Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 9/19/06, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org>
wrote:
Wikipedia is sunk if it must use the
*intersection* of all copyright laws in the world, under which nearly
nothing is permissible to distribute.
Cite up or shut up.
Your claim that the intersection of permitted works is the empty set
is ridiculous and disruptive. If you're going to make claims like
that, please substantiate them.
Although your comment is in a rather impolite tone, I suppose I'll reply
anyway.
If we had to follow the intersection of copyright laws, we could not
distribute a number of things we currently distribute on various of our
projects:
1. Modern mechanical reproductions of out-of-copyright artworks, since
these are only unprotected by copyright in the subset of countries that
have _Bridgeman_-like case law
2. Simple collections of facts compiled by someone else, since these are
copyrightable under the 1996 [[en:European Union Database Directive]]
3. Anything, such as the King James version of the Bible, held under
perpetual copyright in the United Kingdom
4. Anything created and first published in the United States before
1923, but by an author who did not die more than 70 years ago, since
some countries that don't use a "principle of the shortest term" apply
70 years PMA *even* to works that are out of copyright in their country
of origin
5. Similarly, anything out of copyright due to its country of origin
having a 50-years PMA rule, since some countries apply 70 years PMA to
these works anyway
6. Anything out of copyright due to having been first published in the
U.S. during the period when copyright registration and renewal was
mandatory, that did not have its copyright registered or renewed, since
some countries apply 70 years PMA to thsee works anyway
The list goes on extensively. To get an idea of what would need to be
deleted if we respected the intersection of copyright laws, find every
Commons copyright tag with a proviso such as "This may not apply in
countries such as [x, y, z]".
-Mark