Template talk:PD-Canada

Copyright extension

As of 30 December 2022 the copyright length in Canada will extend to 70 years but not apply retroactively.12 How best to modify this template to account for this change? Hekerui (talk) 12:52, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

@Hekerui: For reference, the current text is

This work is [in the public domain / not in the public domain] in Canada because it originates from Canada and its term of copyright has [expired / not yet expired]. According to Canadian copyright law, all private copyrights expire 50 years after the year marking the death of the author. Government works are held under Crown copyright, which expires 50 years after publication. The copyright for an anonymous work expires when 50 years have passed since its publication, or 75 years have passed since its creation.

I think a good outline for the updated licence text would be

• The new law that takes effect on 30 December 2022
• The previous law, which applies to works whose copyright expired before 30 December 2022 (e.g. works whose authors died before 1972)

Canadian copyright law has more edge cases than I was aware of, as does I suppose the copyright law of many countries. (Check out this flowchart!) Given that, my preference would be to simplify the template to just deal with case where the author died over 50/70 years ago, and create other templates à la {{PD-CAGov}} to handle other cases as needed. {{PD-Canada}} only has 97 pages that link to it, so manual review should suffice to turn up any more specialized uses of this template.

Proposed new text:

This work is in the public domain in Canada because it originates from Canada and one of the following statements is true:

• The author died over 70 years ago (before 1954) and the work was published more than 50 years ago (before 1974).
• The author died before 1972, meaning that copyright on that author's works expired before the Canadian copyright term was extended non-retroactively from 50 to 70 years on 30 December 2022.

Does this look good to you? Also, do you know if the current law affords any protection to posthumously-published works? —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 04:31, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi, thanks, it looks good to me. I'll have a look at the Copyright Act regarding works released following a death. Hekerui (talk) 01:08, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

@Hekerui thank you! —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 05:21, 11 December 2022 (UTC)