[pd-discuss] Adding items to PublicDomainWorks.net

Thu Jan 6 14:20:10 UTC 2011

+++1, John.

This is indeed what we'd like to work towards.

In particular:

  * Ideally we could have a drop-down menu, with information for
different countries (based on Public Domain Calculators:
http://wiki.okfn.org/PublicDomainCalculators )
  * We should, indeed, show our working. When it says 'Yes' or 'No' we
should say why. E.g. the creator died in X and copyright expires Y
years after death in country Z.

We'd also like to be able to edit information, and do things like add
links to digital copies of different works.

PublicDomainWorks.net is a volunteer-run project, so if anyone has any
cunning ideas for how best to do any of this, or if anyone would like
to help, please let us know! (In particular I think we are always
looking for Python programmers to help with the code...)

All the best,

Jonathan

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 3:05 PM, John Mark Ockerbloom
<ockerblo at pobox.upenn.edu> wrote:
> What's the data behind this site?  I have to say that in its current form,
> I'm not finding the site very useful.  This is partly because I'm not
> in the assumed EU jurisdiction (something that's not nearly as clear
> as it could be), and also because I don't see any reasons given for the
> determination.
>
> What I think would be more useful is to display an answer showing what
> the public domain determination is based on.  If the underlying data is
> already present for this, this should simply be a matter of some user
> interface
> changes to make the reasoning more visible.  (And if the underlying data is
> *not* present for this, the determinations should not be considered
> reliable.)
>
> For example:
>
> http://publicdomainworks.net/work/HEe5W4HxSImPqwGk_nvhow/History_Of_The_Psychoanalytic_Movement_%5Bn|Ge-%3F%5D_%28tr_A_A_BRILL%29--%5BProf%5DSigmund%28%3DSigismund_Schlomo%29_Freud
>
> currently says
>
>   Work: History Of The Psychoanalytic Movement [n|Ge-?] (tr A A BRILL)
>
>    Work in the public domain?
>     Yes.
>
>
> I'd rather it say something like
>
>   Work: History Of The Psychoanalytic Movement [n|Ge-?] (tr A A BRILL)
>
>   Work in the public domain?
>
>      Yes, in the European Union
>
>  Reasons:
>
>     All known creators died more than 70 years ago?   Yes (see list below)
>
>     [followed by any other relevant checks.  If you're checking on whether
>      the work was first published before the creator's death, for instance,
>      you'd show the results of that check as well]
>
> Now, as it turns out, this particular work is *not* in the public domain
> in many European countries.  That's because the translator, A. A. Brill,
> lived until 1948.  He doesn't show up in the list of creators, though, so
> he's missed by the determination algorithm.  Ideally, there'd be good
> enough data to avoid this error in the first place.  But at least if the
> qualifications and reasoning chains are visible, a researcher
> who's somewhat savvy about copyright can see when there might be missing
> facts or inferences that might be important.  That's much better than
> having an opaque oracle that one's never sure whether to trust.
>
> John
>
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>

-- 
Jonathan Gray

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

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