school and/or the author of the song. Which is most likely to work in your case? JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 18:13, 7 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Jeepday The principal is having the copyright of the song. The song is not on school website but it is on the school diary as hardcopy.
The principal had sent a the permission to permissions-common.
Is it ok, or any other step is required?--Prathamprakash29 (talk) 07:01, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
This is the image of school diary with school song ---Reply
1 The permissions sent in 2014050810001396 are sent on behalf of the author, not by the author. While a this can be addressed, the second issue is problematic.
Jakec had challenged it as not significant or notable, which is not an inclusion criteria at Wikisource, and pointed out the copyright issue. I should have reviewed more before bringing it here. Currently it seems that the copyright issue can be (but has not yet been) addressed. But the work will still fail at least two of the precedent exclusions at WS:WWI. Jeepday (talk) 08:32, 10 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Currently it does not look like there is anything you can do. In an effort to not become a w:Vanity press and remain a library, the community has set some standards on what works can be hosted here. This work, does not meet the inclusion criteria. Jakec and Ankry were essentially correct when they questioned the appropriateness of hosting this work on Wikisource. The two "Official" problems I mention above are the technically correct challenges to the work, other then the copyright issue. If you look hard enough you may think you can find a way around these challenges but speaking from experience in working with the community for years, this work is not likely to be hosted on any wikimediafoundation site in your lifetime. Jeepday (talk) 12:21, 11 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Aside on Excerpts
Jeepday, you cited "Excerpts", but is a song really an excerpt, or more of a self-contained unit like in an anthology? What brought this to mind was an early contribution called Elemoont. It was a story serialized in a Russian newspaper and was accepted here. I found the "Excerpts" description at Wikisource:WWI enlightening as to good management of Wikisource resources in its opposition to fragmentation of an author's work, but I also see how that may be taken too far when it excludes bonafide publication of works of those very authors we are trying to protect that might not appear in any other way. For example in a newspaper, a story serialized there may be thought to have more enduring significance than the news articles that surround it, articles which, in the long run, may only carry historical significance rather than a literary one.
Jeepday, since, as you mention, it was only published in a school diary, I don't mean to argue a moot point, but to open up possibilities of the song being published elsewhere as a condition of it being accepted here. For example, why wouldn't a magazine put out by a school district that you see published in some areas be suitable? ResScholar (talk) 11:53, 12 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
ResScholar you are correct; but in those cases the works have received multiple publications. The community has tended to embrace "Excerpts" of popular works that have recieved multiple publications when a copy of the work as a stand alone is not available, but I think they is usually at least an attempt to set up the entire work as an index, even if only one part of the work is validated at the time it is brought onto Wikisource. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:09, 13 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Karl Marx translations
Latest comment: 9 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion
On Landed Property depends on first publication date (Lawrence and Wishart publication) About five paragraphs long.
Collected Works says of this work and another, "In English they were first published in full in The General Council of the First International. 1868-1870, Moscow, 1966. p. 392." There is also a 1964 work (the earliest of GoogleBooks and InternetArchive) about the same General Council in Google snippet view (presumably a partial publication). So either way a URAA like Das Kapital vol. 2. ResScholar (talk) 20:27, 20 June 2014 (UTC)Reply
Das Kapital Volume Two (1975) probably Lawrence and Wishart. It doesn't matter much because only a few small pieces of it were ever added to Wikisource.
Progress Publishers, Moscow 1956, translated by I. Lasker; that makes it a URAA restoral if the Soviet Union was a pma-50 (or more) country, because Russia would have continued the pma-50 (or more) by 2006 surely.
Selected Essays by Karl Marx: Published by Leonard Parsons, London, 1926. Translator died after 1950. Also a URAA restoral, so I move for removal. False information on translator field and copyright template.
There may be no false information in the copyright template. The work was published in New York the same year by a different publisher: what eventually became a sister firm of London's Lawrence and Wishart that was called International Publishers. Unknown how the one month rule applies here. If it was less than a month, the template is good enough as it applies even to never-registered works for all the stronger reason. If it was more than a month, it's a URAA restoral case. ResScholar (talk) 08:32, 5 June 2014 (UTC)Reply
Works by Edward Snowden
Latest comment: 9 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Contemporary author, two prepared speeches, one's without license, the other is kind of dubious. As near as I can tell, the CC claim for the second is from the boilerplate of Common Dreams. It wasn't originally published there but rather as a testimony to a commission of the European Parliament. Although the way the attribution is set up on Common Dreams which suggests that it was published by the author or with his special consent, the fact that they don't have any exclusives from him makes me think otherwise. Prosody (talk) 20:34, 26 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
I just have written a e-mail to Common Dreams editor with question about CC license at The Work of a Generation text. may they have a permission from Snowden. May be that any speech at European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee meeting is a public domain or common creative. Alexander Roumega (talk) 05:55, 27 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
The Dream of the Rood (translation)
Latest comment: 9 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
originally posted as a Proposed Deletion
A recent edit from a new user account seems to indicate that The Dream of the Rood (translation), added here in 2008, may be a copyvio. The linked translation is the same as ours, at least for the portions I have checked, and that site prohibits copying of the translation. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:51, 10 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
There are two publications dates listed (1908 and 1925) for Ross's translation. Our copy states 1908, which then would be in the public domain.— Ineuw talk21:39, 9 June 2014 (UTC)Reply
So why is this alleged 1908 edition of Nicomachean Ethics by W. D. Ross not listed on WorldCat? This date sounds like hearsay, incorrectly gathered from the 1908-1952 publication of the series as whole and broadcast across the internet.
Leaning delete per this journal's blurb indicating the Ross translation first appeared in 1925. If there was something akin published in 1908, it would seem to have a different translator (as ResScolar labors to point out the long way :) -- George Orwell III (talk) 23:27, 10 June 2014 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Contemporary position paper of candidate for presidency of the European Commission, no indication of liberal licensing. Prosody (talk) 22:16, 17 June 2014 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago10 comments5 people in discussion
This work was originally brought over as en.WP dumping because it did not belong there. However, it doesn't meet criteria for inclusion here either. It is only published on the web. I don't feel we can treat a html document as it were a documentary source. It also is translation from Italian with an unknown translator (which I am only mentioning in case consensus is "Keep" we will probably need to re-translate as Wikisource translation to be certain of translation copyright issues.) Also the copyright of the original Italian is questionable, but I haven't looked into Vactican copyrights at all (this may not be an issue with research).--BirgitteSB01:38, 9 June 2014 (UTC)Reply
It is based on a website not the actual document. All that I can find the Vatican ever released was an html file. BirgitteSB12:13, 9 June 2014 (UTC)Reply
My understanding is that vatican.va or Holy see is the Vatican equivalent of usa.gov anything published is essentially published on either site is essentially published by the government. I don’t think we have a requirement dictating addressing publishing media paper or electronic only. Still not seeing what your argument is. Jeepday (talk) 10:41, 10 June 2014 (UTC)Reply
Perhaps so, but the work we currently have up does not meet the following: "The source of these works must be noted in order to allow others to verify that the copy displayed at Wikisource is a faithful reproduction." I don't see such a source given for this work. Thjis might be correctable, but is lacking as the work currently stands. --EncycloPetey (talk) 07:21, 11 June 2014 (UTC)Reply
The work is July 2005 entry to Wikisource, while WS:WWI is a empty until January 2006. There is a long history of grandfathering minor things like source not entered, especially as the source is indicated in this deletion discussion. I doubt that anyone is seriously suggesting going through and deleting all works where a source is not listed…. I am not vested in the work in question at all, just in the deletion process. No valid rationale is being offered for this deletion. If you hate it and don’t want it to be on Wikisource, then say that, and if a couple others agree we can delete it. But so far, everyone is offering out scope arguments without historical usage and if they were applied across the board would have a significant impact on other works on WS. Jeepday (talk) 15:26, 12 June 2014 (UTC)Reply
I thought we had found that the Vatican claims a blanket copyright on all "publications" on their websites (here). This would mean that the original text is copyright, regardless of scope. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 22:00, 12 June 2014 (UTC)Reply
Keep This is a historical document of a notable person (so in scope) and it is specifically not a work of art. You cannot copyright facts. Where registries around the world have claimed copyright to their BMD certificates it has been due to the artwork and design aspects. On an electronic version this simply does not exist, and the source is the closest that you will get to official. The work should be {{PD-ineligible}}. — billinghurstsDrewth10:10, 18 June 2014 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
We have a number of works by the OCSE, some paired with UNMIK (UN body), i.e. where OCSE in Kosovo. Looking at the OCSE website they claim the copyright on their works http://www.osce.org/about/terms, and where they do any release data/photos it is with a non-derivative licence. That being correct, it would seem that our holding the works may be in violation of copyright.
I am starting this conversation, and as I find further works I will be adding them to the list. Some of these works may be jointly published, and we will need to work out which organisation will hold the copyright. Looking through their publications themselves, they don't mention copyright information, and little really in the way of publication information, so often the publications are of little to no help.
Under UK law, who owns the copyright to this? Because in the US, I think it would be the original authors, but I believe US courts would say the same people own it in the UK as in the US. If we don't have OTRS, we can use the parts that are life+70, which is probably hard to figure out, though the Society probably knows.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:57, 16 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
I tagged this as "no permission" on Commons, but maybe a deletion request would be better. I think that there are several questions:
How can the permission statement be verified?
Is the society really the copyright holders? The original authors might be the copyright holders instead.
Is this published material? As it is a manuscript, it might only exist in one copy which has not been published. United States copyright rules heavily depend on when a work was first published. Also, under United Kingdom rules, the copyright term is usually the greater of life+70 years and publication+50 years. Showing that the author has been dead for at least 70 years is therefore not enough; you must also show that it was published more than 50 years ago.
Latest comment: 9 years ago8 comments3 people in discussion
There is a permission for this text to publish it under GFDL-1.3 license in OTRS that was rejected by an OTRS agent as incompatible with current WMF licensing policy. When the text was uploaded and the permission sent, CC-BY-SA was already the required license for any text contribution. So I think, this text should be deleted. Ankry (talk) 19:02, 22 October 2014 (UTC)Reply
Does Wikisource not allow GFDL-only works? It is still "free", and while I can understand the restriction about importing portions of GFDL works in editing mode, Wikisource is more about simply storing the entire source document without change. I believe Commons still allows GFDL-only images (though highly discourages them). If an external work happens to be GFDL though, I'm not sure why we would not be allowed to host it. Obviously, we can't take the text and use it in a Wikipedia article, but we should be able to reference it. It is different than an original contribution. Now... I'm not sure about scope here. It looks like the source is a comment on a message board originally. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:18, 24 October 2014 (UTC)Reply
Terms of use and earlier Terms of Use (2009) point out that no text contribution that is GFDL-only should be made to any Wikimedia project on or after June 15th, 2009. I am seriously interested in any policy interpretation that allows Wikisource GFDL-licensed uploads after that date (if anybody can point it out).
Also it is curious that this text has "OTRS pending" status for over five years... The OTRS ticket concerning this text is ticket:2010010610000422.
Those are the terms of use for active users of the site. It makes perfect sense for any amount of text on most any Wikimedia site, as it gets edited etc by multiple editors and the GFDL derivative work provisions make it an impossible license to work with. Same with comments like this one. But, stand-alone works are very different. Commons still allows individual images to be GFDL (as those do not create derivative work problems with text). For something like Wikisource, for works which are naturally GFDL with external sources, I don't see how those are bound by the terms of use. We are not into creating derivative works here; we just want to host the unaltered original text. It's still free. Granted, you can't copy/paste from those works into Wikipedia articles or Wikiversity texts, but ... they can certainly be referenced and there is probably a good amount of material out there which is very relevant. Say, Free as in Freedom. I do have scope concerns on this work, and if the OTRS is not valid then of course even the GFDL license is not true (I don't have OTRS access so I have no idea). But I don't see the point in banning individual GFDL works from Wikisource; we are hosting external works, not doing any collaborative editing. Carl Lindberg (talk) 01:27, 28 October 2014 (UTC)Reply
OTRS ticket might be valid if GFDL was still accepted after 15.06.2009. But as I noted above, the permission was rejected basing on the WMF licensing rules. Maybe an OTRS agent with better knowledge about enwikisource licensing could look into the ticket? @Billinghurst:?
@Clindberg: I 100% agree that accepting GFDL would not be here such a problem as it would be for Wikipedia (maybe except potential problem with translating GFDL-licensed texts by wikisourcians). But such exception for Wikisource is not reflected in the official WMF policy. IMO, the current policy is clear here: we can upload GFDL-licensed scans, but we are not allowed to upload any GFDL-licensed text after 15.06.2009. I see no differentiation between stand-alone uploaded works and on-wiki created works in the policy. Policy just says about texts. Or am I missing something?
I guess those are the terms of use -- the text may be validly licensed that way, and the author is not subject to the terms of use, but technically a user here cannot import that under those terms. It is nonsensical to me though that we would allow scans like that but not be able to transcribe them -- the copyright on the scan is the exact same as the copyright of the text. Can such scanned PDFs not have a text layer in them? Projects are allowed to have an EDP (an exemption to the regular licensing rules which makes more sense for their project). Those are normally used to allow non-free works, which Wikisource could never do, but maybe this situation is one area which may make more sense. To me, the terms of use was written for the collaborative text situation (which is true just about everywhere else on Wikimedia projects), but Wikisource is a bit unique in that aspect. I do guess that earlier uploaded GFDL works were allowed to be cross-licensed with CC-BY-SA (did we ever go around and change the licenses?) which could make a difference in that the text could be copied over as part of other projects. But I'm not sure it makes any sense to restrict Wikisource to only PD, CC-BY, and CC-BY-SA works. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:59, 2 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
A 8 year pdf document of a US state government document on transportation. No licence details and unused.
As it is not a federal government document, and there is no evidence that it is not in copyright, then it seems most likely that this is a copyright violation. — billinghurstsDrewth11:04, 29 October 2014 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
It looks like this is from The Writings of St. Francis of Assisi, translated by Benen Fahy and published in the US in 1964. I found what appears to be a copyright notice here on Google Books snippet view, which would place this in copyright for a while yet. Prosody (talk) 23:43, 7 December 2014 (UTC)Reply
I would definitely agree that the version posted is most likely copyrighted. However there are many translated versions not in copyright. For instance, here
PD-Russia
Latest comment: 9 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion
I can't believe {{PD-Russia}} has been outdated for like 7 years, as the rules specified there were retroactively rescinded by Part 4 of the Civil Code, in effect from 2007, which specifies a 70 year protection term.
The current year however is a critical point for the Russian copyright term, since the implementation law 231-FZ specifies that new 70-year term only applies to works that were not in the public domain by January 1, 1993 using a shorter copyright term of 50 years (yes, a different term). And both the current 70-year term and the shorter 50-year term are extended by 4 years if the author fought in the war of 1941-1945 or worked during this period (which in practice applies to any adult that wasn't a convicted criminal).
The combined effect of these provisions means that as of 2014 publiic domain rules amount to the following:
Works published before January 1, 1943 (i.e. 71 years ago) - if published anonymously/pseudonymously, or specicific compilation works such as movies, periodicals and complilations published by a state corporation
Most importantly, works authored by a person who died before June 22, 1941 - otherwise, the 50-year protection wouldn't expire by January 1, 1993, because everyone who was fighting or working during the Eastern Front war of 1941-1945 is granted an extension of 4 years and so their works were NOT in public domain by 1993 and their copyright will only expire starting on January 1, 2015 (Life + 74 years).
The exception is posthumous rehabilitation of those purged during the Great Terror or otherwise unlawfully prosecuted, in which case the protection term is counted from year of rehabilitation + 70 years.
I suggest that someone fluent with US public domain rules should look into combined effects of these regulations.
The important borderline case seems to be Leon Trotsky, who is served under a bizarre set of public domain rules:
His works published before October Revolution are in public domain, since Russia does not recognize the laws of the Russian Empire and so it does not offer protection for works published there;
English translations of his Russian Empire-era works are in public domain if published by 1923;
His works published after November 7, 1917 are protected until 2072, because he was legally rehabilitated in 2001 for being exiled from the Soviet Union in 1928;
English translations of his later Russian works are therefore not in the public domain anymore;
The above list is probably not complete, as for example it is open to question whether his works published after 1928 should be protected under Russian laws or US laws (though I would submit to opinion that they are protected, because by rehabilitation he regained his Russian citizenship).
The English Wikisource holds works that are in the public domain in the US. I can't see where the changes would affect us at all; the US only cares about the law in effect in 1996 for the rule of the shorter term type stuff.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:55, 14 December 2014 (UTC)Reply
Being retro-active, these laws affect US status of a work. Works PD in 1993 (for authors who died before June 22, 1941) were obviously PD in 1996; Trotsky's post-1917 works, except those published pre-1923, are non-PD retroactively, so were not PD in 1996 retroactively, so not PD-US now, retro-actively. These laws need to be discussed here because the matter is relevant for this site. Hrishikes (talk) 04:52, 14 December 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Prosfilaes: I think that the discussion was about the template, not any specific works, though there was a suggestion about a review. If the template is wrong, we fix the template, if it is not needed then we delete it. If there any works that are affected by a change of the template, then we should review them. — billinghurstsDrewth14:51, 28 December 2014 (UTC)Reply
I don't believe these changes affect the copyright status of any work in the US. If it's about the template, copyright violations is not the right place to go; personally I don't think it worth our time to try and keep country-specific templates around, at least for non-English speaking countries.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:23, 30 December 2014 (UTC)Reply
This work predates "Prior to 17 September 1987" (just!) so would be okay with regard to the situation. I would say that rather than fuss the work, we need to review the overarching, then revisit the works with the licence. — billinghurstsDrewth14:46, 28 December 2014 (UTC)Reply
Someone care to create OPL3 and curate
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 9 years ago8 comments5 people in discussion
The Index for this was PRODed a short while ago and the File was deleted on Commons because it is not PD under the terms of Article 13 of the Copyright Act of Republic of Indonesia (Governmental releases). The list was promptly re-created here in the Mainspace with a licence suggesting that it is PD because the copyright has expired per Chapter III of the same act. I can't see the justification for this licence in this Chapter. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 19:43, 31 December 2014 (UTC)Reply
Delete -- AirAsia is a legal entity & this manifest was generated by "them". There is no expectation of any declaration/registration by them nor the need for attribution to a specific person; copyright protection is understood to be extended even if it was never formally published.
The form entries themselves, while quite re-useable in some other format or list, would not meet our requirements for hosting regardless. We don't host bus timetables, tidal charts or the phases of the moon -- this list is just a variation on that same theme (and don't get hung up on the fact the debate started here in CopyVio instead of some other deletion forum either). -- George Orwell III (talk) 05:10, 1 January 2015 (UTC)Reply
Keep -- The Supreme court of the United States has stated many times that charts, tables, graphs, data, lists, and information cannot have a copyright owner, and therefor it's copyright cannot be infringed. 174.97.45.23405:43, 1 January 2015 (UTC)Reply
Reply a) SCOTUS' opinion isn't in question here, it's Indonesian law that applies. The licence given claims that the list is being published on behalf of the Government under Article 14 of the above act; b) Our policy What Wikisource Includes, specifically excludes lists and tables of data. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:09, 1 January 2015 (UTC)Reply
Reply A) Chapter 1, Article 1, Number 3 of the Copyright Act of Republic of Indonesia states that a work is defined as "Work shall mean any result of works of an Author, which shows originality in the field of science, arts and literature." A passenger manafest does not fulfill the requirements as a "work" under Indonesian law, and if it is not a work, it cannot be copywritten. B) It states that it excludes unsourced lists/data. " Reference data that is provided as part of larger publication (tables, appendices, etc.) is perfectly acceptable."174.97.45.23406:20, 1 January 2015 (UTC)Reply
Reference for what exactly? That's not going to cut it - at least not until the Final accident report is made public. Only then would this listing of simple form-entered data be considered a reference to a larger [published] body of work. You're not the first to make that leap erroneously and probably won't be the last. Sorry -- George Orwell III (talk) 06:34, 1 January 2015 (UTC)Reply
Keep I don't really understand what can be copyrighted here. It is like bus timetables: only the layout can be copryighted, not the times listed. Here, passenger names are not copyrightable and the layout was a product of computer software (Worldspan, Sabre, Galileo, Amadeus, etc.) whose license, most likely, did not assign exclusive rights to the licensee (Indonesia AirAsia). In short, I don't see how Indonesia AirAsia could claim any copyrights to this document. Regards, Kashmiri (talk) 01:48, 2 January 2015 (UTC)Reply
Comment I am not certain that we would host the work whether it is copyvio or not. As I see WS:WWI we would only host a complete report of the matter, not one page. I vote Delete on that perspective, irrespective of the CV question. — billinghurstsDrewth06:35, 2 January 2015 (UTC)Reply
Delete or re-license all speeches licensed with {{PD-EdictGov}}. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 21:55, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Comment I am concerned about the confusion that is existing around this proposal. The confusion seems to be whether this is an existing licence, and whether the licence is being appropriately applied. From what I am seeing, we look to identify from authoritative sources the scope of the licence, and explain the use of the template, and then review its use appropriately. Works where it has been misapplied can then be deleted by grouping if that is clearly determined. Summary ... Keep the licence, review the works. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:02, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
Keep This is a historical document of a notable person (so in scope) and it is specifically not a work of art. You cannot copyright facts. Where registries around the world have claimed copyright to their BMD certificates it has been due to the artwork and design aspects. On an electronic version this simply does not exist, and the source is the closest that you will get to official. The work should be {{PD-ineligible}}. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:10, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
