[open-bibliography] New microshort film on the Public Domain Calculators!

Tue Oct 12 09:00:32 UTC 2010

Having looked at the UK flowchart, I wouldn't yet be comfortable 
recommending it to anyone. It might serve as a reminder to someone who 
already understood it, but for me it raises more questions than it answers.

    * What is an "unoriginal film" or database?
    * What is a "substantial change" to a database?
    * What does "fixation" mean?
    * I'm guessing EEA is European Economic Area but I'm not sure, and
      don't know how to check what that actually is. Is it different
      from the European Union?
    * What is a treaty country? Where do I find a list?
    * Why is the last bit surrounded by dashed lines?
    * Why is the very last block yellow?
    * What's a typographic arrangement?
    * When did someone last confirm that this chart was accurate? What
      was their qualification, if I'm to use it for the basis of a legal
      decision?

Other notes;

    * The use of max(a,b) and min(a,b) is going to be confusing for
      people. At least write "maximum of" and "minimum of"
    * max (term of protection in country origin) < 70 -- this is rather
      confusing. I don't understand it.
    * Also, there's a typo in "min (50 years from publication, 125 years
      from creatuion"
    * http://wiki.okfn.org/PublicDomianCalculators (linked in the PDF)
      doesn't exist!
    * Making it a PDF is a baffling roadblock for what is, essentially
      an image. PDF might be better for printing, but that's all.
    * "Microshort" looks very like "Microsoft" when you have not yet had
      coffee.

That said, there's certainly a point in collecting these various charts 
and keeping them up-to-date, but the user interface needs some thought. 
As they seem to all be multiple choice trees, it would lend itself well 
to an HTML quiz like interface. You could standardise on a simple data 
format for these;

what is it?
|-literaray, dramatic, artistic work.
| |-who is the author?
| | |-at least one known author.
| | | |-is at least one of them a EEA national or resident?
| | | | |-yes
| | | | | |-public domain 70 years after death of longest living author.
| | | | |-no
| | | | | |-work first published in European Economic Area? (add link)
| | | | | | |-yes
| | | | | | | |-public domain 70 years after death of longest living author.
| | | | | | |-no
| | | | | | | |-is one of the authors citizen of a treaty country? (add 
link)
| | | | | | | | |-yes
| | | | | | | | | |-is max (term of protection in country origin) < 70 
(I don't understand this)
| | | | | | | | | | |-no
| | | | | | | | | | | |-public domain 70 years after death of longest 
living author.
| | | | | | | | | | |-yes
| | | | | | | | | | | |-life of the longest living author plus max (term 
of protection in country of origin)
| | | | | | | | |-no
| | | | | | | | | |-public domain
| | |-anonymous or legal entity
| | | |- 70 years from (publication or creation) (whichever is greater)
| | |-a computer
| | | |- 50 years from creation
| | |-the governement: crown copyright
| | | |-published?
| | | | |-no (not commercially)
| | | | | |-125 years from creation
| | | | |-yes (commercially)
| | | | | |-50 years from publication or 125 years from creation 
(whichever is less)
|-sound recording, broadcast, performance, unoriginal film
| |-50 years from the greater of broadcast, fixing, publication.
|-unoriginal database
| |-15 years from last substantial change
|-typographic arrangements
  |-25 years from publication

Or maybe XML or some other machine readable format. That way you could 
overhaul the entire user interface without having to rebuild many random 
documents. Any 3rd year computer science student should be able to write 
some PHP to create you a choose-your-own-adventure given the above data.

However, better than all of these would be using a simple RDF/XML scheme 
as you could include multiple answers which led to the same bit of the tree;

<Question id='top'>
   <text>What type is it</text>
   <hasOption>
      <Option>
        <answer>literaray, dramatic, artistic work.</answer>
        <hasQuestion rdf:resource='#author'>
      </Option>
      <Option>
        <answer>Sound recording, broadcast, unoriginal film</answer>
        <hasResult>50 years from the greater of broadcast, fixing, 
publication.</hasResult>
      </Option>
   </hasOption>
</Question>
<Question id='author'>
  <text>who is the author?</text>
   ...etc...
</Question>

While this format would be better to work with, it may scare off 
contributors.

Jonathan Gray wrote:
> We'd be most grateful for any help in spreading the word about this! ;-)
>
> http://blog.okfn.org/2010/10/12/new-microshort-film-on-the-public-domain-calculators/
>
>   

-- 
Christopher Gutteridge -- http://id.ecs.soton.ac.uk/person/1248

/ Lead Developer, EPrints Project, http://eprints.org/
/ Web Projects Manager, ECS, University of Southampton, http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
/ Webmaster, Web Science Trust, http://www.webscience.org/