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

Wed Oct 13 04:30:05 UTC 2010

In case people aren't aware of it, there is a "public domain analysis"  
chart done by Peter Hirtle for the US:

http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

It assumes some commonality of knowledge (e.g. "unpublished" isn't  
defined, but many users would probably understand its meaning), but I  
find the descriptions to be clear.

kc

Quoting Christopher Gutteridge <cjg at ecs.soton.ac.uk>:

>
> 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/
>
>
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-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle at kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet