[pd-discuss] [Communia-members] Works entering the PD on 1 January 2010 ?

Wed Dec 2 17:56:53 UTC 2009

Dear Daniel,

Thanks for your email. Please feel free to update the wiki page adding
your name and affiliation - as well as details for anyone else working
on the Swiss calculator!

Regarding the legal ambuguities you refer to - is this something that
is recorded in metadata about works? If not - do you think it should
be? I guess we're currently thinking about a two tiered approach to
the calculator:

  (i) Something that maps the law as accurately as possible, trying to
account for how one would (in principle, with perfect infomation) make
a decision about whether or not a work is in the public domain. This
will be a combination of diagrams and explanatory notes for each
country. These will basically be high resolution 'legal models' and we
hope in the long term they can be peer reviewed.

  (ii) Something that works with the information we have about works
(imperfect information) to say whether or not a work is in the public
domain. These will be estimates of what is in the public domain - and
will be at least initially (out of necessity) lower resolution models.
I understand this is because not all information relevant to making a
decision about whether or not a work is in the public domain will be
easily available.

I think that (i) is more suited to specific questions about specific
works, and (ii) is better suited to working with large datasets - to
get an answer that will be roughly right most of the time, but far
from legally perfect. With the public domain calculators we are hoping
to get information for (i) from each jurisdiction - and this can be
used for particular implementations, such as publicdomainworks.net, to
make estimates based on available data.

I understand that what will help get (ii) closer to (i) is as the
information improves. One way to do this is to have richer metadata -
and we are currently working on allowing users to add information to
existing metadata (in a versioned, wiki-like manner). The Open Library
in the US are also working on this.

Please feel free to use the pd-discuss list to talk about your
progress and any issues you have. Ultimately this will be useful as an
archive for others to refer to if there are certain recurring problems
or questions - and as a collective memory for the project!

Best wishes,

Jonathan

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 5:28 PM, Daniel Boos <boos at allmend.ch> wrote:
> Dear Jonathan
>
> Sorry for the late follow up. I talked to Simon Schlauri. According to
> your webpage he does it for Switzerland. We will look what we can do.
> I think for Switzerland it seems to be quite easy. The only problem
> might be that some works are in the public domain, but we didn't know
> that. This was for example the issue with the copyright extension from
> 50 to 70 years.
> Best
> Daniel
>
> On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 11:36 AM, Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:
>> On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 7:08 AM, Daniel Boos <boos at allmend.ch> wrote:
>>> Do we have somewhere a page with information about this different
>>> jurisdictions? In Switzerland for example, all works of authors
>>
>> Regarding duration of term of copyright, you might be interested in:
>>
>>  http://wiki.okfn.org/PublicDomainCalculators
>>  http://blog.okfn.org/2009/11/17/documentation-from-the-public-domain-calculators-meeting/
>>
>>> This is due to the fact that the copyright term extension from 50 to
>>> 70 years came in Switzerland in to law in 1993. Works that were
>>> already in the public domain, were not protected again. So all works
>>> of authors that died before 1943 are public domain in Switzerland.
>>> There is a federal court decision about this (1). We still decided to
>>> celebrate the Public Domain Day, because the works are then available
>>> internationally and available online.
>>
>> If you would like to contribute towards a Swiss calculator, your input
>> would be warmly welcomed!
>>
>>> Do other organisations also plan to celebrate the Publicdomainday?
>>>
>>> I just looked at the list on
>>> http://www.publicdomainworks.net/stats/year/2010 A famous Swiss
>>> (Author) missing on the list was Maximilian Bircher-Benner. He
>>> "invented" the Bircher-Müsli. Another woman is Maria Waser (3). An
>>> Austrian would be Josef Roth.
>>
>> To make the list of authors/works as comprehensive as possible - we
>> need more bibliographic metadata about works (e.g. from library
>> catalogues, cultural heritage institutions, and so on). Unfortunately
>> it is not easy to come by open metadata about works! If you have any
>> suggestions for data sources (local, national or international...) we
>> could use, we'd love to hear about them. We've been documenting
>> sources at, e.g.:
>>
>>  http://ckan.net/tag/read/bibliographic
>>  http://ckan.net/tag/read/metadata
>>  http://ckan.net/tag/read/library
>>
>> Warm regards,
>>
>> --
>> Jonathan Gray
>>
>> Community Coordinator
>> The Open Knowledge Foundation
>> http://www.okfn.org
>>
>>
>>
>>> (1) http://www.servat.unibe.ch/dfr/c3124266.html (German...)
>>> (2) http://www.mhiz.uzh.ch/projects/Bircher_Benner.html (German)
>>> (3) http://ead.nb.admin.ch/html/waser.html
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 6:20 PM, J.C. DE MARTIN <demartin at polito.it> wrote:
>>>> Thanks to all who have already replied privately!
>>>>
>>>> Just keep in mind that it is not as easy as looking
>>>> at who died in 1939. In several EU jurisdictions,
>>>> in fact, there is a WWII provision that extends
>>>> the term of protection by a few years (the exact number
>>>> is a function of the country, otherwise it would be too easy,
>>>> wouldn't it?).
>>>>
>>>> Also, in the Baltic countries and probably elsewhere
>>>> there are specific provisions compensating
>>>> -by extending their term of protection- authors
>>>> who were banned during the Soviet era.
>>>>
>>>> Anyway, keep sending names, preferably
>>>> on this mailing list, to tap the common expertise
>>>> of the members.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks, best,
>>>>
>>>> juan carlos
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> J.C. DE MARTIN wrote (on 19-11-2009 16:11):
>>>>> Dear All,
>>>>>
>>>>> Could you please post on this mailing list
>>>>> (or send me privately) news of works in your
>>>>> jurisdictions which will enter the public domain
>>>>> on 1 January 2010 ?
>>>>>
>>>>> We are, in fact, preparing a
>>>>> publicdomainday.eu
>>>>> website that we want to launch shortly.
>>>>>
>>>>> Many thanks!
>>>>>
>>>>> juan carlos
>>>>>
>>>>> prof. juan carlos de martin
>>>>> coordinator - COMMUNIA project
>>>>> http://communia-project.eu
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>> Communia-members at lists.communia-project.eu
>>>> https://lists.communia-project.eu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/communia-members
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Communia-members mailing list
>>> Communia-members at lists.communia-project.eu
>>> https://lists.communia-project.eu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/communia-members
>>>
>>
>

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org