[Foundation-l] Fwd: Copyright problems of images from India

Tue May 10 22:09:20 UTC 2011

It's actually even worse than that. Due to the URAA, thousands of works
which are verifiably public domain in India have had their copyright
restored in the United States. For example, all of the works of Mahatma
Gandhi are public domain in India (since he died over 50 years ago),
however, most of them are copyrighted in the U.S. until at least 2055 (even
if they were never published here). Thus in order to host the files on
Commons we have to know all of the following:
* Who authored the work?
* What year did the author die?
* Was the work ever published in the United States?
** If so, what year?
** Were copyright formalities followed?
** Was the copyright renewed? If so what year?
* If not, did the author die after 1945 (1996 - 50 - 1)
** If so, what year was the work first published in India? Was it before
1923?

If you can't answer all of these questions, your image might get deleted.
Welcome to the insanity of U.S. copyright laws and treaties!

Ryan Kaldari

On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 1:26 PM, Tomasz Ganicz <polimerek at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2011/5/10 FT2 <ft2.wiki at gmail.com>:
> > Why would the creator's citizenship, or the place of its creation, be
> > decisive?  The works of an Indian citizen are granted copyright under US
> law
> > in the United States, on a parity with the works of a US or any other
> > citizen, even if copyright has expired or still continues in India -- and
> it
> > is US law that governs Wikimedia.
> >
>
> Not really - because both US and India signed Berne, UCC Geneva, UCC
> Paris, and TRIPS treaties - so (with some expections) the works
> performed by non US-citizens in India are copyrighted in USA if they
> are still under copyright in India.
>
>
> --
> Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
> http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
> http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
> http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29&title=tomasz-ganicz
>
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