[Foundation-l] PD in Israel

Fri Apr 27 11:58:57 UTC 2007

Hi,

We (he.wiki community) have heard there is a problem with PD images which
were created after 1946.

According to Israeli law, pictures are released to public domain 50 years
from the day the picture was taken. This means that images that any picture
that was taken by an Israeli before 1957 is in PD in Isreal. I understand
that because of some sort of convention between Israel and the US, this rule
does not apply in the US (i.e. pictures that were taken between 1946 and
1957 are PD in Israel but not PD in the US.

Thus:
1) Is this true? Can a copyright expert with expertise in Israeli law and US
law confirm this?
2) If this is true, the commons template
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-Israel should be fixed.
3) If this is true, I wonder why commons created PD templates for each
country, is the coutry that count is only the US. If an picture need to be
PD in US, what does it matter if it is PD in other coutries. And if it does
matter - than Template:PD-Israel should *not* be changed.

Thanks,
Yoni