[WikiEN-l] British copyright law != American copyright law

Wed Aug 4 12:18:42 UTC 2004

WRT the discussion here (mav, Jimbo) about the validity or otherwise of 
the British Portrait Gallery's enquiry, I have posted on wikipedia-l about 
the British (and Australian) legal situation; have a look at the recent
archives for the details. To cut a long story short galleries in 
Australia, and now it seems Britain, think they have the legal right
to impose these restrictions under their own copyright laws, and
from my reading of the literal text they may be right (though there
may be precedents in the area that say otherwise, IANAL).  

We may be in the situation where it might be illegal for a British 
or Australian user to take an image from a gallery website of a PD
artwork, and put it on the Wikipedia, but not for an American user to do
so.  Then again, maybe they'd like to try to extradite the American 
user in that situation...in other words, it's potentially a legal mess
and I'm not liking their chances of successfully pursuing us.  
I suspect this could keep Larry Lessig and Eben Moglan amused for weeks.

If I were Jimbo, I'd be tempted to deliberately perpetuate an American
stereotype and tell the National Portrait Gallery to kiss our ass and
sue if they dare...but I'd perhaps want to get a real legal opinion
first.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Robert Merkel
                                     robert.merkel at benambra.org
                                        http://benambra.org

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing
that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go
wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
    --Douglas Adams, "Mostly Harmless"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------