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

Fri Aug 6 05:35:43 UTC 2004

On Thursday 05 August 2004 19:24, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> >On Wednesday 04 August 2004 18:28, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> >>p.s.  I would be interested in gathering examples of content that (a)
> >>we ought to have in the encyclopedia on editorial grounds but that (b)
> >>would not be legal for us to host in the United States.
> >
> >In some countries, works enter public domain 50 years after author's
> > death. So, there are wagons of pictures and texts of authors who died
> > between 1934 and 1954 which are PD in those countries but not PD in the
> > US.
>
> All 1954 deaths are still have their works under copyright until the end

I did say between ;)

> of this year.  What you cite is the standard under international law.
> It is interesting to note that the countries that have or are pushing
> for longer copyright terms are rich ones with many businesses that are
> already heavily invested in their intellectual properties.  The artists
> that did the work more than 50 years ago have long since been paid off.

The point is, if the Wikimedia's servers, or perhaps only the image server, 
would be in one of these countries, Wikipedia could use material which it 
can't use now.