Template talk:PD-US: Difference between revisions

This template currently says "this image might not be in the public domain outside the United States. See Copyright". First, if a U.S. work is in the public domain in the U.S., it is also in the public domain in all other countries that do apply the "rule of the shorter term" of the Berne Convention. This includes the EU and Japan, and possibly other countries as well. Secondly, en:Copyright is a rather unhelpful article that doesn't explain in any way how copyright works internationally. I think it would be better to link to Wikipedia:Public domain, which does explain it. Lupo 09:27, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree about the link; I've changed it. User:dbenbenn 12:00, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lupo, you are wrong in applying Berne. Berne is not law, it is only a treaty agreement. Any government can choose to implement Berne and opt out of particular conventions any way they choose. That is stated in your own authority document- Wikipedia:Public domain. -Mak 04:14, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You want me to get technical? :-) It's informal speak (as I've pointed out at Wikipedia:Public domain). Basically, what I said was right, but it's ok that it was not included because sometimes the rule of the shorter term of the Berne Convention (as codified in the EU Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection, which is binding for EU members) may still be superceded by individual EU members' earlier bilateral treaties with the U.S. That's the case for e.g. Germany and Switzerland. And note that in general, countries cannot "opt-out" from individual paragraphs of the Berne Convention. That's only possible if the Berne Convention explicitly says so, which it does for that rule of the shorter term. Lupo 08:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Because the U.S. did not join the Berne Convention until 1989, it is likely that it had by that date already established treaties with many countries. I just read (on w:susning.nu, for what it's worth) that Sweden signed such a copyright treaty with the U.S. in 1911. I looked through both the "see further" links provided on the template, but I could not find the individual treaties of countries other that Germany. Is there any such list somewhere, of which countries have an individual copyright treaty with the U.S.?

Fred Chess 12:40, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes: Circular 38a of the U.S. Copyright Office. Fails to mention some modern states, such as Eritrea, but is otherwise rather complete. It doesn't, however, tell us what the contents of these bilateral treaties were, nor where to find them. Lupo 09:26, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

From en:Wikipedia:Public Domain:

For non-U.S. works published without compliance with U.S. formalities, the situation is a bit more complicated:

• If published before 1909, such works are in the public domain in the U.S.
• If published between 1909 and 1922 (inclusive), they are likely to be in the public domain in the U.S. outside of the Ninth Circuit (i.e., also in Florida). Within the Ninth Circuit some such works may be considered unpublished works according to Peter Hirtle and following the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the case Twin Books v. Disney in 1996. The case was about the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods; the decision is heavily criticized in Nimmer on Copyright (ISBN 0-820-51465-9), the standard commentary on U.S. copyright law.

Since the foundation servers are stationed in Florida, then wouldn't it make sense to amend the PD-US template to state "or that its first publication anywhere in the world was prior to January 1, 1923" instead of 1909? -User:Anetode 13:37, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As Macao honors the rule of the shorter term pursuant to Article 51 of its Decree-Law n.o 43/99/M, I have amended this template to show that this template does not apply to China except Macao. Apparently Hong Kong and Taiwan do not honor the rule of the shorter term.--Jusjih 16:45, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Correction, I just found Taiwan honoring the rule of the shorter term. See 106bis of the Copyright Act.--Jusjih 17:44, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As I said in the edit summary, if a work was published anywhere else than in the US, then PD-US is not the template to use. I do understand that, technically, the statement is true, and that it can be used as such on English Wikipedia, but I don't think we should use it here. Comments? Fred Chess 10:50, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

After thinkng about it, I guess it could be possible that PD-US could be used to denote the copyright status in the US specifically, and that the image description page also has other copyright tags such as {{PD-Old}}. But in that case something should be added to the template to mention that the template can't always stand alone. And that might be confusing because there is (as far as I know) no other template that claims work published worldwide prior to a date to be public domain just because it is public domain in one country....

Fred Chess 10:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I think the commons still has the rule that a work must be PD in its source country and in the U.S. to be eligible for upload to the commons under any PD tag. The PD-US tag should thus only be applied to U.S. images, and for U.S. works, the 1909 stuff is irrelevant. We don't talk about what non-Russian works are PD within Russia in PD-Russia either. Hence PD-US should state what U.S. works are PD in the U.S.

As you said, the 1909 business may be useful for clarifying the status of a non-U.S. image within the U.S. (Note that the quote someone provided above from en:WP:PD is outdated. See en:WP:PD#_note-US1909 for the current wording.) I'm not sure whether an auxiliary tag to be used only in conjunction with other PD-country tags would be useful; the rules are rather complex:

• If the foreign work was published in compliance with U.S. formalities (© notice, registration), the foreign work is PD in the U.S. if it was published before 1923.
• Otherwise:
  • If the foreign work was out of copyright in its country of origin on the URAA date (January 1, 1996 in most cases), the work is PD in the U.S.
  • Otherwise:
    • if the work was published in a language other than English (I have no idea how to interprete this for e.g. paintings!), the work is PD in the U.S. if it was published before 1909. It's treated as an unpublished work, hence it'd also be PD in the U.S. if the author is known and died more than 70 years ago. See Hirtle's chart for the U.S. rules for unpublished works.
    • if the work was published in English, the work is likely PD in the U.S. if it was published before 1923.

How useful would a tag (or tags) for these cases be? I think the important things are pre-1923 if the work was copyrighted in the U.S., and the URAA case if not. The 1909/unpublished special case would only apply for works that were still copyrighted in their country of origin on the URAA date, and that country of origin was not English-speaking. Lupo 11:50, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest that "China (not Macao or Taiwan)" be simplified to "mainland China" or "the People's Republic of China". Seahen 19:37, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]