[Advocacy Advisors] Copyright for government works

Tue Feb 11 17:27:51 UTC 2014

Hello Mathais,

I see this discussion on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Support_for_US_copyright_amendment_(edicts)

Do you know if there are any other discussions about edicts of governments
on wiki?

I was glad that Carl's testimony happened during Copyright Week in January (
https://www.eff.org/copyrightweek). Thanks for sharing!

On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 12:23 AM, Mathias Schindler <
mathias.schindler at wikimedia.de> wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> I'd like you to take a few moments to have a look at
> https://public.resource.org/edicts/ and the discussion about whether
> copyright protection should be awarded to government works. The
> wording suggested on this page calls for the amendment of the US
> copyright code:
>
> "Edicts of government, such as judicial opinions, administrative
> rulings, legislative enactments, public ordinances, and similar
> official legal documents are not copyrightable for reasons of public
> policy. This applies to such works whether they are Federal, State, or
> local as well as to those of foreign governments."
>
> This definition is narrower than the wording regarding *federal*
> works, which are not copyrightable at all, regardless of their
> "edictive" (no such word exists in my dictionary) nature.
>
> Mathias
>
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-- 
Stephen LaPorte
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation

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