Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Kuban kazak (talk | contribs) at 12:05, 13 May 2006 (→IMHO we are inventing non-existent problem). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

For discussions about this template see Misplaced Pages talk:Image copyright tags --Denniss 10:57, 2005 May 1 (UTC)

I believe this template is completely wrong. See Wikipedia_talk:Copyrights. Lupo 08:57, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

And then there's the duplicate template {{Sovietpd}}. Lupo 10:44, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Interwiki link to vi:

Please add an interwiki link to the Vietnamese version of this template:

]

Thanks.

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 08:55, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

No, please don't; and please delete the tag on the Vietnamese WikiPedia. This tag is wrong. Lupo 07:55, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Previous discussions on this template

• March/April 2005 - No clear outcome
• January 2006 - arguments for why pre-1973 is very doubtful, if not outright incorrect
• TfD discussion from February 2006.

User:Irpen decided after not even one day of discussion to remove the TfD notice from the template. {{Sovietpd}} now redirects to this template. Lupo 08:33, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

• About a possible 1954 cut-off date for works becoming PD in Russia, see Wikipedia_talk:Copyrights/archive5#Link_to_Russian_Wikisource. Lupo 10:45, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

"User Ipren decided" because it was obvious from less than a day vote that the proposal to delete the template was dead. Many votes were cast and none of them was delete. To cotninue the vote would have been meaningless. The proposal to delete is thus dead. In no way it prevents you from rasing the entirely valid discussion on template modification. Go right ahead. --Irpen 16:25, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

The discussions are already ongoing. Please do not try to cut it short just because you don't seem to care. Thank you. I do think until this IMO patently false tag is corrected, it should be deprecated with a warning and a pointer to the discussion like I did. I do resent your undoing this. Lupo 16:35, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

If you "do think" something, propose it first and wait for feedback, since WP works by consensus rather than by single individuals deciding the issues on their own. See what others "think" and than proceed. I am not trying to cut short any discussions. I am requesting that you withhold any unilateral actions while discussions are ongoing. --Irpen 16:40, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I have re-instated the link to the talk page, but left the deprecation bit out. I voiced my concerns long ago. You didn't voice any opposition or disagreement then. Apparently it's necessary to advertise this more broadly, and using the tag itself to do so it an obvious way. Lupo 16:43, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

The current version is fine with me. Thank you. --Irpen 17:04, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

JYolkowski's rewrite

Maybe JYolkowski's rewrite helps to clarify matters, but it should be noted that it essentially is still equivalent to the previous version, but it may highlight the problem better. Although Soviet works published in the USSR pre-1973 were not copyrighted in the U.S. due to a lack of copyright treaties (as pointed out by 17 USC 104(b)(2)), such works became eligible for retroactive copyright restoration in the U.S. when Russia (and the other successor nations) joined the Berne Convention and the U.S. then passed the URAA (see WP:PD for a brief explanation of the URAA). See 17 USC 104a(h)(6)(C)(iii). Thus such works are only in the public domain in the U.S. if they were in the public domain in Russia on January 1, 1996 (see 17 USC 104a(h)(6)(B)).

Therefore, a tag that states precisely under which conditions a work (or at least, an image) entered the public domain in the USSR would make much more sense than this pre-1973 business. The USSR changed its copyright laws several times, and one would have to examine all these laws and their implementation acts to figure it out. (The implementation provisions are important to make sure one does not overlook a possible case where a new law was applied retroactively to works that had already gone out of copyright under the previous law.)

The whole issue is of course complicated by the fact that there are many successor states of the USSR. Why only consider Russia? Is a USSR work considered to have been simultaneously published in all successor states? As a hypothetical example consider a USSR work that were copyrighted in Russia on January 1, 1996, but out of copyright in the Ukraine on that date. (Granted, I believe that such a case is unlikely, but it illustrates the problems.) What then?

Since this pre-1973 tag also seems to exist on the commons, it may be worthwhile to consider the situation in other countries, too. In particular the European Union would be of interest here. The EU does implement the "rule of the shorter term" (again, see WP:PD) towards non-EU countries, and thus I think for the EU the rule would be "if a Soviet work was in the public domain in the USSR, it is in the public domain in the EU, too". Again, the issue may be complicated in the case of USSR works that are still copyrighted in some but not all successor states of the USSR.

In any case the reasoning "Soviet works published pre-1973 are PD outside the USSR because the USSR was not party to international copyright treaties" does not hold. That 1973 date is a completely bogus lead as far as the U.S. is concerned. (I think it's also pretty irrelevant for the EU, but I'm not sure.) For the U.S., the critical question is "was the work copyrighted on January 1, 1996 in its home country (or countries)?" If so, it is covered by U.S. copyright (with the U.S. copyright terms!), if not, we may consider it PD in the U.S. Lupo 08:11, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

One thing I do not like at all about the rewrite is that it implies (although the statement in question is marked with {{fact}} as needing verification) that works published pre-1973 indeed were in the public domain in the USSR (or its successor states) on January 1, 1996. That doesn't necessarily follow either. Lupo 08:17, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Some external opinions by experts

May I point the interested parties to this message from Janice T. Pilch, librarian and assistant professor at the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Maybe she explains it better than I can. The bottom line is that the "pre-1973" reasoning is invalid. Pilch has also published on these topics in peer-reviewed journals, see e.g. . Lupo 09:25, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

See also Michael Newcity's take on that issue (he agrees that "pre-1973 is PD" is wrong). Newcity is a Senior Lecturing Fellow at the Duke School of Law and adjunct associate professor on Slavic Languages & Literature. (Faculty listing.) There is at least one court case where Newcity offered an option as an expert (for the plaintiff; the case apparently was decided in favor of the plaintiff). Lupo 09:25, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Zscout370 has also pointed me to this essay on Russian copyright law and the Berne Convention. (Link to google cache, it's a Word document from the Russian-Ukrainian Legal Group.) They also point out that the 1993 Russian copyright law was retroactive. Lupo 13:33, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Wow: difficult to unwind all that spaghetti. But it sounds to me like

1. The international copyright status of pre-1973 Soviet documents is not completely clear, or wasn't in 2001
2. Pre-1943 Soviet documents published anonymously, by a company, or by the state are in the public domain

Does anyone know if there have been further developments regarding international copyright treaties? —Michael Z. 2006-02-28 00:38 Z

Yes, it's a mess. All that we know by now is that the "pre-1973" reasoning is incorrect. Figuring out what exactly would be a workable rule is difficult. Lupo 08:00, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Marxists Internet Archives have published the English translation of the actual legislation, see http://marx.org/history/ussr/government/law/1961/civil-legislation/ch04.htm. --80.202.107.156 21:21, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I know. They say it was an excerpt from the old copyright law of the USSR, which has since been superceded by laws in 1991/2, 1993, and 2004. The 1993 law and its modification in 2004 were retroactive for a period of 50 years. Unfortunately, they don't show what the terms were back in the 1960s (it says lifetime of author, but then mentions fixed durations and the possibility of such fixed duration copyrights passing to heirs). Someone has access to the original sources mentioned there? Lupo 22:05, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Work of Soviet government

Is there any info about the work of the Soviet government? All of the pictures at Grigori Nelyubov and most of the Soviet space program are from government sources. Thanks! --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 16:58, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

What would be a workable rule?

Since the pre-1973 rule doesn't work, let's see if we can find a more precise workable rule.

1. Works published in the former Soviet Union must be considered simultaneously published in all successor nations, because all these successor nations were considered members of the UCC with effective date of May 27, 1973 (the date the USSR had joined the UCC). See Circular 38a of the U.S. Copyright Office.
2. The U.S. Uruguay Round Agreement Act (URAA) (TRIPS), codified in U.S. law as 17 USC 104A, says that a work's copyright is automatically and retroactively restored in the U.S. if it was still copyrighted in its country of origin on January 1 1996. In the case of simultaneous publication, a work has multiple countries of origin, and must be out of copyright in all of them to avoid this automatic retroactive copyright restoration.
3. Georgia is one of those successor nations of the USSR. It has passed in September 1999 a retroactive copyright law defining a general copyright term of 70 years p.m.a. Anonymous works are copyrighted for 70 years since their first publication, unless the author becomes known within that period, in which case 70 years p.m.a. applies again. If an unpublished work is published for the first time after its original copyright had expired, the publisher is granted the economic rights (known as the publication right in the EU) for a period of 25 years.
4. Since that law is explicitly retroactive, any works of authors who died 1929 or later were covered. (By now, according to that Georgian law, works of authors who died before 1936 are in the public domain.)
5. The 70 year period of Georgian copyright law matches the periods of Russia and of the Ukraine. All the other successor nations have a period of 50 years (and various special cases). The Russian (1993/2004 law) and Ukrainian (2001 law) laws are retroactive "for a period of 50 years", whatever that means exactly. See Misplaced Pages:Copyright situations by country.

The only workable rule for Soviet works that I can deduce from all this is that they are no different than any other work; i.e. Misplaced Pages can consider Soviet works PD only if the author died more than 70 years ago, or, in the case of an anonymous work, if the work was published more than 70 years ago (but then we'd need to be pretty sure that it was indeed an anonymous work, it doesn't just mean "I don't know who took this picture"). Since we need to consider all successor nations' laws, any attempt to find "safe cut-off dates" based only on Russian law are wrong, and thus both 1954 (2004 - 50) and 1943 (1993 - 50) are incorrect.

Comments, anyone? Lupo 10:06, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I am not convinced of the Georgia argument. Speaking from an EU point of view I would like to follow the EU rule of the shorter term and accept only the 50 years pma rule (valid in Russia and most other successor states) as workable. We cannot avoid ALL risks and should go pragmatic ways diligently monitoring possible troubles. UNTIL we get troubles it seems the right "via media" between the pre-1973 NONSENSE and the 70 years pma rule (which has to be valid indeed for creators who are citizens of the three baltic former Soviet and now EU countries!!) to accept the 50 years pma rule --Historiograf 14:35, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

PS: PLEASE COMMUNICATE THIS DISCUSSION TO COMMONS VILLAGE PUMP! --Historiograf 14:38, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand— Russia has 70 years p.m.a. since 2004. Lupo 18:16, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry my mistake --Historiograf 23:38, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

So can we be confident that the 1925-1962 soviet law defining only 3 years (in special cases 5 years)(Ajvol, 09:32, 14 February 2006 in this discussion) for photos has been abrogated by the present Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Estonian laws, and that copyright that had expired after 3 or 5 years has been revived by the newer laws of those countries whenever the photographer is still alive or died after 2006 - 71 = 1935 (Georgia, Estonia) ; 2004 - 51 = 1953 (Russia, Ukraine) ? Teofilo talk 12:23, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. First, you can ignore Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the context of this discussion: these Baltic states are not successor states of the USSR. (Such is politics...) For Georgia, yes, I think your statement is true. For Russia and the Ukraine, I do not know how to interprete their "50 year retroactivity": does that mean the current laws cover any work whose author died less than 50 years ago (1954 or later for Russia, 1951 or later for the Ukraine), or does it mean they cover all works published after that? Or does it mean any works that were still copyrighted in 1954 or 1951 by the then current laws? And what about the earlier 1993 law in Russia, which also was retroactive for a period of 50 years? And I'm unsure about any interactions between this retroactivity period and the 70-year p.m.a copyright term in these two countries. But given the fact that for the U.S., we would have to consider all successor states, and Georgia is a pretty clear-cut case with an (unfortunately!) long copyright term of 70 years, I think this deliberation is moot. Lupo 12:57, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Even if Estonia is not considered a "successor state", wouldn't a US court consider that the present Estonian law applies for works first published in Estonia at the time that state was part of the Soviet Union ? Teofilo talk 12:11, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Ask a U.S. court! Seriously, I don't know what a U.S. court would do e.g. for a work published by a publishing house based in Tallinn at a time when it was part of the USSR. Estonia is not a legal successor of the USSR. First and foremost, a U.S. court would apply U.S. law, that much is sure. It would also take into account foreign laws to figure out whether or not a work was copyrighted in the U.S. at all. But which foreign laws the court would consider in such a case, I do not know. Lupo 17:31, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

IMHO we are inventing non-existent problem

Huge number of people use pre-1973 Soviet publications as the public domain works. Many use them commercially. The legal reasons to depreciate the tag are obscure and certainly are untested in the USA courts. I can not imagine that the first test case will be Misplaced Pages (noncommercial organization working for the common good). Depreciating the tag will be a catastrophe for a whole section of wiki and the risk is most probably just our imagination. I would suggest to stop the self-harming actions until a real danger (test case) will be present abakharev 22:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Well said Alex! -- Grafikm 22:47, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Alex in your opinion, would this be a violation and abuse of admin power? Have a look at Commons and I would like someone to draft this. --Kuban Cossack 23:03, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Alex, I would very much appreciate if you or Ezhiki (or another admin) to draft that too. I think it is really, really important! -- Grafikm 23:11, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

This cannot go unnoticed. Please keep an eye out on the commons talk page as well. --Kuban Cossack 23:15, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. I daresay that it's the cornerstone of the problem... :) -- Grafikm 23:17, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Guys, please keep your cool. I also don't know what Lupo is doing and what's the issue he has with this tag. He even listed it for deletion in the past, and the result was an overwhelming "keep" It's too early to draft an RfC which is a big PITA for everyone. This may be an option oif this goes too far but for now, please let's discuss it peacefully if Lupo really feels so strongly about this issue for whatever reason. --Irpen 23:17, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

No, the first time he was openely blamed for not putting the Russian and Ukrainian as well as other communities and discussing it with them. This time he openely used his admin powers to deprecate the tag, again with no comments on Russian and Ukrainian as well as other community noticeboards. Not only is that extreamely bad faith action, it was a direct insult to all people who use the tag and those who uploaded those 1000+ images. He also made us think that as an admin he has got an upper hand in pushing his original research thesis into wiki. THAT IS A DIRECT VIOLATION OF ADMIN PRIVLIEGES and it personally makes people feel exreamely insecure about renegade administrators. As he has stepped over the line twice I am not certain that he will not do it the third time, and yes this calls for a wider opinion of other admins (and if need to be - the arbcom). --Kuban Cossack 23:27, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Lupo is absolutely right. The legal incompetence of the Russian and Ukrainian are well known. We cannot accept clear copyvios - STOP WISHFUL THINKING. --Historiograf 01:35, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, with supporters like this above, this will go a long way, I suppose. --Irpen 01:37, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Look what we've got here! All those editors who didn't care to comment at all during the past few months despite having been aware of the issue suddenly come out of the bushes. Unfortunately, I still have not seen a single coherent argument why the "pre-1973" rule should be considered correct. Only threats and personal attacks. Oh well. I have made my case. I cannot understand why you insist on spreading misinformation. Lupo 07:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

You have abused your admin rights. That is the mess that you are not going to get out of and I shall, if need to strat a full arbcom against you. Original research done by you, plus, twice neglegince of the whole Russian and Ukrainian communities, who unlike you write articles and improve them. Who unlike you are from Russia and do not care about work that was published in their country and unlike you are not copyright nazis. What's next first you attack all of our images, then you will attack all of the articles that we wrote, then you will try to get all of us off wikipedia. Right? It is called fascism and the fact that you spat in our face twice IS NOT GOING TO BE FORGOTTEN, Let I remind that 61 years ago we defeated one nazi and now will defeat you as well. --Kuban Cossack 12:05, 13 May 2006 (UTC)