[pd-discuss] Canada PD calculation code

Fri Jun 5 03:45:42 UTC 2009

Hi all,

I know that this would turn me quite unpopular, but I'd like to repeat what we
(or at least I) have been arguing in London.

The problem to me, which makes me feel quite uncomfortable with, is that you
talk about something that is not defined. One "calculates" the Public Domain,
but for what reason? I guess, the answer is to give information about the type
of uses one can do with a specific work. In fact, if we ascertain that it is in
the PD then people can do... what?

Depends. In fact if a work is in the PD in France may be used in different ways
than if it were in the Netherlands, or Belgium or Canada, or US. The fact that
70 (or 50) years p.m.a. there are still moral rights prohibiting to perform a
given number of uses is something that cannot be forgotten. And the amount of
time during which they last (somewhere they don't exist, or expire along with
the economic, or after N years, or never, being perpetual) is also an aspect
that cannot be left a part.

Regarding Crown copyright it is pretty much the same. Crown copyright is typical
of all Commonwealth countries, and it tells us a characteristic that regards the
authorship/ownership aspect. It tells us that a specific category of works
created by government's employees of UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, etc
belongs to the Queen of England. But it doesn't tell us anything about the type
of uses one can do with it. In fact, a Crown copyright work has different type
of protection in, say, UK or Canada. If we don't clarify that, and a potential
user from Canada is told by the calculator that a work is Crown copyright, s/he
probably will act as the category allows him to do in Canada (where enactments
and maybe reasons for judgements are freely reproducible), but the work could be
under UK (where the terms are different), or New Zealand (enactments and reasons
for judgement are Public Domain and not Crown copyright), or Australia
(see http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1297263 for a more clear
explanation of what I want to say...).

Don't misunderstand me if I sound too critic, my intention is just to address an
issue that I have pointed out in more than one occasion, with respect to a
project that I find particularly interesting. And I believe that you see this
point as well, as witnessed by the article of Torremans on your webpage, which I
would put as the very first and not last link.

On a higher level of abstraction, I think the problem is that the project
pretends to calculate, thus to measure, something that a priori refuses to
define. The connected danger, to me, is that the project might facilitate
information that at best is not accurate. And you all know what is the common
outcome when the wrong informations have legal relevance...

thomas

Scrive Andy Kaplan-Myrth <andy at kaplan-myrth.ca>:

> Hi,
> 
> David Read wrote:
> > We want to cover all copyrightable
> > material, not just books, but recordings too, for example.
> >
> > Andy, can you tell me if your diagram goes beyond books/photographs
> > and covers music recordings too?
> 
> That flowchart was written with only books and photographs in mind, 
> but as far as I know it should also cover audio recordings, films and 
> neighbouring rights. They don't have special terms of copyright in 
> Canada the way photographs and Crown Copyright do.
> 
> > Another thing that comes up in practice is the issue of imperfect
> > data, such as missing author records, ambiguous authorship for records
> > missing birth/death date information or finding the original
> > publication date when the item in question is just a reissue.
> 
> We faced that problem with our project as well, which is why I 
> included the general fall-back rule that's written at the top of the 
> flowchart (although looking at it now, we could have been more clear 
> about what it was for): The oldest person on record in Canada lived to 
> 117 years old, so we decided we would be safe to use that as the 
> required length of time for the calculation: If death date is missing, 
> assume the person lived to 117; If birth and death dates are missing, 
> assume the person lived for 117 years after publication/creation. This 
> errs on the side of caution of course, but we decided this was the 
> best solution.
> 
> Cheers,
> Andy
> 
> 
> -- 
> Andy Kaplan-Myrth, M.A., LL.B.
> ------------------------------------------------
> email: andy at kaplan-myrth.ca
> web: http://kaplan-myrth.ca
> blog: http://blog.kaplan-myrth.ca
> ------------------------------------------------
> 
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