[Wikisource-l] Copyright issues on Wikisource

Sat Nov 4 05:59:47 UTC 2006

Erik Moeller wrote:

>On 11/3/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>On behalf of the Wikisource contributors, I request an official advice
>>from the Wikimedia Foundation regarding copyright issues on Wikisource.
>>    
>>
>There's an ongoing discussion on the Foundation-level about whether or
>not we should provide such advice to communities. In the meantime, it
>would probably be good for people in the community with legal
>expertise to self-organize as an open advisory group (juriwiki-l
>seemed to be going in that direction, I'm not sure how active it still
>is).
>  
>
I think that I agree with you on this.  I have always strongly believed 
in the autonomy of the projects, but for that to be effective the 
projects need to avoid the temptation to seek high-level policy 
statements that could have effects beyond what is intended.

I think that Yann's request is simplistic.  International copyright law 
is extremely complex, and when it was being drafted it could never have 
forseen the issues that are now being raised because of what modern 
technology has made possible.  Any kind of pronouncement would not do 
justice to all the possibilities. 

U.S. law must absolutely be the first that we look at in any given 
situation, just because the servers are there.  We could probably get 
away with ignoring the laws of all other countries, but that could have 
other consequences. 

The Leroux matter has to do with a peculiar aspect of French law that 
extended the usual life + 70 for time lost during the war.  There are 
also people around to claim the rights so this is not an orphan work.  
Whether that extension also became applicable is also applicable in the 
United States as a part of the US adhesion to the Berne Convention is a 
debatable point, but Project Gutenberg already includes the French 
version of two of the works in question.  Furthermore the two English 
translations published in 1908 and 1909 would be in the public domain.  
This all comes down to a question of whether the French Wikisource wants 
to maintain good relations with the heirs of Gaston Leroux.

George Bernard Shaw has nothing to do with this.  The special French 
extension does not come into question in this.  Shaw is still protected 
in England since he died in 1950, but he originally wrote in English 
over a very long period, and much of his work would already have been 
published in the United States in the original language before 1923.

These are devilishly nuanced situations.  Any policy position that says, 
"Follow US law, and ignore the rest" would be wrong on many levels even 
if it is legally correct on a technical level.

Ec