[Commons-l] PD-UN template

Sat Oct 28 22:40:36 UTC 2006

On 10/23/06, Fredrik Josefsson <fred_chessplayer at yahoo.se> wrote:
> On behalf of a user who asked a question on Commons:
>
> Question about [[s:en:Template:PD-UN]]
> <http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/en:Template:PD-UN> and
> its Chinese and French versions hereto. When
> Wikisource was a multilingual site accepting all
> languages, it had so many UN Security Council
> resolutions posted by various users unaware of UN
> copyright. As the UN Headquarters is subject to the
> same USA laws, works published there are copyrighted
> in the same way as works published in the USA.
>
> Works published in the USA between 1978 and 1 March
> 1989 without copyright notices and without subsequent
> copyright registrations are in the public domain in
> the USA, but should subsequent copyright registrations
> be validly made, the works become copyrighted. I would
> like to ask if these works are acceptable here. This
> is critical as most, if not all, images at
> [[:Category:Stamps of United Nations]] may be indeed
> copyrighted.
>
> ----
>
> I thought I ask at the mailinglist, see if anyone can
> provide an answer...
>
> / Fred-Chess

This basically seems to be saying that the UN's materials are subject
to US copyright laws. Which means they don't really fall into a
special copyright category and should be treated as any other
copyrighted material (and we probably shouldn't have a PD-UN template,
which implies that UN material is uniquely PD for any particular
reason, in the way that works of the U.S. federal government are PD).

The UN seems to consider themselves a regular copyright holder as well
(http://www.un.org/copyright.htm), which I admit somewhat surprises me
(I guess they just want the right to control it, since I doubt they
are trying to turn a profit). In any cases, the reasoning on the
template looks correct, but all it basically says is "this isn't PD
unless it is PD for some other reason", which probably means that the
template is misleading at best for most people.

FF