[Wikisource-l] [Ticket#2006110310010139] Copyright issues on Wikisource

Sat Nov 4 04:38:25 UTC 2006

Dear Yann Forget,

Thank you for your mail.

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.
> 
> The issue is whether works which are public domain in USA, but not in
> their country of origin can be published on Wikisource. Public domain in
> USA is the rule which is applied since the beginning of the project in
> November 2004. I ask in December 2004 [1] that a clear policy should be
> defined, but it was never done. Subdomains have followed different rules
> on this matter: for example, the English Wikisource publishes works from
> George Bernard Shaw [2], an Irish author, works which are public domain
> in USA but not in Ireland. A similar issue now arises on the French
> Wikisource [3] about works from Gaston Leroux.
> 
> So can we follow a uniform policy accross languages and subdomains and
> publish any work which is public domain in USA, or should another policy
> be defined?

This is not an official reply from the Foundation, but I've followed copyright
discussions for a while.  Since the Wikipedia webservers are located in the
United States, US law is the minimum standard that all projects need to
follow: if something is legally unusable under US law, it should not be used
on any project or language.  Individual projects and languages are free to
apply additional restrictions if they wish.

Yours sincerely,
William Fairfax

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