Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Should a free encyclopedia be redistributable by
anyone in every
country, or only the United States, or need it not be
redistributable at all?
It should be as widely redistributable as is practical. Due to
differences in jurisdiction, there can be difficulties associated with
this. We must not bend our NPOV/encyclopedia policies to conform to
censorship, for example, but we can try as hard as we can to
accomodate minor differences in copyright laws.
The variations in copyright laws can be a tremendous hurdle. As a
person active on Wikisource, I've developed quite a different
perspective on the matter. There, the issue rarely has anything to do
with images. To whatever extent we may want images the copyrights are
usually an extension of the work that contains them. Nor, since we
include whole books, is fair use a major topic.
Whether or not a given work is in the public domain, is a far more
common problem and far more difficult. It can be even more difficult if
we need to look after the interests of the downstream user.
In an earlier post in this thread Jimbo said "we are not legal risk
takers" That does not get rid of the problem. When does the risk
probability become so small that it is no longer a risk? Which carries
the greater risk, an earthquake in California, or a hurricane in
Florida? Compare that with the risk of a law suit over a particular
technical copyright infringement. The range of risks is very wide, and
nobody is seriously suggesting that we carry the text of any current
best seller.
These are among the questions we have encountered:
1. Hitler's "Mein Kampf" - Volume 1 was originally published in
1926. There were four distinct English translations (one British,
three American) between 1932 and 1041. The British translator died
in 1946. The American translation copyrights are all owned by
Houghton-Mifflin and were properly renewed. We determined that we
could not carry the existing English versions. The German language
version could probably be safely carried in the US because of enemy
property exemptions when the U. S. agreed to honour European
copyright extensions. Other countries have had mixed messages about
whether the copyrights continue to be valid.
2. Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi" This was originally
published in 1946. He died in 1952. The organization that held
posthumous rights to the work renewed the copyright in 1974, but it
was challenged in court in 2000. The copyright was overturned on
the grounds that it could not be proved that Yogananda had granted
them the right to renew. We now carry this work.
3. Max Planck won the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1918. This was
awarded to him at a ceremony in 1920 where he delivered an
acceptance speech. The Swedish Academy published this with other
similar speeches in 1921. A separate version of the speech was also
published in England in 1922. It has not yet been established
whether a U.S. edition exists. Planck died in 1947. The work would
appear to be in the public domain in the U. S. because it was
published before 1923, but would continue to be protected in Sweden
and Germany until 2017. Following this line of thought the lecture
delivered by Pieter Zeeman when he won the 1902 physics prize would
be the oldest one still covered by copyright. This issue is still
undecided.
In dealing with matters like this to what extent do we protect
downstream users? Should we go ahead and include the text, and add a
warning that a downstream user republishes the material at his own risk?
There are probably other areas where we could safely republish material
that is prima facie copyright, but that point can be discussed at some
other time. Suffice it to say that any such action should not be done
recklessly.
Ec