Wikisource:Copyright discussions

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Copyright discussions

This page hosts discussions on works that may violate Wikisource's copyright policy. All arguments should be based entirely on U.S. copyright law. You may join any current discussion or start a new one.

Note that works which are a clear copyright violation may now be speedy deleted under criteria for speedy deletion G6. To protect the legal interests of the Wikimedia Foundation, these will be deleted unless there are strong reasons to keep them within at least two weeks. If there is reasonable doubt, they will be deleted.

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Transcriptions added by user:Johnson.Xia edit

Most of the works uploaded by Johnson.Xia (talkcontribs) appear to be copyright violations. They are not with license templates and many are copy and pastes from a Chinese Government website that clearly states that the pages are copyright. So even if the Chinese language pages are in the public domain, there is no certainty that the translations are in the public domain. Unless this can be quickly demonstrated to not be the case I think that we just have to delete the uploads. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:44, 9 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

I would like to cite Article 5 of Copyright Law of the People's Republic of China that most of my works published are either 0"official translations" of "documents of administrative nature" or "mere information about facts or happenings". Also, considering copyright regulations for official websites of governments around the world, I believe that works from Chinese Government are in public domain as well. Johnson.Xia (talk) 15:17, 9 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
Speaking of .gov websites, I wonder if documents on speaker.gov are in public domain. Johnson.Xia (talk) 21:21, 9 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Johnson.Xia: Are you claiming that the works are classified as {{PD-ROC-exempt}}? If yes, then they need to be applied to the work, and you have to explain/demonstrate that is the case on the talk page of each work. Use the notes field in the pertinent talk page template. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:00, 10 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Billinghurst: I think you mean {{PD-PRC-exempt}} in this case. Shells-shells (talk) 18:51, 10 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
Please specify which works are questioned. Even if Chinese Wikisource considers anything absolute acceptable, the translation here requires verifiable source and license. If Chinese Wikisource considers anything a copyvio, then the matching work here must go.--Jusjih (talk) 18:27, 14 August 2022 (UTC)Reply
I note multiple issues with lack of licensing, questionable copyright status, improper sourcing (zhWS cannot be a source for a text on enWS), and what appears to be undeclared user translations in violation of WS:T. I am unable to trawl through all their contributions just now, but a quick spot check indicates there is a lot of cleanup to do (large parts may need to be deleted) and Johnson.Xia appears to need guidance on our policies and practices. @Johnson.Xia: please familiarise yourself with enWS policies (you'll find pertinent links in the welcome message on your talk page) before adding any further texts, and ask for help or guidance (at WS:S/H or from an admin) if there's anything that is unclear. Xover (talk) 07:05, 24 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
"improper sourcing (zhWS cannot be a source for a text on enWS)", "undeclared user translations in violation of WS:T", please specify it. unsigned comment by Johnson.Xia (talk) 19:05, 24 September 2022‎ (UTC).Reply
You were clearly able to find it yourself without much trouble. Xover (talk) 18:06, 24 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Ok, having gone through them, this affects the following pages:

None of these are egregious, but all of them also have various lesser issues with formatting, incomplete header template etc. They're also mostly cut&pastes of web pages. --Xover (talk) 12:17, 11 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Works of Noel Rosa edit

The translation licenses are fine, but it's not clear to me whether/why the underlying works are PD. Some works don't have years; those that do range from 1932–1936. Do these qualify as "cinematographic, phonographic, photographic [or] applied arts works" (from commons:Template:PD-Brazil-URAA)? —CalendulaAsteraceae (talkcontribs) 02:28, 26 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

I see this in Wikipedia: "Apart from expired copyright and unknown authors, works in the public domain include those from authors who have died and left no successors." MarkLSteadman (talk) 03:48, 28 January 2023 (UTC)Reply
@MarkLSteadman Thank you for checking! Do we have reason to think that applies to Rosa? —CalendulaAsteraceae (talkcontribs) 05:05, 31 January 2023 (UTC)Reply
He apparently died fatherless, young and estranged. But I don't know nearly enough about Brazilian law to confirm what that requires. MarkLSteadman (talk) 17:46, 31 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

WIPO Copyright Treaty edit

Is template {{PD-UN}} appropriate here? Although WIPO is one of the 15 specialized agencies of the United Nations, the treaty appears to be a document issued WITHOUT a UN symbol. And according to the terms of use of WIPO, CC license is only applicable to those documents published as of November 2016. Teetrition (talk) 12:59, 4 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Teetrition: WIPO is part of the UN. It is a public domain document for our purposes as an equivalent to a gov-edict of WIPO as part of the UN. Happy for a better suggestion for an applicable licence or a wording update, though you couldn't possibly be saying that it is not able to be reproduced. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:12, 5 March 2023 (UTC)Reply
Even though it was published in 1996, if WIPO the document under a cc-by-4.0 as of 2016, then we can re-license it. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:17, 5 March 2023 (UTC)Reply
This is an interesting case. UN policy was tightened considerably since the text of our template (see the equivalent templates at Commons; we need to update here), and fairly clearly does not apply to this treaty.
The WIPO's own Open access policy explicitly only applies to post-2016 publications (which this treaty predates by a decade). As a negotiated treaty the most reasonable author for copyright purposes is the WIPO itself, alternately one could view it as a collective work of the contracting parties (in which case we would need unanimous consent for licensing, in which case… forget it). Since the WIPO is not itself a competent legislative body, and the treaty is not self-executing (it was implemented in the US through compatible regulations included in the DMCA, not adopted as-is), it is not itself an edict of government. In other words, the only path to hosting it is if the WIPO itself considers it to fall ex post facto under their Open access policy, or otherwise licenses it under a compatible license.
In view of that I'm trying to get a request for clarification to them through a volunteer that is or was recently Wikimedian in Residence at WIPO, and failing that through their other contact channels. I think the odds are actually pretty good that they'll considered this covered by the Open access policy, but we'll need confirmation of that. Xover (talk) 10:23, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Constitution of the Soviet Union (1936) edit

The PD-EdictGov template does not apply here because the English translation was not produced by a government. It was published by a private company in the UK in 1978, and would still (I think) be under copyright in both the UK and the US. Jcitawy (talk) 17:43, 15 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

  Keep I don't disagree with the source of the translation, or the reasoning for a nomination, however, the work's source clearly states that it has been released into the public domain, and that should be given validity, and a seemingly legitimate release statement overrides the hypothetical of who did own the copyright. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:37, 18 March 2023 (UTC)Reply
  Delete The work was originally published in print by Red Star Press Ltd., in Joseph Stalin: Works, Volume 14 (London, 1978), and we would need a proof that this particular publication of translated texts was released into public domain. The fact that marxists.org released their 2008 reprint into the public domain is imo not a proof that the 1978 publication had been released too, especially as they do not say what they founded their their release into public domain on, and there are considerable doubts that they had the right to do so. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:13, 18 March 2023 (UTC)Reply
Changing my vote to   Keep per TE(æ)A,ea. below. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:55, 22 April 2023 (UTC)Reply
  • Keep (the TL) as PD-US-no notice, due to simultaneous publication (distribution) in the United States under Red Press’s American division. I have a copy on hand, so if it isn’t deleted, I can scan it in and post it here. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 16:00, 28 March 2023 (UTC)Reply
    • billinghurst, Jan Kameníček: Given a lack of opposition, I’m going to make a scan in the next few days. I also wanted your opinions on another item in that volume, “On the Draft Constitution of the U.S.S.R.: Report delivered at the Extraordinary Congress of Soviets of the U.S.S.R.” This was a speech delivered on the floor regarding the Constitution Commission. I mention it because I believe that it would qualify as PD-EdictGov. I will scan it in in any case, but I await your opinions before uploading it. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 20:58, 2 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
      Honestly, I always hesitate about PD-EdictGov and I would also appreciate if some help page explained it in more detail, but it seems to me that the original text should fall under this license. I suppose that the English translation was distributed in the US as was the previous volume and so it falls under PD-US-no notice, right?
      As for the Constitution of the Soviet Union (1936), if no opposing arguments come within a few more days, it can be imo closed as kept. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 23:14, 2 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
      @Jan.Kamenicek: My understanding is that there is very little case law on GovEdict in the US, though there was a case in the past couple of years which came down with a decision allowing American state government publications generated by a private company om behalf of that government to be released into the public domain (was discussed here at enWS with links). So my understanding is that essentially if it is a government that is speaking in its official sense for the public's broader information then it is available. As we only look to comply with US copyright law then we have a broader capability to reproduce the edicts from any government. Edict here is acts, regulations, declarations, official documentation at a broad audience; so not one to one communications, etc. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:16, 3 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
  • To all involved: I have proofread Index:Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.pdf. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 22:18, 6 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
  • Hmm. Provided this text was ever enacted as the constitution of the USSR—which I am going to go ahead and assume—the Russian-language original clearly falls under {{PD-RU-exempt}}.
    I see above assertions that this translation is covered by {{PD-US-no notice}}, but I see no specific explanation of why this is so. In order for it to be no-notice it would have had to be first published in the US without a valid copyright notice. I see no evidence provided above that the relevant publication did not have a valid copyright notice (@TE(æ)A,ea.: if your meaning is that you have visually inspected a physical copy of the publication and found no notice then please say so explicitly; just saying it has no notice without specifying how you know is not very useful for future wiki-spelunkers).
    Additionally, in order for a multiply-published work (as I see referred above) to qualify has "first published in the US" it must have been published in the US no more than thirty days later than wherever actual first publication occurred. This is a quite rigid limit and requires much better evidence than seeing both UK and US on the colophon. While a specific date is usually not possible to ascertain with 100% accuracy, reasonable research must be made (and documented) to establish a reasonable likelihood that foreign publication happened "on or about" date X, that US publication happened "on or about" date Y, and that the probable intervals between the two is less than 30 days.
    @MarkLSteadman: You mention a 1938 likely first publication of the translation. Is that the same as File:Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.pdf? I rather understood that to be a partial scan of Joseph Stalin: Works, vol. 14 (1978). London: Red Star Press Ltd.? On what do you base the claim of a 1938 first publication of the translation, and why do we assume this is the same translation? And if they are the same and this translation was first published in 1938, who was the translator and what else do we know about that publication? Even if there's no scan online it should be possible to find it in a library or archive somewhere (TE(æ)A,ea. in particular is good at finding stuff like this in libraries).
    I think it's very likely that there's an early translation of this, and a lot of the communist-leaning publishers didn't—for whatever reason—include copyright notices, so finding a PD translation should be eminently possible. But based on the information provided above I am more confused than persuaded for the specific translation under discussion here. Possibly I'm just having a senior moment, but I'm not seeing the evidence needed to conclude "PD" here. --Xover (talk) 15:15, 2 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
    Hmm. And looking at the scan of Works (1978), its preface actually says The … Russian edition of J. Stalin's works … contains thirteen volumes and covers the period from 1901 up to January 1934 and has been published in English by the Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow. […] After this time, writings of J. Stalin in the English language could so far only be found in … pamphlets, Congress reports, newspaper articles e.t.c. After reprinting the 13 Volume Moscow edition, we now present five further volumes of works of J. Stalin. … As well in volume 14 after Stalin's explanatory speech on the Draft Constitution, we have included the full text of the Constitution as finally adopted by the Supreme Soviet.
    That certainly suggests that Red Star Press may have facilitated the translation and that this is its first publication. The text in the preface doesn't rule out that they used a previously published translation, of course, but they also discuss having checked the German and French translations so it certainly could be read to mean an original translation (if you're republishing an existing translation you usually don't check translations in other languages). This scan certainly has no visible notice, but since it was published after 1977 a notice was not strictly required. Works published 1978 through 28 February 1989 could be registered up to 5 years after publication even if they contained no notice (and would get either pma. 70 or pub. + 95 terms). However, searching the Stanford database (which contains renewals up to 1978) and the Copyright Office's database, reveal no entries for this under any probable search term ("Stalin" in title or author). That makes it eligible for {{PD-US-no-notice-post-1977}}. Iff this was this translation's first publication (cf. Mark's mention above that the translation was first published in 1938). Xover (talk) 16:16, 2 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
    • Xover: I’ve long since returned the book, so I can’t scan any more of it at this point and I can just tell you what I remember. I received a physical copy of a book, and was able to examine it directly. The book contained no notice. It was published in 1978. I will take you at your word that there was no curative notice and is thus PD-US-1978-89 (the Commons license). I didn’t save my contemporaneous research, but I know that Red Star Press had (has?) an American division, and that they published books in both places. I don’t know why they would delay publication in U.S. contra U.K. I doubt the usual sources of evidence (newspaper advertisements &c.) will be useful here; the evidence is more circumstantial. I don’t know if there is an earlier English translation, but I wouldn’t be surprised as to this work as it is politically important. While I didn’t see any volumes other than no. 14, based on bibliographic information available to me, it does appear that Red Star started publishing the “new series” based on Stalin’s new works (post-1934) in 1978. There is no indication anywhere that the translation of the Constitution was copied from an earlier source. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 16:51, 2 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
      Thanks, that was exactly what I had in mind. I had a look through newspapers from around 1978 but could find no trace of this. To make probable a simultaneous publication we would have to find something like a publishers catalog including it whose date is known. Or an ad for it in a different book by this publisher whose date is known. Or possibly a secondary source that discusses either the publisher or the work in a way that dates it. But see also below regarding a possible (probable?) 1937 translation that would predate this if it is identical. Xover (talk) 17:37, 2 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
    More research, greater confusion…
    This indicates that an English-language translation was published by the State Publishing House of Political Literature in 1938. In addition, I found a 1976 edition by Progress Publishers that predates the Red Star Press edition by two years. This latter edition lists Printing history. 1937, 1938, 1945, 1947, 1951, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1960, 1962, 1965, 1967, 1969, 1972. Given the timing etc., in view of the previously mentioned 1938 edition, it seems likely that the State Publishing House of Political Literature published an official(ish) English-language translation in 1937, and that this was what was used for Progress Publishers' editions, at least up until the 1976 revised edition (when Progress Publishers seem to indicate an original translation from the Russian).
    Given the existence of an official(ish) English-language edition I find it unlikely that a wholly new translation was made absent specific evidence suggesting that (cf. the copyright claim for new translation from Russian by Progress Publishers). That makes probable a 1937 first publication in the USSR (we can just use Russia as a pragmatic simplification).
    Since about 1919, the State Publishing House of Political Literature (and all its several hundred siblings, commonly known, I think, as Politizdat) was the state publishing monopoly (before 1919 it was the party publishing organ). So I think it's reasonable to call the translation an "official" translation of the constitution. Official translations of the things exempted by {{PD-RU-exempt}} are also exempt, so this translation was PD in Russia on publication.
    So… The 1937 translation should be {{PD-RU-exempt}} and PD in its country of origin on the URAA date. If published outside the US in 1937 without observing the US-required formalities, and PD in its country of origin on the URAA date, it is {{PD-US-no notice}} (or possibly {{PD-US-no renewal}}). This requires finding a scan of the 1937 edition to verify that it has no notice (or that it has one). Alternately, if we can find a couple of contemporary publications by the State Publishing House of Political Literature to establish a pattern of including / not including a copyright notice.
    In addition, the recent-ish clarification of {{PD-EdictGov}} expanded its scope to include not only works that have the "force of law" (which translations usually do not, even if official) but also works whose authors are "authorized to speak the law" (i.e. any competent legislative assembly). An official translation of the constitution is somewhat of a stretch as having been authored by the Supreme Soviet, but if I squint just right I might just be able to convince myself that for a constitution published by the one-and-only state-monopoly publishing organ we're close enough to call it {{PD-EdictGov}}.
    If either of these apply there remains the question of whether the text published in Works vol. 14 is identical to the text published in 1937. That will need further research. Xover (talk) 17:33, 2 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
    My general conclusion when I dug into it aligns with this. Basically a. There is evidence of a publication in both Moscow as well as by International Publishers [5] in New York in 1937 / 1938 of an "official" translation and b. without comparing the actual published texts it will be hard to determine one way or the other definitively MarkLSteadman (talk) 22:58, 2 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
    The Montreal Gazette published a full translation of the draft of the constitution on June 26, 1936. And by references elsewhere it seems The New York Times also published this draft on the same day. That suggests a coordinated release to the press of an already translated text.
    Several articles of the translation published in the Times appear in The Herald-News for June 30, 1936. These are described as having been "cabled from Moscow" (but that could just mean a foreign correspondent in Moscow, not "Moscow" itself). In any case, the quoted articles are not identical with our text, for example using "toilers" where our text uses "the working people" (art. 125).
    According to The Hartford Courant for November 28, 1936: "fifteen million copies" of the constitution (presumably the draft since it wasn't adopted until Dec. 5) have been distributed in "five score languages". And the Soviet ambassador is throwing shindigs at the embassy celebrating it. It's certainly a massive propaganda push.
    The Seattle Star for February 4, 1937 advertises "the first official text of the constitution … in English, translated by Ivar Spector, University of Washington professor of oriental studies". Apparently it's a pamphlet for sale in the uni. bookstore. If it's the first translation then an official translation has not been distributed yet despite it having been adopted two months previous and the drafts apparently having been widely distributed in translation.
    But all in all, I find a minor fever-pitch obsession in the news with the draft constitution up to about the end of November 1936. Thereafter there's some references to the new constitution (mostly saying Stalin is a dictator and the constitution isn't worth the paper it's written on) through the beginning of 1937. And then it goes entirely quiet. There are no mentions of publications of translations after the early 1937 Spector translation. Xover (talk) 07:43, 3 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
    There is a partly official, partly original, translation in Source Book on European Governments (1937). It uses the official translation of the draft, combined with original translation of the 43 amendments finally adopted. This translation also uses "toilers" in Art. 125, so it is not identical to our text.
    There's a copyright registration for the Spector translation: Union of Soviet socialist republics. Constitution of the Union of Soviet socialist republics adopted by the extraordinary VIII all-Union congress of Soviets, Dec. 5, 1936. Translated by Ivar Spector, with an introduction. © Jan. 15, 1937 ; A 104377 ; Metropolitan press, Portland, Or..
    There is an original translation in International Conciliation, Issue 327 from Februarry 1937, by a Prof. Clarence A. Manning at Columbia University, New York. It intersperses Russian words in parenthesis where there is no good English translation. It also uses "toilers" and is unlikely to be the direct source of our text.
    Aha, but in LeBuffe, Francis P. Jurisprudence, with cases to illustrate principles (1938) there's is a quote of Art. 4 claiming to be from the 1937 International Publishers translation. The economic foundation of the U.S.S.R. is the socialist system of economy and the socialist ownership of the implements and means of production firmly established as a result of the liquidation of the capitalist system of economy, the abolition of private property in the implements and means of production and the abolition of exploitation of man by man.. Contrast that with our text which reads: The socialist system of economy and the socialist ownership of the means and instruments production, firmly established as a result of the abolition of the capitalist system of economy, the abrogation of private ownership of the means and instruments of production and the abolition of the exploitation of man by man, constitute the economic foundation of the U.S.S.R.. These are clearly not the same translation.
    But the Department of State Bulletin (1939) contains a full quote of Art. 125 from a translation published by the the American Russian Institute:
    In conformity with the interests of the working people, and in order to strengthen the socialist system, the citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed by law:
    a) freedom of speech;
    b) freedom of the press;
    c) freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings;
    d) freedom of street processions and demonstrations.
    These civil rights are ensured by placing at the disposal of the working people and their organizations printing presses, stocks of paper, public buildings, the streets, communications facilities and other material requisites for the exercise of these rights.
    Compare this with [Page:Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.pdf/33|our text]]:
    In conformity with the interests of the working people, and in order to strengthen the socialist system, the citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed by law:
    a) freedom of speech;
    b) freedom of the press;
    c) freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings;
    d) freedom of street processions and demonstrations;
    These civil rights are ensured by placing at the disposal of the working people and their organizations printing presses, stocks of paper, public buildings, the streets, communications facilities and other material requisites for the exercise of these rights.
    This seems exceedingly likely to be the same translation. Xover (talk) 08:42, 3 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
    The American Russian Institute version is on Hathi (HathiTrust), Art. 125 on p. 35. It says it is based on the 1938 edition by the State Publishing House of the U.S.S.R, MarkLSteadman (talk) 12:46, 3 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Two collection of essays by G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936), published in 1975 and 1964. The ones in the latter are asserted (in the notes field) to have been never previously published. The other has no similar note.

My head isn't cooperating just now, so I'm dropping them here for help. We need to check the status of these, especially the allegedly unpublished ones, and update the listing. I suspect most of these are PD, including some of the ones currently tagged as being in copyright. It'd be nice to get these cleaned up properly. Xover (talk) 16:09, 3 May 2023 (UTC)Reply

  • As collections, they should be deleted eventually, although they should be kept for now to facilitate copyright research on the individual essays. The note in The Spice of Life and Other Essays says, “None of them has appeared in a collection before.” They have, however, appeared in periodicals before. For example, the first essay in that collection, “Sentimental Literature”, first appeared in The Speaker for July 27, 1901. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 16:59, 3 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
    Aha! Yes, that makes it even more likely these are mostly PD. Xover (talk) 18:34, 4 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
Collections have their own copyright, and having the table of contents and links to the individual essays here is probably too much. We can have the individual essays here, but not reproduce their headings and orderings.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:55, 3 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
Meh. Collection copyrights are dumb. :-(
Anybody made any progress on identifying source of original publication for these, or alternate (PD) collections to which we could source them? Xover (talk) 12:21, 11 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Szilard Petition edit

According to this page, A Petition to the President of the United States, is believed to be in the public domain. Therefore it seems probable, that this had simply no copyright notice on it, when it was first published. Also the National Archives Catalog states "Access: Unrestricted / Use: Unrestricted".

But after more research there I now have some doubts. This article states, that it was declassified in 1961 and first published in 1963. This seems to refer to "The Atomic Age" by Grodzins and Rabinowitch (1963). This book has a copyright notice.

But according to a scan by the University of California it was not declassified in 1961, but in 1957. This could suggest a not as formal first publication in 1961, which was refered to as "declassified" in the article (speculation).

In the end, the question is, what the correct copyright template (is it possible that USGov applies, even while Oppenheimer tried to supress the petitions circulation at Los Alamos?) is or whether it should be deleted (which would be a bit sad, as I would presume Szilard would be pleased with a wide distribution of this document). Habitator terrae (talk) 11:27, 8 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

  Comment How is this a work of the US government? It would appear to be the work of one person, and countersigned by others. The author didn't publish it, and that someone else has published it without the authority of the author is someone else's breach of copyright, or publishing under public interest, not through a loss of copyright. Seems that it would be PMD + 70 years for an unpublished work. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:25, 21 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

I would expect that is because they are members of the government drafting documents on government policy related to their official duties? But in general I have a hard time following this area of the law as I would expect that mailing a petition to the government would count as publication, since it has an implicit ask for further distribution? MarkLSteadman (talk) 08:06, 21 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Billinghurst, @MarkLSteadman, @TE(æ)A,ea.: So revert to old copyright template (or delete)? Habitator terrae (talk) 18:21, 21 August 2023 (UTC) PS: @billinghurst: Perhaps of interest, don't know wether it also appeared in Leo Szilard, his version of the facts.Reply

Three images in Jack Daniel's Properties v. VIP Products/Opinion of the Court edit

The three images listed were uploaded and later deleted at Commons

as copyright violations. I have uploaded them here and returned them to the work. They form part of our issue about de minimis works that are part of works that are otherwise within scope. @TE(æ)A,ea.: your contribution.

Until we have a clear approach, this is how I will manage these undelete and migrates.

The license on them is not one of ours, and should be part of a discussion, or we should have an interim copyright tag for such images migrated and under discussion. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:51, 17 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

  • The licence is a category-specific version of our usual PD-USGov, for SCOTUS opinions. The PDF is of a Supreme Court opinion, which is PD-USGov; and the images here, being derived from that opinion, retain that (lack of) copyright (status). TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 00:38, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived:

Deleted as copyrighted.

This monument was erected recently—sometime between 2008 (listed on the monument) and 2020 (when this photograph was taken). Thus, the publication of the text (in the form of the monument) did not require a copyright notice, but was automatically subject to copyright. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 22:37, 18 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

  Keep — The monument mostly contains bare statements of fact, along with a concluding statement that’s very generic, with something in its format included in thousands of similar monuments. So, this would count as PD-text. And according to Seal of Buffalo, New York and File:Seal of Buffalo, New York.svg, the current seal of the city of Buffalo (which is used on the monument) was taken from a 19th century version of the logo, and is thus in the public domain. PseudoSkull (talk) 23:33, 18 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
    • PseudoSkull: I actually wasn’t thinking about the seal, but the choice of three-dimensionality might also count as copyrightable matter (even though it is an interpretation of a work in the public domain), but I think that that is a closer call. As to your PD-text, while the monument’s text contains statements of fact, the wording of those statements might (in my mind) be sufficiently creative to constitute copyrightable subject matter. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 03:08, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
@TE(æ)A,ea.: I will admit that that’s a possibility, but the statements seem pretty generic and uncreative to me, in both a legal and a critical sense. My reasoning for saying that is that they’re fairly simple sentences; they give names and numbers, and a very basic explanation of how those names and numbers relate to each other, and it’d be very easy to conjure the same sentence with different variables in many other context.
Although, I’d be interested to see if there are court rulings on similar materials, so we could make comparisons to this specific monument. And my opinion may change if the evidence is sufficient in that regard. (Although it’d be pretty sad if this is copyrightable, since it in theory would limit someone’s ability to make many statements of fact legally.) PseudoSkull (talk) 03:23, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
  Delete. That text is not a mere listing of facts so it is fairly clearly in the realm of what is protected by copyright. The original photograph is also in danger of a challenge on Commons as a derivative work of the monument, but that’s not a relevant issue here per se.
But given this is so borderline for copyrightability, it would be useful if a couple of more people could chime in on where they fall down on that. Xover (talk) 13:48, 11 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
  Delete Imo, the text does not really just state a bare fact, it plays with pathos and touches human emotions, so I do not really see it as PD inelligible. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 17:41, 11 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
  This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 21:58, 17 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Jan.Kamenicek, @Xover, @TE(æ)A,ea.: I've started a discussion at Commons, just so you're aware (and my opinion on it has changed since my initial vote): c:Commons:Deletion requests/File:Potter's field monument at City Honors High School, Buffalo, New York - 20200707.jpg. SnowyCinema (talk) 23:51, 17 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Index:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu edit

The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived:

Kept, there is some evidence that it was published in the US within 30 days of its British publication, and so it is in PD in the US as the copyright was not renewed.

Should be localised, unless shown that New York and Toronto publication were within 30 days. Commons file is currently tagged as not renewed, but in attempting to link authors, I've found a few like Blunden (British and active until the 1970's). ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 15:35, 11 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

There's no reason to think that New York and Toronto publication weren't within 30 days; Oxford Press published in multiple cities exactly for that, so they would get Berne and US protection.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:15, 11 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
Bleh. Actually there is. This is a second or later edition of a work first published in 1900. First newspaper notice is in The Standard for 7 November 1900, where it is listed under "yesterday's new books" (i.e. 6 November). First US newspaper notice is in The New York Times for 8 December 1900 in an ad from OUP claiming it as "just published". This on the face of it evidence that it was first published in the UK and published in the US just over 30 days later.
However, the ad appears in the NYT on a Saturday (which had greater circulation than weekday issues, especially for advertising books), and it is an ad for multiple titles from OUP (so not specific for this work or its publication date). That puts it just inside the 30 days limit. The evidence is also a terminus ante quem: it can't have been published later, but it could have been published arbitrarily long prior. Considering even the absolutely worst case assumption here only puts us 2 days over the limit, I am comfortable assuming the ad came at least two days after actual publication (you want your book to actually be on sale and in bookstores when the ad runs) and that we can therefore consider this to be a US work for copyright purposes.
Prosfilaes makes the same assumption (albeit without this evidence), so if someone disagrees with this assessment they'd better speak up quick or I'll close this as keep. Xover (talk) 15:15, 11 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
  Keep --Jan Kameníček (talk) 00:58, 9 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
  This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 22:05, 17 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

The Mysterious Ship edit

Written in 1902, but not published until 1959. Previously discussed at Wikisource:Copyright_discussions/Archives/2016#The Little Glass Bottle, but I'd appreciate a confirmation that this work qualifies for {{PD-US-no-renewal}}. —CalendulaAsteraceae (talkcontribs) 04:59, 17 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

  • Based on the renewal notice from that discussion, I would agree. This is not a mere technical issue; Derleth’s heirs didn’t have the right to renew Lovecraft’s works, and they could not claim that by calling Lovecraft a pseudonym of Derleth. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 23:00, 17 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Prosfilaes: Do you have a take on this? Has your stance / understanding of the issue evolved in the 8 years since the last discussion?
If this is a renewal by Derleth's heirs, then in order for it to be valid Derleth would have had to own the copyright for it. It seems unlikely Lovecraft sold it to him since it's juvenilia. Was Derleth Lovecraft's literary executor? Did he buy the writings from the state? What's the theory here? Xover (talk) 15:23, 11 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
It's still got a renewal, but that renewal is incorrect in several ways. I don't think it would hold up in court, but I'm not positive.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:06, 12 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

The Times/1939/Obituary/Arthur Irwin Dasent edit

Published in 1939, so does not qualify for {{PD-US}}. Might qualify for no/defective notice or no renewal? —CalendulaAsteraceae (talkcontribs) 05:11, 17 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

If we have some evidence, that the London Times was distributed in the US too (which I believe it was), I think it can be considered to be in the public domain in the US because of the lacking copyright notice. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 11:32, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Possibly, but I am very reluctant to make such assumptions without clear evidence and significant supporting research. Xover (talk) 12:22, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
The copyright term under the 1988 act for works of unknown authorship was 50 years so it was in the public domain in the UK from 1990 until being revived by the extension in 1995 to +70 again on 1996-01-01, which is the URAA date, before finally expiring in 2010. That means it isn't covered under {{PD-1996}}. MarkLSteadman (talk) 14:21, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Right, so if it's a UK work it was restored to pub. +95 (1939 + 95 = 2034) in the US by the URAA. But if it was simultaneously published in the US (within 30 days) it is a US work subject to US requirements and ineligible for restoration under the URAA. So the questions are 1) was it published in the US within 30 days, 2) did it contain a correctly formed copyright notice in the US, and, if so, 3) was the copyright renewed. I'm not sure how we would determine #1 to any reasonable level of certainty without pretty in-depth research. #2 should be possible to determine through finding a scan of a copy held in a US archive, and #3, if needed, is the usual renewal search (except in periodicals instead of books, but...). I don't think it is unlikely, per se, I'm just unwilling to make the necessary assumptions absent actual evidence. Xover (talk) 18:31, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

A Sting in the Tale and Introducing Jesus edit

These works by Roy Clements (https://royclements.net/) are available on his website, but it says "The copyright for all the materials on this website is retained by Roy Clements." I can find no CC-BY-SA 3.0 markings on his website, and the PDFs of the books have no markings to indicate they've been released under a free license. As per this, the author page of Roy Clements should be deleted as well.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:46, 17 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

  Delete Also includes copyrighted quotations from the NIV. MarkLSteadman (talk) 04:59, 17 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Dr Clements has agreed with me by email that he is releasing the books under cc-by-sa. Could you tell me what I should do to confirm this? Marnanel (talk) 00:39, 19 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Marnanel: If Mr. Clements updates https://royclements.net/books/ (or makes a separate copyright page, or something equivalent) with a clear statement that either all the books, with all parts, or lists the specific books and parts, that are licensed under {{CC-BY-SA 4.0}} that will be sufficient. An admin can verify the statement and document it here. And having these under a compatible license would be awesome!
However, be aware that this is not quite as easy as it sounds. If these books were professionally published at some point (which the website suggests), the author will have signed a contract with the publisher assigning some of their rights to the publisher. Such contracts vary considerably, but a common feature is terms that prevent the author from doing what is proposed here (it could be through exclusive publication rights or some other mechanism). If so, there needs to be permission from the publisher as well. In addition, if there are illustrations, book covers, etc. that were created by third parties, these have separate copyright and Mr. Clements does not automatically have standing to license these. For example, the PDF of God and the Gurus contains a collage of photos that are credited to "Cover photos by courtesy of Camera Press". Camera Press' courtesy permission for use on the cover of a printed book does not automatically extend to giving Mr. Clements the right to license the photos to others, especially not under a permissive license.
Copyright law is, sadly, incredibly complicated, and often works in ways normal people think is very unintuitive and strange. But the bottom line is that Mr. Clements, despite obviously being what we normally refer to as "the author of the books", must assess both copyrightable contributions by others and any exclusive rights or other bars in contracts with publishers. If you're more than averagely up on copyright and contract law you can kinda sorta navigate this on your own, but as a general policy I would advice authors to consult a competent intellectual property lawyer before making any moves. The volunteer community on Wikisource will make our own assessment of such issues in order to manage our own liability (i.e. to make sure we do not host any copyright violations), but we cannot assess Mr. Clements' liability in terms of contractual obligations or rights to third-party contributions. Xover (talk) 09:08, 19 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Marnanel: I see https://royclements.net/books/ now includes the statement Roy Clements retains copyright to these books; you can share and quote them under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License 4.0, but there is still no statement regarding possible third-party copyrights like the NIV quotes, cover designs, and the Camera Press photo collage.
I am also concerned by the phrasing "share and quote": the CC BY-SA license doesn't just allow sharing and quoting, it allows remixing. In legal terms someone could take Mr. Clements' texts and modify them to argue for something directly contrary to the author's beliefs or convictions. Copyright law's moral rights would prevent such a modified version from claiming it was written by Mr. Clements (but would still need to credit Mr. Clements as the original author due to the attribution requirement in the license), but his texts could still be used as the basis for something which he would be vehemently opposed to. Just as an example, if these had been books about preserving nature, someone could legally modify them to argue in favour of paving over national parks to enable industrial development, or abolishing pollution control legislation to improve profits for polluting industries. I am not familiar with Mr. Clements' political or theological (or moral or...) views, but I am sure one may come up with examples of uses that would be as offensive to his views as the nature preservation example would be to someone with strong views on that subject. Are we certain that Mr. Clements' release under this license is a fully informed one?
Copyright law is complicated and I strongly recommend seeking advice from a legal professional specialising in copyright in cases such as this. Xover (talk) 11:02, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Undelete Old New Land edit

The Levensohn translation (which this apparently is) was not renewed, so the text should not have been deleted. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 02:20, 28 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

After a quick look at the Stanford database, the copyright really seems not renewed. If confirmed, it can be undeleted. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 18:46, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
If you looked through Stanford and didn't find anything it was probably not renewed. A bit odd since they registered the new matter for the second edition in 1960, but… It might also be worthwhile to search the actual volumes for 1941+28 for the original registration numbers (see ei's comment in the previous discussion) just to make sure there's no quirk of spelling or category that's preventing us from finding the renewals. Xover (talk) 09:42, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Comment The deletion discussion is at https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?oldid=12722222#Old_New_Land it seems to have levels of research that contradicts the "not renewed". More informtion required that demonstrates that the deletion discussion was incorrect. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:46, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

  • No, that’s incorrect. The previous discussion revealed the same information I mention now, (including the fact of public-domain status,) and then deleted it without a reason. That’s why I started this discussion. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 15:46, 3 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
    @TE(æ)A,ea.: It was not "deleted without reason". It was deleted because the copyright discussion Billinghurst linked showed the work to have been published in 1941 and properly registered for copyright (with a registered second edition in 1960). That discussion also showed that you were mistaken about the identity of the translator. In other words, you are in this thread making a bald assertion in contradiction of the previous discussion, spicing it up with implied criticism of the closing admin (which happened to be me this time, but could have been anyone), giving no details of the research you've done, and don't even link to that previous discussion that you only after being challenged reveal to be most of your implied argument.
    In future, please consider making requests like this in a more structured and complete way. If you are requesting undeletion of a previously deleted text then link to any and all relevant previous discussions. If there are mistakes, confusions, missing aspects, etc. in those discussions then please point them out specifically. If you have done subsequent research please describe that research and its outcomes (especially for "absence of evidence" cases like non-renewal, it's critical that we be able to show we have made a good faith effort to identify any possible copyright). And please frame the undeletion request itself neutrally and assuming good faith (no sniping at the closing admin please): if you have complaints about anyone involved they can be raised on a user talk page, WS:S, or WS:AN, but WS:CV (or WS:PD) is not the place for that.
    Or to put it slightly more succinctly: if you want to persuade someone of something, it's usually more effective to make a persuasive argument than to complain of their failure to read your mind. Xover (talk) 09:39, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
    • Xover: I will try to respond to your aspersions in order. It was “deleted without reason”; the rationale simply stated that it was a copyright violation, without addressing at all the strong evidence against such a claim raised during the discussion. Einstein95’s research in that discussion, which you specifically thanked, found the proper source for the discussion (the identified source, which I had discussed, was of a different work). The discussion showed a publication in 1941, which had a copyright notice but no renewal. I was not mistaken; the mistake originated in a different Web-site, which was (I believe) the original source of our text. I am not contradicting the former discussion; I created this discussion so that the result of the previous discussion could be implemented. I started this discussion to resolve the error involved in improperly closing the original discussion; of course that would imply something against the dignity of the closing administrator. There is no additional research to be done; all of the research necessary to be done in reference to this work was already done in the original discussion. I don’t know why it would be necessary for me to find the discussion for another user; it is directly referenced in the deletion log. In the course of making an undeletion request, I seek to provide all necessary information; but there is nothing for to add when (as here) I merely reference the previous discussion and the incorrect closure of said discussion. Again, there is no “subsequent research” which would supplemental to my argument; all of the information was available at the time of the original discussion. I don’t think it’s important to discuss the closing administrator at all; merely the incorrect closure which was done. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 00:05, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Works by Cemach Feldstein (1884–1944) edit

First published in 1942 and 1943 outside the US, and later translated by Wikisource from various subsequent reprintings. Feldstein died in 1944, so with Lithuania's pma. 70 term they were still in copyright on the URAA date (1996). The originals are thus in copyright in the US until 2023 2038/2039. Xover (talk) 13:20, 16 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

I can't find out if Lithuania was pma 70 in 1996. They signed the Berne Convention in 1994 and ratified it in 1996, so they could have still been life+50. We should record the rules in 1996 (or the URAA date) somewhere, because I've looked them up a couple times and had no list to add them to.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:06, 17 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Good point. Lithuania is an EU member so the current pma. 70 term is retroactive, but on 1 January 1996 it was pma. 50 (Lithuania was pma. 50 from at least 1994 until 2003, I believe). Since Feldstein died in 1944 the Lithuanian copyright on the last of his non-posthumously published works should have expired in 1944 + 50 + 1 = 1995 (before being retroactively restored to pma. 70). That should make them public domain in the US unless there's simultaneous publication involved (which would also require correct notice and renewal, so pretty unlikely). Xover (talk) 11:08, 17 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
  • Lithuania was a part of the Soviet Union, which had a 25-year (later 50-year) term until after Lithuania gained independence. Thus, Feldstein’s works should be in the public domain owing to that fact. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 01:05, 17 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
    The Soviet terms are mainly a factor for the successor states (the satellites that joined the CIS). The Baltics are considered to have been occupied countries so it is generally their pre-occupation laws that are relevant. Xover (talk) 10:37, 17 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
    The pre-1940 law was the 1911 Russian Empire copyright statute which had a 50-year term. MarkLSteadman (talk) 14:52, 21 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
    It's really irrelevant. Circular 38a from the US Copyright Office[6] says that Lithuanian-US copyright relations are "Lithuania · Berne (Paris) Dec. 14, 1994; Phonograms Jan. 27, 2000; WTO May 31, 2001; WCT Mar. 6, 2002; WPPT May 20, 2002; VIP Jan. 1, 2019". If that date for Berne is correct, then 1 January 1996 is the only day that matters, at which Lithuania had to be at least life+50 to be in conformance with Berne. If it didn't come into effect until mid-1996, as per the ratification I found online, then the URAA date would be later in 1996, but still life+50.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:43, 22 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

My question here, really, goes to how devolved Crown copyright is in Canada. This report was made by the government of Ontario, or some part of it, and includes a specific notice of Ontario’s Crown copyright (with a no-commercial-use restriction) on the first blank page. The license template states that this is free for use in the United States because Canada has pledged not to enforce Crown copyright in the United States in works with restored copyrights under the URAA. However, I am not sure if this pledge (again, on behalf of Canada) binds Ontario (or any province); if the Crown copyright truly vests in Ontario, as the notice in this PDF would seem to indicate, then Canada, I believe, has no power to pledge nonenforcement. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 16:35, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hmm. Interesting question. My immediate inclination would be to take that statement at face value. It has no obvious red flags of copyfraud or misunderstanding of copyright, and looks well-thought out. Canadian provinces are somewhat more autonomous, and their relationship to "the Crown" more notional, than typically found in the UK (Ireland and Scotland being the obvious exceptions). It's not something I've ever had cause to research, so I could well be wrong, but nothing I actually do know makes me immediately question that statement. Xover (talk) 06:45, 11 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Provincial crown copyright is held by the King's Printer for Ontario, not Public Works and Government Services Canada, so I am inclined to agree that this template cannot be assumed to apply to provincial or territorial works. And in cases with unclear or ambiguous copyright, our usual practice is to   DeleteBeleg Tâl (talk) 19:22, 11 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
The King's Printer presumably could grant a US release via OTRS as well for works with expired crown copyright. MarkLSteadman (talk) 22:22, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Lehrer's translations where original would be under copyright: followup edit

Followup to Wikisource:Copyright_discussions/Archives/2020#Lehrer's translations where original would be under copyright:

CalendulaAsteraceae (talkcontribs) 04:45, 11 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

I took a look at "Juca" (scan page 44). I agree that the Portuguese lyrics are under copyright, and they should be redacted. And I agree that a translation of them would be under copyright as well, but the Lehrer lyrics for "Juca" are not a translation. A few phrases match, but the majority of it seems to be a rewrite using the spirit and meter, but not the meaning or words. Here is a quick comparison between the original (with translation) and Lehrer's version of the same section:
Portuguese lyrics Translation Lehrer's lyrics

O seu luar
Virou chuva fria
A sua serenata
Não acordou Maria.

Your moonlight
Turned into freezing rain;
Your serenade
Did not awake Maria.

Outside the shops
⁠Along that street in Rio,
⁠He tried to get the cops
⁠To make the act a trio.

As you can see from this example, Lehrer's lyrics are unrelated to the content of the original lyrics, and therefore will not be under copyright. So the Lehrer lyrics, as far as I can judge are not a translation and therefore original to him. Therefore, it is only the foreign-language text that should be redacted from the scan. Nothing else needs to be deleted or removed except for any transcription of the copyrighted foreign-language text, which not all the pages have done. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:56, 11 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
@EncycloPetey:: On the other hand:
French lyrics Translation (machine) Lehrer's lyrics

Allô, allô, James, quelles nouvelles
Absente depuis quinze jours,
Au bout du fil je vous appelle
Que trouverai-je à mon retour?

Hello, hello, James, what news
Absent for a fortnight,
At the end of the line I'll call you
What will I find when I return?

Hello, hello, James? Tell me, what's new?
I've been away two weeks or so,
And that is why I'm calling you
For any news that I should know.

The still-copyrighted foreign lyrics certainly need to be redacted. But without diving in deep I think making a call on the English lyrics is going to be really tough. They are unquestionably derivative works of the foreign-language originals, so I think our default assumption must be that they are covered by the original's copyright, and then only for cases where we actively verify that the lyrics are as unconnected as in your example we can accept it. This French example is essentially straight translation, but it could be as extreme an example as the Portuguese one with most of the texts somewhere in-between. It needs detailed and case-by-case analysis is, I guess, what I'm saying. --Xover (talk) 06:01, 11 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
I've checked both Portuguese songs, and in those situations, Lehrer's lyrics are largely unconnected to the originals, except where a short phrase might be carried over to allude to the original. I am not skilled enough with French to address those lyrics. --EncycloPetey (talk) 14:57, 11 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
I think the same goes for "The Bourgeoisie", e.g.:
French lyrics Literal translation Lehrer's lyrics

Jojo se prenait pour Voltaire
Et Pierre pour Casanova
Et moi, moi qui étais le plus fier
Moi, moi je me prenais pour moi

Jojo thought he was Voltaire
And Pierre, Casanova
And I, who was the proudest,
I thought I was was me

Pierre thought he was Casanova,
Jojo, Voltaire and Debussy,
And I, who always was the proudest,
I imagined I was—me!

CalendulaAsteraceae (talkcontribs) 16:56, 11 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Emily Dickinson edit

The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived:

Poems with no date and poems published after 1928 deleted.

While Dickinson died in the 1800s, many of her poems were only published in 1929 or later. The 1929 collection's copyright was renewed in 1957, and the same goes for later collections. See List of Emily Dickinson poems for info. It seems that many non-PD-US poems are on Wikisource. They'll need to be deleted and set for undeletion in the appropriate year (some as early as next year) according to the publication details. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 15:09, 16 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Cleaning this is going to require huge amount of work and I am afraid it will be difficult to find someone who will undertake it. The pages with Dickinson's poems lack basic information like year of publication, source and even licence. Especially the licence is crucial for their keeping, but I wonder who is going to go through all 1775 of them, verifying copyright of each of them and adding licence templates. What is more, some of them (like The feet of people walking home) need to be split as they contain several versions in one page (all of them unsourced of course). Besides, the system of their sequencing by number instead of adding them to subpages of the works which they were published in is inconsistend with our practice. It might be better to delete them and allow editors to start anew, I believe that works of such an author as Emily Dickinson would be added again quickly. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 16:59, 16 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
  Comment This is one of the major problems with many of our works 1. not being scan-backed or 2. not being part of collection subpages or 3. not following a consistent style guide on titles. It creates these very kinds of problems. If the material needs to be verified, deleted in bulk, assessed, etc., this suddenly becomes much more difficult.
So we could maybe, rather than consider this a single deletion debate, consider the Emily Dickinson effort a large-scale maintenance project to change bad titles, identify original sources, collect the material in subpages, and maybe delete some if necessary. I'll think about taking it up, but don't take my word for it that I will. PseudoSkull (talk) 21:05, 16 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
A note on Wikidata: I found that the poems have Wikidata items, but they are categorized at the work level rather than the version level. For example, Within my reach!. There is also a Wikidata item on WS numbering of works by Emily Dickinson that will need to be completely deleted, since we need to just do away with this numbering scheme, since the numbers appear to have no basis in any source other than ourselves. If I take this project on, I'll fix up all the Wikidata stuff as well. PseudoSkull (talk) 21:16, 16 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
@PseudoSkull: if you want to tackle the WD items associated with Poems (Dickinson) I'd appreciate it, but if not I intend to try and take care of those eventually. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 21:35, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Beleg Tâl: If I didn't start the Wikidata thing in a week or two, leave me a message somewhere or ping me. SnowyCinema (talk) 14:10, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Thanks! I got started on it yesterday and split off the wikidata idems for Part I and Part II, but I think I'll leave the rest to you lol —Beleg Tâl (talk) 20:42, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
(Also I got rid of "WS numbering of works by Emily Dickinson" - I merged it into the item for the 1955 Poems of Emily Dickinson where the numbers originated) —Beleg Tâl (talk) 21:39, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
So here's the hard numbers. Apparently 962 of the poems we have were made after 1929, and 64 have an unknown date of first publication. This gives us a lofty number of 1026 possible individual copyright discussions we may need to have in the future... Just over a thousand sections. Isn't that lovely?
This is all according to the Wikipedia list at List of Emily Dickinson poems#Table. I've made two userspace pages to visualize:
Hopefully this is helpful, if not scary for some. PseudoSkull (talk) 21:50, 16 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
My personal recommendation is a bulk deletion. Just to be on the safe side. But that's just me. Added to the fact that none of the samples I'm seeing for presumably copyrighted ones have scans to back them. PseudoSkull (talk) 21:55, 16 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • PseudoSkull: Most of the 962 definite-date poems were originally published in one of a few (dozen or so) volumes of Dickinson’s poetry, so there could just be a few headings which list all of the articles thereunder. However, all of our copies of the poems here are the original versions (taken from her handwriting), and those were generally first published in the variorum editions of 1955 and 1998—meaning that basically all of her poems which we hold (and are not scan-backed) are still copyrighted. As for the poems without a listed date on the table, I believe that that means that they were first published after “the Todd & Bianchi volumes of 1890-1945” (that is, in the two variorum editions I mentioned which were published in 1955 and 1998). So, if you want to consolidate the tables and/or make more tables based on this information, or maybe just one table listing all of her poems which are not scan-backed, that would probably be the table from which to make deletions. The numbering schemes (of which there are two, of which we use either one or a combination) are from the two variorum editions, so they’re not wholly Wikisource-originated. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 22:52, 16 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
  Comment I've also been long suspicious of the tendency in these poems to use spaces between em dashes, in both titles and the poems themselves. An example is at Suspense — is Hostiler than Death —. Are there any scans that prove they were actually written this way? Because this practice is generally something we avoid here. @Beleg Tâl: I saw you working on these. What are your thoughts? I'd like to see those pages moved, and the poems fixed (for the ones that aren't deleted). If a bot for that job is desired, I'll volunteer. PseudoSkull (talk) 21:18, 17 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
None of the poems in Poems (Dickinson) have dashes in their titles. Beyond that, I really don't know. I suspect that the "preferred" titles for these poems would remove the dashes entirely. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 21:27, 17 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
The dashes, like the index numbers, appear to originate with Thomas H. Johnson's The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1955). This edition has no titles, but refers to each poem by first line. The dashes in the text do have spaces surrounding them. If this edition were hosted here (ignoring the fact that the collection is still under copyright), we would remove the spaces around the dashes per WS:MOS. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 21:38, 17 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Delete the poems with no date, and the poems published in 1929 and later, as copyvio. The rest of them are included in collections that are already in progress, and once they're completed we can discuss their deletion at WS:PD (the 1890 collection is already under discussion there). Next year we should also prioritize proofreading Further Poems of Emily Dickinson (1929) to restore those poems to our collection. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 17:23, 24 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks to SnowyCinema for creating both the list of poems probably copyrighted and list of poems without a listed date. Unless some new ideas appear, I will delete the listed poems in a short time and close this discussion. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 15:12, 11 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Deleted and imo ready to be closed. The sequencing system from the header of the rest should probably also be removed (see e. g. here), but that can be discussed somewhere else. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 21:26, 16 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
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Portal:Toodyay Letters edit

I started splitting these letters into their own works. However, I am suspicious about their copyright status, for two reasons:

  1. They are tagged as {{PD-Australia}}, but most of them were written in the US
  2. They are manuscripts, and weren't published until 1959.

Here is the history of these documents:

Sykes may have remained a historically insignificant character, if not for the discovery in 1931 of a collection of letters written to him by his wife. The letters were found in a crevice during the demolition of old police buildings at Toodyay, and handed in to the Royal Western Australian Historical Society, which lodged them with the State Archives of Western Australia. Many years later, the social historian Alexandra Hasluck rediscovered the letters and researched Sykes. The results of her research were published as her 1959 book Unwilling Emigrants.

Excerpted from William Sykes (convict) on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Beleg Tâl (talk) 16:27, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

UK, not US surely ? I don't know if that makes a difference. -- Beardo (talk) 18:10, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Oh yeah, I guess it would have been the UK. I'm not sure where I got the idea that they were from the US lol —Beleg Tâl (talk) 18:20, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
As manuscripts, they're clearly PD-UK and PD-Australia. I assume they were never published with permission of the estate, so they would have been legally unpublished in the US until 2002 and thus went into the public domain under life+70. So they should be fine, if we can find a source that's usable, which could be Unwilling Emigrants if the text wasn't edited or if they were reproduced as facsimiles.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:50, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Several of the letters come from https://catalogue.slwa.wa.gov.au/record=b1711183~S2# -- Beardo (talk) 21:06, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
I was assuming they were all from his wife; if she was 20 when she married in 1853, that puts here at 120 in 1953, so clearly life+70. Portal:Toodyay Letters says Myra Sykes (c. 1833–1893), though her author page does not, so she's clear. His son, if he was born in 1865, and lived to 100 in 1965, which would be PD in Australia, but not UK or US. If she did get permission to print the letters, then they would be in copyright in the US until 95 years from 1959.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:59, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
The 95 years from 1959 is because of the 50 years from 1959 for posthumous + 20 publication in the UK meaning it was copyrighted on the URAA date, correct? MarkLSteadman (talk) 21:14, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

This text from 2005, added here in 2009, is described as a "free informational release" in the header, but listed as {{PD-release}}. There are several issues here:

  1. This work is unsourced, and a quick search doesn't give me the actual paper, so information about it is limited. And most of the info about it online that I can find is from after 2009, indicating they may know about the paper in the first place from us.
  2. What is a "free informational release"? If this was the rationale for the public domain release assumption, I am skeptical that a mere statement of "free informational release" is sufficient.
  3. Is this stated as being in the public domain somewhere else? There's both an editor and a main author involved with this essay, according to the text, so both would have to consent to a public-domain release.

Any info? SnowyCinema (talk) 19:11, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

"Alex was looking for a place to post this online, and I suggested he submit it here. According to him it has been published twice, as appendices to the books Lost Flight of Amelia Earhart by Carol L.Dow and Legerdemain by David K. Bowman.--Srleffler (talk) 16:55, 16 October 2009 (UTC)" So apparently the user who posted this was Alex himself, but can we be sure? SnowyCinema (talk) 21:06, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Looks legit to me, ideally we'd get Dr Mandel to send an email to OTRS to confirm, but I don't think it's likely to be copyvio. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 21:36, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Being that the latest author died in 1966, the other in 1955, this work is probably still under copyright (since unpublished works require pma 70). And I'm skeptical of the claim that this presumably private letter to Roosevelt was published as the license claims. SnowyCinema (talk) 19:21, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Did you see the information on the Talk page about its publication? --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:28, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
I would be shocked if no one has gone through his archives and published them they may have a later copyright date but I doubt they are unpublished (with permission of the archive). Also, I am not sure why this is presumed private to begin with. "publication occurs when one or more copies or phonorecords are distributed to a member of the public who is not subject to any express or implied restrictions concerning the disclosure of the content of that work." What restrictions on disclosure are there if you just mail a letter to the whitehouse saying go do policy X? Isn't the expectation FDR is going to tell people the contents? MarkLSteadman (talk) 19:51, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
On re-examination, it looks like this letter was published in the Smyth Report, which, according to Commons, is in the public domain due to lack of copyright renewal. But, it's always difficult to determine the exact status of these sorts of things without a scan to back them. I don't think I'd go as far as to assume a letter to the president should assume a publication after, even if most of the time it is, but that's just me. SnowyCinema (talk) 20:45, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • SnowyCinema: You can read most of the report here, but the title page is missing. I agree with you as to the general-publication issue—the exception only applies when it is expected that the letter will be generally published after delivery, like a letter to the editor or a manuscript submitted to a magazine. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 22:27, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
    I think the expectation is that these will get released as part of their public papers as well as shared within government. I am not a lawyer in terms of how this has been interpreted by the courts. But also how public officials with archives and people going through them, e.g. presumably Google Books counts as publication of Einstein's love letters, but the various books that did the same with this letter doesn't count?. MarkLSteadman (talk) 01:19, 24 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

The Secret History edit

This page has no source and no license, but appears to be this 1935 edition. Now, according to Loeb Classical Library, "it's probable that all volumes published before 1939 are public domain in the US", but I don't see a rationale for this and I haven't been able to confirm this myself. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 19:27, 30 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

It's probable. Having looked at a bunch of Loeb's, I've never seen a copyright notice on an older one, and I've never found a renewal for one. It would be this volume at IA, and I don't see a copyright notice on it, I don't find a renewal for it, and Dewing was American, so whatever the circumstances of the printing, the URAA wouldn't have restored it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:46, 30 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Moon Treaty edit

As an international treaty, what license should be placed on this work? I can find nothing on Help:Copyright tags that applies in this instance. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:35, 31 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

We generally use {{PD-EdictGov}} for international treaties. Our most recent discussion on the subject appears to be this one. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 03:13, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Given that it was drafted at the UN, {{PD-UN}} may also be appropriate [7]. [8]. MarkLSteadman (talk) 06:12, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
This treaty was never ratified by any country, and the UN is not itself a competent legislative assembly, so EdictGov does not apply. {{PD-UN}} would seem to be the nearest, but I do not immediately see that this falls within any of the relevant categories. Xover (talk) 11:22, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
It was never ratified by a country with a manned spaceflight program, but it was ratified by 18 countries; see here. Since the treaty has force of law in those countries, it seems to me that {{PD-EdictGov}} should apply (although {{PD-UN}} might also apply idk) —Beleg Tâl (talk) 14:01, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
It was passed as a resolution by the General Assembly and included in the official Resolutions and Decisions list so I would think it would count as "Official Records". MarkLSteadman (talk) 17:48, 8 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, I was unsatisfied with {{PD-EdictGov}} because it is a statement about US copyright status only, and since this has not been ratified by the US, the tag seemed inadequate on its own. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:08, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

{{PD-EdictGov}} applies to foreign laws as well as local laws, so even though a treaty is not ratified in the US, it would still be PD in the US. (Mostly commenting this for anybody referencing this discussion in the future.) —Beleg Tâl (talk) 18:44, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Two questions here: (1) Is English Teaching Forum a publication by the U.S. government or merely one maintained by it (allowing individual contributions to have copyrights)? (2) Is the author (described in the text as “an Assistant Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse at DePaul University in Chicago. She has taught ESL/EFL writing for over 15 years in the United States, the Czech Republic, Japan, and Turkey.”) one to qualify for PD-USGov? The PDF indicates that she held, at some point, a government job, so I’m not sure there either. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 19:20, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

I do not see any copyright information in the English Teaching Forum publication itself. The website links to the Department of State copyright information page, which states "Unless a copyright is indicated, information on State Department websites is in the public domain and may be copied and distributed without permission." For this reason, I am inclined to believe that English Teaching Forum and its contents fall under {{PD-USGov}}. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 19:57, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Notes and Queries( Later volumes).. edit

Starting the discussion here, because one volume Index:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu proved to have contributions from authors that were apparently active until at least 1970, which led to the volume being deleted on Commons. A local copy now exists. However, I strongly suspect that whilst these are unquestionably PD-US (given the publication dates.), some contributions to the publication are not necessarily out of copyright globally. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 23:10, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

  • ShakespeareFan00: Insofar as the volume are indisputably in the public domain in the United States, I don’t see a need to seek out copyrighted contributions here (as opposed to on Commons). If editors on Commons find such still-copyrighted contributions, the files can be localized at that point; but it is not necessary for English Wikisource to proactively seek out such contributions, given the U.S. copyright status. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 23:48, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
    My concern wasn't the specfic volume but others.. In any event the remaining volumes of the 12th series ,and possibly the 13th Series can be uploaded locally, We'd then have a complete run? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 00:01, 3 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

The Bremen Town Musicians (without source) edit

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Deleted as copyvios.

Recently flagged by Beleg Tâl. Looks like this is D.L. Ashliman's translation: "Translated by D. L. Ashliman. © 2001-2006", with no free license that I can find. --YodinT 11:20, 3 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Have gone through User:Stellatomailing's contribs and found the rest of them that are still up at their original title. We have scan-backed public-domain translations of all of them by Margaret Hunt (including the above story):
--YodinT 14:30, 4 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
I've removed all links to these works from other pages (translations pages, etc.) --YodinT 14:43, 4 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
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The Fun of It (1932) edit

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Copyright not renewed so the book is elligible to be hosted in Wikisource.

Amelia Earhart's second book The Fun of It was published in 1932. I can find a scan on IA. But I cannot find a copyright renewal in the Stanford database nor in the online scans at Gutenberg. Can anyone else find something, or do we have a case of a lapsed copyright? --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:28, 4 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

  • I manually checked both the original registration (which does exist) and the renewal issues from the time (and the one for the next one, in case of a late registration). I didn’t find anything, so this looks like PD-US-no-renewal to me. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 21:22, 4 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
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Deep Elm Blues edit

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Deleted as a copyvio.

No source; misspelled title; notes that point out this was a song first recorded in 1933, but claim it's "traditional". This feels like a copyvio. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:25, 7 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

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The Scientific Ape and The Clockmaker by Robert Louis Stevenson edit

Both of these works were first published in 2005 (see Parfect, Ralph. "Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Clockmaker" and "The Scientific Ape": Two Unpublished Fables." English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 48, no. 4 (2005): 387-400. https://doi.org/10.2487/Y008-J320-0428-0742.) which I believe means they are not out of copyright as a result. Chrisguise (talk) 06:40, 8 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Chrisguise: If a work is unpublished until 2003 its US copyright term is pma. 70, so works by authors who died before 1954 are in the public domain in the US (and, obviously, in countries with general pma. 70 copyright terms). Xover (talk) 08:32, 8 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
I believe it is copyrighted in the UK until 2039 so it would need to be hosted locally. There is the also the question about whether the following editorial revisions might make it a derivative work with a separate copyright (I suspect not) t: "The text has been rendered so as to allow it to read as easily as possible, while preserving its more significant idiosyncrasies. I have corrected most of Stevenson's misspellings (e.g. "nieghbourhood" for "neighbourhood") and faulty punctuation (e.g. erratic use of quotation marks). I have kept original spellings, however unusual, where they are repeated (e.g. "animalculae" as the singular as well as the plural of the noun "animalculus"), or where they seem to be typical of orthographic practices of the day. Where the standard spelling has changed since Stevenson's lifetime (e.g. "caraffe" to "carafe"; "cocoanut" to "coconut"), and where adoption of upper- or lower-case letters is unorthodox or inconsistent ("tory" to "Tory"), I have preserved Stevenson's usage. I have omitted Stevenson's deletions from the text. Whereon revision Stevenson has added words, I have included these in the text, but have not indicated in the text itself that they are a later addition. Finally, I have changed all of Stevenson's underlinings to italicizations." MarkLSteadman (talk) 17:39, 8 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
I don't see any of that being copyrightable in the US.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:57, 12 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Why is copyrighted in the UK until 2039? Xover (talk) 09:12, 12 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
From "Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988"
Copyright in the following types of work lasts until 31 December 2039:
  • unpublished literary, dramatic and musical works of which the author has died (unpublished in the sense of the proviso to s. 2(3) of the 1956 Act);
From the 1956 act:
Provided that if before the death of the author none of the following acts had been done, that is to say,—
(a) the publication of the work,
(b) the performance of the work in public,
(c) the offer for sale to the public of records of the work, and
(d) the broadcasting of the work,
the copyright shall continue to subsist until the end of the period of fifty years from the end of the calendar year which includes the earliest occasion on which one of those acts is done.
MarkLSteadman (talk) MarkLSteadman (talk) 09:27, 12 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. enWP has a cogent summary of the relevant issue too. Definitely in copyright in the UK and ineligible for Commons. Should still be fine in the US and eligible to be hosted here. Xover (talk) 07:23, 13 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
@MarkLSteadman@Prosfilaes@Xover Thanks everyone. If I get around to replacing the unsourced versions currently on WS with scan backed ones, I'll make sure I only upload it to WS, noting I'll probably need to redact the rest of the paper that is wrapped around them. Chrisguise (talk) 07:39, 13 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Covenant of Omar edit

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Deleted, no evidence of the translation being in the public domain in the US.

The original text is from long ago, but it's unclear where the translation came from. Perhaps there is a public domain or freely licensed translation available, but I see no reason to believe this is one. It appears to be one of the versions that has been copy-pasted all over the web. The archived webpage I linked in the "notes" does mention a book it's from, but not the year of the book, and I wasn't able to find info about the book with a brief search. Seems more likely than not a copyrighted translation. -Pete (talk) 20:29, 9 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Note, I see that another version of this is under discussion above at #Pact of Umar. Pinging User:TE(æ)A,ea. -Pete (talk) 20:50, 9 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Pete: So far as I can see, the “Covenant” (or “Code”) is a different translation of the first part of the “Pact.” The source given (from here) is to Tārīkh al-Umam wal Mulūk, an Arabic (extant in Turkish and Persian) source text, not an English book. I am not sure of the source of this translation. A definitely public-domain translation can be found here, pp. 168–169. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 21:53, 9 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Sorry, I said "version" when I meant "translation". Not making any strong claims here, just pointing out adjacency to somebody working on related material. -Pete (talk) 21:55, 9 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
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F. R. Benson's Richard II edit

Currently unsourced, but the text is available on Google Books, as part of a collection of essays first published in 1984 and republished in 2015. The copyright page claims All rights reserved for the entirety of the book, although it confirms that the text was first published in 1899. Is the work still in the public domain, or has something happened to it and it is now a copyvio? Thanks for any help you can provide. Cremastra (talk) 01:33, 11 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Cremastra: The collection is protected by copyright, but the original essay's copyright has expired. We can re-source this to either a scan of the Manchester Guardian for December 4th, 1899 (where it was first published), or to the first reprint in a book in The Manchester stage, 1880–1900 (1900). UK newspapers are hard to find scans for, and newspapers in general are hard to transcribe with our tools, so the book is probably the best bet. Xover (talk) 10:29, 11 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Dada Manifesto (1916, Hugo Ball) edit

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Deleted, no evidence of the translation being in the public domain in the US.

The text for this translation is from a transcription of a handwritten copy done much later; the translation, so far as I can tell, was made by Christopher Middleton for John Elderfield’s version of Ball’s diary Flight Out of Time, at pp. 219–221 in the second edition (which is “Copyright © 1974 Viking Press, Inc.”). TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 05:57, 11 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

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The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived:

Deleted, translation copyrighted.

This is an incomplete copy of a copyrighted translation (from the mid-1980s). There is no official translation, so far as I know, that could replace it. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 05:38, 12 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

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Leo Tolstoy as the Mirror of the Russian Revolution edit

The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived:

Deleted, translation not in the public domain in the US.

This translation is from Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1973, Moscow, Volume 15. It's possible that this translation is in the public domain, but I doubt it. —Beleg Âlt BT (talk) 16:29, 21 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

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Aash Al Maleek edit

A 1935 1984 work where the author died in 2017. And no information on the translation. -- Beardo (talk) 23:16, 23 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Comment: The Wikipedia article says the Arabic lyrics were written in 1984. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 10:22, 24 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Good point, yes, it does seem unlikely that he wrote it the same year that he was born. Someone put the wrong year in there in an edit in 2011. Unless the words have some special copyright status through having been requested by the King, my point stands. -- Beardo (talk) 14:43, 24 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Text from the Rosetta Stone edit

This appears to be the translation by Quirke and Andrews, published in the 1980s, and almost certainly copyrighted. —Beleg Âlt BT (talk) 22:18, 26 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Content related to 2008 U.S. presidential election edit

Unclear how the following works are or are not compatible with Wikisource copyright policy. I'm putting three somewhat different topics under one heading, because they're similar, but they might need different outcomes.

1. John McCain Concession Speech edit

This one seems clear-cut to me, this is a speech given by a senator and a presidential nominee, but in his capacity as a candidate not as an agent of the U.S. government. So {{PD-USgov}} seems to clearly not apply.

Adding some similar speeches below; none of these appear to be in McCain's capacity as senator, but rather as a guest of private organizations. -Pete (talk) 05:01, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

2. Barack Obama's 2008 election victory speech edit

3. Press conferences of incoming Obama administration edit

The press conferences of the incoming Obama administration:

This one has been discussed before, thank you MarkLSteadman for the info. See: Wikisource:Copyright discussions/Archives/2011-04#Barack Obama's president-elect press conference - 25 November 2008 So I'm not proposing deletion for these. However, while the CC-BY 3.0 template may be accurate, the reader has no way to verify the accuracy. The reasoning that's provided in the Wikisource discussion should be made available in some way on the page. What's the best approach? It could be accomplished in several ways (through individual notes on each page, through a note on a new Barack Obama's president-elect press conferences parent page, etc.) What's the best approach to empower the reader to verify that the asserted license template is accurate? -Pete (talk) 02:47, 27 February 2024 (UTC) Pete (talk) 02:47, 27 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

For convenience here is an archive link of the copyright policy at change.gov (which is a dead link in the discussion linked above) [9] -Pete (talk) 04:23, 27 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
In terms of missed life opportunities, I sure wish I could have been in the meeting where Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, Eric Holder, Janet Napolitano, Susan Rice, Jim Jones, and Joe Biden, or their lawyers...as well as the reporters who asked the questions...(i.e., those who "authored" the December 8 press conference)...agreed to a CC license. -Pete (talk) 17:00, 27 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
well this gets into off the cuff remarks and eligibility for copyright in general too as opposed to the prepared statement https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Copyright_of_Political_Speeches MarkLSteadman (talk) 15:21, 28 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
That meta wiki page is really interesting, thanks for linking it @MarkLSteadman:! Lots to learn. It does seem like scenarios could emerge where it's not possible to host a scan or other source document on Wikimedia servers without violating (to my eyes questionable) copyright a media company might claim; but maybe that's not something to worry about. -Pete (talk) 05:14, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Peteforsyth: I believe a link to [10] in the {{textinfo}} template on each work's talk page would be the usual and least confusing place for this, wouldn't it? —Beleg Âlt BT (talk) 14:43, 28 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Beleg Âlt: That seems like one reasonable option, if the pages are to be kept, yes. It wasn't done when the previous discussion was closed, and I was wondering if there was something more going on here. For what it's worth, I haven't found a clear policy on where sources should be linked for works that don't have proper scan-backing; {{No source}}, for instance, does not prescribe where the source should be added. I understand that the talk page has been the "traditional" place, but it seems to me much more useful to add it to the "notes" field in the header template. I don't have any stake in these particular works, but I am interested to hear if there's a problem with me adding such information in the header template as a general rule. -Pete (talk) 05:14, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
I don't think it's a policy per se, but using edition = yes in the header and then {{textinfo}} on the talk page is such a well-established precedent and standard that I would highly recommend sticking to it (or at least, I'd seek community feedback at WS:S before changing it up). Bear in mind that we operate as much on precedent and consensus as we do on official policy :) —Beleg Âlt BT (talk) 14:04, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Aha! The "edition" parameter is the part I'd been missing. Yes, what you say makes perfect sense now. -Pete (talk) 18:04, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

And if I may add:

4. Democratic Debates edit

There are these two, with no source given:

with no source, I cannot see how we can know if these were released. -- Beardo (talk) 04:28, 27 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

"Copenhagen Document" (1990) edit

This can be found online in a few places ([11], [12]) but there's no indication it has been released into the public domain, so I assume the copyright holder is still the OSCE. Cremastra (talk) 13:06, 28 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

It is a little complicated because as mentioned it is available both at the (Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a part of the US Government) and the OSCE which is the successor to the (Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe). Since it was a governmental conference at the time it is unclear whether the copyright was owned by the governments or the conference and then transitioned. If it is part of the US Government it is in the PD in the US. MarkLSteadman (talk) 15:50, 28 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
The GPO lists Congress as the author: https://catalog.gpo.gov/F/XHD8EBQQYPDVIT7JSR8LRGN7JFUNDA1L27NJ578YI7ESKLD23Y-02849?func=full-set-set&set_number=001000&set_entry=000001&format=999 MarkLSteadman (talk) 15:54, 28 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
  Keep sourced to this scan: https://books.google.com/books?id=jEKASGidb8MC as a US government work. MarkLSteadman (talk) 15:58, 28 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
What would be the reasoning for considering the conference qua conference to be a legal entity capable of itself being the author of a work for copyright purposes? The straightforward interpretation would be that its products are a joint work of the participants, (including any non-government entities iff any were present). And if the work in a practical sense was the product of the conference, why would we consider it to be authored by just one arbitrarily picked participating government for copyright purposes? Xover (talk) 08:01, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
The reason is that the US Government is relevant for US copyright which is relevant for Wikisource. Presumably there could be a UK version that might have Crown Copyright in the UK but that wouldn't be able to be asserted against the US. A book might have US and UK rights owned by different publishers and with different copyright statuses, picking the US status isn't arbitrary it's required by our polices. MarkLSteadman (talk) 13:40, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
I'm not following. We're not talking about which jurisdiction applies (that's the US, by policy), we're talking about who was the author of the work for the purposes of copyright. That a work may have multiple geographically-exclusive licensing deals does not affect its actual authorship or copyright status (and in any case is unlikely to be pertinent here). Xover (talk) 14:51, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
The authors are presumably the representatives of the various governments, so for the US Jim Baker / Steny Hoyer / Max Kampelman, Denmark Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, etc. just as for this The Jeddah Communique: A Joint Statement Between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is its Joe Biden and Mohammed bin Salman, but no one is suggesting that what year Biden's death happens is relevant. I would expect that the US Government would have the US copyright in such situations, not Mohammed bin Salman in his personal capacity. MarkLSteadman (talk) 15:59, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
No, it would be a joint work of the US government and the Saudi government (personal monarchies make that a little more complicated, but let's for the sake of argument pretend Saudi Arabia is somewhere with a slightly less medieval system of government) and both would hold the copyright together to the degree they are capable of holding copyright (no for the US due to {{PD-USGov}}, but probably yes for Saudi Arabia and any number of other countries). Unlike {{PD-EdictGov}}, {{PD-USGov}} is not "transitive": other governments' copyrights are valid in the US (through Berne etc.; and keep in mind that the US government can hold copyright on works in other jurisdictions, so long as that jurisdiction doesn't have a transitive government works exemption). Xover (talk) 16:24, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
That is the point of discussion here: Is the copyright split (the US Government having exclusive control in the US, the Saudi Government having exclusive control in Saudi) or joint (the US Government and the Saudi Government both have copyright in each). I would think that the US Government would tend towards exclusive control within the US relying on agreements around classification when it wants to restrict in other countries rather than copyright. There may be case law around exactly as you say, the US trying to enforce copyright in other jurisdictions and vice versa for such joint work, IANAL. I would tend to see this like many joint commercial ventures where for example a US and a UK publisher both are involved in the creation as a joint venture, and leave with sole ownership respectively in each country, but of course that is generally more explicit than governments. MarkLSteadman (talk) 17:37, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
There is a potential argument of it being a {{PD-EdictGov}} because it has a legislative component, if the same legislators brought the text up for a vote (they may have) it would follow under it or it is incorporated into a resolution by reference, etc. MarkLSteadman (talk) 18:01, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
I'm with Xover here. The question of authorship comes before the question of copyright status. If non-U. S. government authors share ownership, PD-USgov does not apply. -Pete (talk) 18:17, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Ownership is exactly the question here. Who owns the US copyright of a meeting at the White House between Biden and anyone not in the US government at the oval office? Is the contract between DoD and a defense company owned by the company? Etc. MarkLSteadman (talk) 22:20, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
@MarkLSteadman: Is your position that the each government has the right to make copies or license the content, independent of the other governments party to the agreement? If so, this is a new notion to me, but in the case of contracts it makes intuitive sense, in terms of accountability/enforceability. Every party to a contract should be able to distribute the document to others, in order to ensure that its terms are being met. Do I understand you right? -Pete (talk) 10:31, 1 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Peteforsyth: Sort of. My position is that when it says "Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government" that means that when a DoD lawyer sits down to negotiate a contract with say Boeing when the document is fixed it becomes a US Government work and is not eligible, irrespective of the level of input of the Boeing lawyer. If Biden or a US Ambassador meets with Zelenskyy and drafts a statement Zelenskyy can't claim copyright in the US on the statement because Biden's/the Ambassador's statement is a US Government work. The statute doesn't say solely produced or without any non-governmental copyright etc. Now if after the meeting Zelenskyy makes his own statement, that is his / the Ukrainian government's own work so it is eligible irrespective of the level of input Biden/the Ambassador, it doesn't magically become a US Government work merely because Biden has a joint authorship claim. Authorship comes first of course, to be a government work it needs to be authored by a US government employee, but the statute isn't merely about authorship eligibility, it is about works. MarkLSteadman (talk) 12:13, 1 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
So, I see three overarching/intersecting issues at play:
  1. US gov is a co-author and therefore a (co-?)owner of the work
  2. US law declares its own works PD in the US
  3. Wikisource policy cares only about US copyright
Seems like the sticking point is in the connection between 1 and 2. I'm backing off any strong opinions, at this point just trying to follow along. -Pete (talk) 19:09, 1 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, that is that basically correct. Just that the definition of a "work of the United States Government" is a "work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties." So it's not quite authorship and not quite ownership. It is certainly possible to read that as "work prepared by only an officer ..." or to read that as to not apply to going to a meeting and agreeing to a joint text, IANAL, maybe that was explored in case law, etc. but my take is that going to a meeting with someone, working back forth on an agreed text, and leaving with a document meets that statute definition of prepared. Other speeches at the conference are not covered, if the US packed up and left and the others agreed on a document without the US it wouldn't be covered, etc. MarkLSteadman (talk) 20:50, 1 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
I could see a claim that these all are derivative works of unpublished draft texts which are not US government works and so eligible for copyright protection under the Berne convention. I have never heard the argument made about other works, e.g. that publishing a Jane Austen previously unpublished manuscript draft of Pride and Prejudice in 1990 would place it back under copyright until 2047. MarkLSteadman (talk) 15:22, 1 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
I think the "sweat of the brow" doctrine issue of creativity/originality (see here) is important to this example. (Not following how this example connects to the Copanhagen document though.) -Pete (talk) 19:09, 1 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Biden is giving a speech in London. White House person prepares a speech draft, great PD, prepared by a US employee. Downing Street person same time prepares a speech draft, great, has crown copyright, under Berne it is copyrighted in the US. Downing street emails draft to the White House, White House person revises the draft and incorporates the Downing Street suggestions, great document is prepared by a government employee, Biden gives speech great all done. Now if it is all in 30 days the work counts as first published in the US, the Berne copyright doesn't apply. But what if is not.... MarkLSteadman (talk) 21:39, 1 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
I think you're off in the weeds here. Authorship comes before ownership. Ownership can be transferred, authorship cannot. If the US government and Boing write something together it is either so interwoven that you can't distinguish who wrote what (a joint work) or each's contributions are seperable (a collaborative work). In a collaborative work each party owns the copyright for the part they contributed. In a joint work the parties jointly own the copyright in the whole work. For a joint work you need the permission of all the contributors. In a collaborative work the US government is prohibited from claiming copyright protection in the US for their contribution, but they can claim copyright in the rest of the world for it. In a joint work, since you cannot distinguish the PD-USGov contributions, PD-USGov has no real bearing (it's a noop, essentially as if the US government hadn't been involved).
A movie is a classical example of a collaborative work. The score is easily seperable from the rest of the movie. The same for a collection of short stories or essays: each essay or story can easily be separated from the whole. w:Good Omens is an example of a joint work. You can't really meaningfully separate out which bits are Gaiman's and which are PTerry's. They both own the copyright and both need to agree to license it. Now both of them have separate publishers for the US and the UK, with which they both have to sign the contract, but that just licensing (transferring some bits of the ownership). They are both still the authors for copyright purposes, retain all the rights they have not licensed away, and both enjoy the special non-transferrable "moral rights" to be recognised as the authors (and a few other things, depending on jurisdiction). Xover (talk) 10:51, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
That is the point of disagreement, in cases of joint works (as opposed to collaborative, contracted / granted or derivative where copyright transfer is required for the non Gov work):
a. The government contribution makes it a government work: e.g. "More specifically, where there has been a Government contribution in connection with the preparation of the work, e.g., use of Government time, facilities, equipment, materials, funds, or the services of other Government employees on official duties, and the subject matter of the work directly relates to or was a type involved in the employee’s field of governmental employment, then the work generally is presumed to be a “Government Work” and not available for copyright." [13] ("any work of the United States Government")
b. The non-government contribution makes it a non-governmental work ("as if the US Government hasn't been involved). I guess the example here is that US Government employees are similar to employees at an private nonprofit that says all our works are released into the public domain. I understand thinking that for a UK - Canada agreement both recognize each other's copyright under Berne, and also the US. That making it a US - UK - Canada agreement doesn't really change things that much. Or similarly that two companies entering into an agreement is similar to the two plus the US government,
I have been trying to find the basis for b. and am struggling based on the text of statute, as well as the lack of any statutory mandatory licensing back to the US Government, requiring presumably a separate agreement for the US government to use the joint work. It also seems unlikely on government intent grounds: that large swaths of DoD documents or Department of State documents are outside of US Government control and under the copyright control of foreign governments within the US (e.g. a joint US / Iran effort in the 70s would require a license in the 80s) or for the public to loose access to government creations by having the government do a joint work with someone (e.g. to an EPA cleanup plan if developed jointly with the responsible party). The idea is precisely that a commercial agreement with the US government is fundamentally different as there is now a compelling interest of the public of having access, among other things to prevent the double payment: the public pays to create it using government resources, hands it over to a public company and then pays again to license it back, that is why a CRADA (Cooperative Research and Development Agreement) is necessary for transferring the rights back when using a government lab [14], because it is decided that having the research is worth the US Government investment in the lab. MarkLSteadman (talk) 14:22, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
As I said, I think you're off in the weeds here. There is nothing magical about the government's contribution to a work. The bit you quote is about distinguishing whether a singular work was a government work or the work of the federally-employed author as a private individual. That's a separate issue. For the text in question the US contribution came from the "high representative of the US" so there's no question that their contribution was a government work. But US government contribution to a work is not contagious: the US can't claim copyright, but it doesn't nullify anybody else's copyright. And the public's interest is a matter of just precisely public access, which exists irrespective of copyright. Xover (talk) 15:10, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
If Rodgers and Hammerstein had a falling out and Rodgers refused to go along with the copyright claim out of spite, Hammerstein couldn't have filed independently a registration with the copyright office, that isn't some magic nullification. All this is saying is that if Hammerstein and a government employee made a joint work, the public interest is for the government employee to (effectively) not file (be rejecting it), rather than file and transfer the copyright to Hammerstein. Now of course the filing / claiming isn't necessary as a step, but the rejection still happens. (To be clear this should be {{PD-in-USGov}} as said we are only talking about the US status here). MarkLSteadman (talk) 16:04, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
FYI here is the House resolution on this document which was adopted: https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/232/text, "Whereas the Copenhagen Conference on the Human Dimension (CDH) document declares that the will of the people, freely and fairly expressed through periodic and genuine elections, is the basis of the authority and legitimacy of all government;" . It was also referenced here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/37/text. From the Chairman of the CSCE at a Congressional hearing: "The U.S. and the participating states agreed at that conference to the Copenhagen Document, which included a commitment to invite observers from other participating states to observe national elections. The U.S. was a major advocate of that commitment, since the Berlin Wall had just fallen and many nations were about to hold their first real elections in decades. OSCE participating states reaffirmed this commitment at the OSCE's 1999 Istanbul Summit." But apparently I can't print what the commitments the US made unless I get permission from 60 countries, some of which no longer exist. It's a neat trick to be able to make any government policy statement not accessible by making it a joint document. MarkLSteadman (talk) 20:18, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
So for example: https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/senate-bill/2532 [PL: 102-511]. Requires "adhering to the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Charter of Paris;". The Charter of Paris [15] contains "Proceeding from the Document of the Copenhagen Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension, we will cooperate to strengthen democratic institutions and to promote the application of the rule of law." "The function of the Office for Free Elections will be to facilitate contacts and the exchange of information on elections within participating States. The Office will thus foster the implementation of paragraphs 6, 7 and 8 of the Document of the Copenhagen Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE' (the relevant provisions are contained in Annex 1)." On the EU side, the association agreements have language like: "CONSIDERING the commitment to the implementation of commitments made in the framework of the CSCE, in particular those set out in the Helsinki Final Act, the concluding documents of the Madrid, Vienna and Copenhagen meetings, those of the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, the conclusions of the CSCE's Bonn Conference, the CSCE Helsinki document 1992, the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Energy Charter Treaty as well as the Ministerial Declaration of the Lucerne Conference of 30 April 1993" http://data.europa.eu/eli/agree_internation/1998/98(1)/oj . I think that it is reasonable to interpret this document as incorporated into legislation and hence eligible for EdictGov. Another example is the Istanbul Document signed by Clinton [16] . "In this respect we reaffirm our commitments, in particular under the relevant provisions of the Copenhagen 1990 Human Dimension Document, and recall the Report of the Geneva 1991 Meeting of Experts on National Minorities" MarkLSteadman (talk) 00:50, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
I don't have the spare cycles to give that side the consideration it needs, but, yes, {{PD-EdictGov}} would seem to be one possible avenue for this document. There's currently case law that says adopting a model code into enacted code makes the model code into essentially EdictGov. Things like technical standards merely incorporated by reference are currently up in the air because there's case law from a lower court suggesting the former logic may apply to the latter situation (cue the inevitable copyright-flamewars and community split on Wikimedia projects). I don't personally think things incorporated by mere reference can "inherit" EdictGov status because the results would be obviously untenable (and courts tend to reject reasoning that leads to such results), but the waters here are very muddy until we eventually get clarification from the courts. For the Copenhagen Document though, it is possible the way and extent of its incorporation into something covered by EdictGov pushes it towards the more plausible side of the grey area there. Or not. I am very conservative on what uncertainty we should accept in such cases, so it would take quite a bit to persuade me with such an argument. Xover (talk) 11:03, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
That is why I prefer the US Government explanation, but yeah it is on the type of document, how it is incorporated as requirement, the commercial harm tests, etc. in that gray area but that is all very messy, as well as the large amount of work to dig through exactly the legislative history of the US Government and the CSCE / OSCE to find exactly the legal basis for those commitments. MarkLSteadman (talk) 14:33, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Grandson, on thy Second Birthday edit

This page has no source. The only asserted date I could find is 1934, on the author page, but there's no indication where it was published, or whether copyright renewals have been checked. After checking renewal records from 1961 and 1962 ([17] [18] [19] [20]) it seems plausible that the copyright was never renewed, but without knowing where it was published or whether the 1934 date is accurate, it's tough to say with confidence. (I did a few web searches including Internet Archive and have not been able to find this poem. There is a different poem by Sheehan that has an interesting OTRS release, so I searched Commons as well, but found nothing to match this file.) -Pete (talk) 17:36, 28 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Though if it was only published in Ireland, or the UK, there wouldn't have been need for a renewal, would there ? -- Beardo (talk) 21:40, 28 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
No, its US copyright would have been restored by the URAA in 1996 to a publication +95 years term. We need to know where it was first published in order to determine that its copyright has expired with any plausible level of certainty. Xover (talk) 08:06, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Procedural question: How should one proceed in a case like this? (For my own edification, hoping to get a better feel for Wikisource processes.) Feel to reply on my user talk or email. -Pete (talk) 18:09, 16 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Not sure I understand what it is you're asking? If we can't find evidence that at least makes it plausible that it is in the public domain or compatibly licensed it will have to be deleted. But others may yet do research and uncover more information, and in cases like this I tend to do at least a cursory amount before closing to see if something obvious was missed. In other words, if you cannot find any more information yourself then it's just a matter of hoping someone else does before it comes time to close this thread (and WS:CV is even more backlogged than usual right now, so it might be a while). Xover (talk) 19:51, 16 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Xover: Sorry, I guess my question was vague. But your answer addresses it fine. Basically, I'm making more posts to the boards lately than I have before as I try to help with the copyright tag backlog and would be happy for any feedback or tips on how I'm using them. If just letting this one alone after making the report is the way to go, that makes sense; but if I was expected to escalate it at a certain point to the deletion board, I'd have wanted to know about that. -Pete (talk) 06:32, 17 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Kaushîtaki-brâhmana-upanishad edit

Insufficient information is provided about the translation to determine copyright status. As far as I can tell, it seems to have been part of this 1991 publication which is almost certainly copyrighted. —Beleg Âlt BT (talk) 19:54, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Delete, evidence exists that the translation is default-copyrighted. SnowyCinema (talk) 20:31, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
  Delete It may not have been that publication, he died in 1984 [21], but in any case it was URAA restored. MarkLSteadman (talk) 10:36, 3 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Petro Poroshenko's Inaugural Address edit

This was published in 2014, so it would appear to be copyrighted, BUT it is public domain in Ukraine, where it was published. BUT, in my understanding, Wikisource operates under United States copyright laws (as opposed to Ukrainian ones). If this was an "edict of government" it would be eligible for PD in the United States, but it is not of a legal nature, it is a public speech. Is this public domain for Wikisource? Cremastra (talk) 00:03, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Index:Indian Philosophy Volume 1.djvu edit

This seems to be a London published edition from 1948, not a 1927 one. The author died in 1975. Can someone please check the copyright status in more detail?. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:49, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Commencement Address, William & Mary's College edit

Although there are several copies of this address around, I cannot see one which is an official one from Jon Stewart, which I understand means that it is still under copyright. -- Beardo (talk) 03:39, 4 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

I looked, the "official" one is probably the one posted by William and Mary on both their website and the actual address on their YouTube channel. and both are restrictive ("Standard YouTube License"), so I don't think it was released under a CC license   Delete. MarkLSteadman (talk) 09:59, 4 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Letter recommending persecution of certain Muslims edit

This claims to be a translation by David Price, with no identifying info. The link goes to a U.S. rep born in 1940, though that David Price's bio does not mention Arabic or translation among his skills. Still, no claim of free license or public domain status is asserted, and the Wikisource edition is the only one that appears in a basic web search. Seems unlikely this translation is PD or freely licensed. -Pete (talk) 08:26, 4 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Different David Price (1782-1835), the source is one of the volumes of this book: https://archive.org/details/chronologicalret03pric   Keep (wrt to copyright). I've updated the link. MarkLSteadman (talk) 10:01, 4 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. Too bad my search didn't include just dropping the years, whoops. Seems to me the {{copyvio}} banner could be dropped from the page, at minimum, and maybe this should just be considered resolved. @MarkLSteadman: any reason not to just close this now? -Pete (talk) 19:04, 4 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yes: copyvio discussions, once opened, generally need to run for two weeks to let others chime in. The only exceptions are noms made in bad faith or noms determined to be eligible for speedy deletion. And I think that's a good idea, because I have made copyvio noms that seemed clear-cut but which other contributors were able to identify as public domain; and there have been cases where things that looked clear-cut the other way (clearly PD) took a turn and ended up being deleted.
Not that I don't support some IAR'ing in some cases to avoid excess bureaucracy, but I tend to be conservative on that for copyvio discussions because 1) the area is often very complicated (benefits from multiple contributors) and 2) despite this it is often possible to arrive at a bright-line decision (unlike other deletion discussions). Xover (talk) 08:10, 7 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
As it stands the page carries a very forceful comment in the editorial voice, which I think no individual Wikisource contributor actually believes. "The contents of this page may violate Wikisource's copyright policy." It also blanks the contents of the page on that basis. I have no problem with letting the discussion continue, but keeping the blanking banner in place during that discussion seems more or less like bureacracy for bureaucracy sake, at the expense of the reader's access to information and understanding of Wikisource editors' analysis. .Pete (talk) 00:19, 15 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Miser's Gold edit

This topic also applies to many (but not all) of the poems listed at Author:Robert Ervin Howard/Poetry. There is no source and no explicit claim of a free license or public domain status. After some hunting I found the poem here, but while this claims to be part of the "opensource" collection on the Internet Archive, there is no explicit license named, and the book appears to be a self-compiled work (with none of the ordinary front matter a traditional publisher would include). It does not mention copyright status or licensing on the IA page (beyond the "collection") or in the work.

My best guess is that this, and numerous other, of Howard's poems were unpublished in his short lifetime. He died in 1936. Perhaps their copyright has not been vigorously defended, and while much of his work has fallen into the public domain due to lack of copyright renewal, I believe unpublished works would not require a renewal.

When voting, please indicate whether your !vote should apply to all of Howard's poetry that was unpublished in his lifetime, as there appear to be many such poems on Wikisource. -Pete (talk) 20:45, 4 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Oh, I now see {{PD-old-US}} which seems to address these pages. My apologies. -Pete (talk) 21:53, 4 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Peteforsyth: The copyright situation for Howard's works is hyper-complicated, which, in addition to his prodigious output, is why we have about a bajillion of his works in various states of insufficient copyright tagging. He wrote a massive amount of poetry in letters to a small group of friends, that was unpublished at the time of his death. There has been wrangling over his copyrights for a century, including at least two transparent land-grabs. One of those was a poetry collection published in 2002 (I'm fuzzy on the details: it's been a while) specifically to secure copyrights. It's an utter mess and means we need to do diligent research for each of his poems individually to figure out their publishing history. A lot of Howard's material is in the public domain, but a significant chunk is not, so we can make few blanket assumptions. The good news is that Howard fans have cataloged first publication info for a whole lot of these, so it's often entirely possible to come to a conclusion; it just takes some effort. Xover (talk) 08:00, 7 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yes, as I continued to poke around I found this discussion, which has links (including archival) to Herman's work. @Xover: would you consider the most recent revision of his document ([https://web.archive.org/web/20190715192544/http://www.robert-e-howard.org/AnotherThought4rerevised.html this one, unless there's a newer one not mentioned in that wiki discussion) authoritative for any works at all (either demonstrating that something is or is not in copyright), or merely a launch point for more authoritative research? (Note that Miser's Gold does not appear in that document, so I should probably remove the tag I added and bring that up for deletion. I'll hold off on further action till I hear back though.) -Pete (talk) 20:06, 8 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Note, technically the unpublished works written after 1928 do not fit in the Wikisource inclusion criteria. I'm not proposing anything radical, but just noticed that; perhaps some should be deleted, or perhaps the policy needs some finessing. -Pete (talk) 21:23, 8 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
So far as I know none of these are actually unpublished today. The issue is whether they were unpublished at the magic dates in 2002/2003 or thereabouts. Xover (talk) 19:54, 9 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
No, indicative rather than authoritative; you need to check the claims it makes. Not least because we have access to a lot more information now (online) than what Herman had in 2007, and the applicable copyright issues are now much better understood. Xover (talk) 19:50, 9 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for spelling that out, that all makes sense. (I don't understand what's "magic" about 2002/03, but happy to take your word for it.) -Pete (talk) 06:29, 11 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
In the US there are special rules for works that were unpublished at certain dates. Unpublished works created before 1978 and published between 1977 and 2003 are in copyright until the longer of pma. 70 and December 31st, 2047. If they were created before 1978 and published after 2002 they are covered by a pma. 70 copyright term. Since Howard died in 1936 any of his pma. 70 terms will have expired. Meaning that if they were unpublished on January 1, 2003 they are now public domain ({{PD-US-unpublished}}). Which is why one of the many entities vying for Howard's copyrights published several collections of his previously unpublished works in 2002: they wanted to preserve the copyright until 2047. Xover (talk) 07:17, 11 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for spelling it out. One by one I'm grasping the various rules about renewals... -Pete (talk) 18:07, 16 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Weird Tales/Volume 19/Issue 3/The Thing in the Cellar edit

The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived:

Deleted as being in the public domain in the US.

  This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 22:59, 17 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Mohamed Muizz's Inaugural Address edit

This work was uploaded with no license tag. It is not an edict so {{PD-EdictGov}} does not apply. I don't see anything at commons:Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Maldives that would suggest that this speech is automatically in the public domain in the Maldives either.

The work is copied from the website of the Maldivian President's office, whose copyright policy is rather unhelpful—it states that public domain content on the site is in the public domain, and copyrighted content on the site is copyrighted (and that content submitted by visitors to the site is CC-BY-4.0, but that wouldn't apply to this page).

Beleg Âlt BT (talk) 21:17, 6 March 2024 (UTC) —Beleg Âlt BT (talk) 21:17, 6 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

From THE COPYRIGHT & RELATED RIGHTS ACT (2010) has the standard edict exception and nothing broader which doesn't really apply ... "(b) any official text of a legislative, administrative or legal nature, as well as any official translation of such documents." MarkLSteadman (talk) 23:24, 6 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Also checked the youtube page, no indication of CC license there (although YouTube is much less helpful now in that regard). MarkLSteadman (talk) 23:40, 6 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yep, that's essentially the same type of content that is covered by {{PD-EdictGov}}, which this is not. —Beleg Âlt BT (talk) 14:14, 7 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

File:Maugham - Of Human Bondage, 1915.djvu edit

W. Somerset Maugham died in 1965. Does this file therefore need to be localised? It's in the current MC. --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:16, 10 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

On Human Bondage appears to have been first published in the US. The New York Times for June 6th, 1915 lists it as being scheduled for June 26th, while The Observer for August 8th, 1915 lists it as being scheduled for publication the same week. As such it would be a US work for Commons licensing purposes (because it is a US work in all Berne countries), with pub. +95 being the only applicable copyright term. Xover (talk) 07:28, 11 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Xover: Trying to parse this, do you conclude that the copyright would have expired in 2010 in the US, which is the only relevant country in this case for both Commons and Wikisource, ergo compliant with both Commons and Wikisource copyright policies? -Pete (talk) 17:58, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yup. Xover (talk) 18:47, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

The LOMEM utility mentioned, I found the original publication - https://archive.org/details/Apple-Orchard-v1n1-1980-Mar-Apr/page/n14/mode/1up?q=LOMEM - and I can't find any notices (or as yet a registration within 5 years), Can someone here do a more detailed check? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:41, 10 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Alma Mater (Adrian C. Wilcox High School) edit

  Keep Alma Mater per evidence at Commons:File:Alma Mater (Adrian C. Wilcox High School).jpg of a 1961 dedication with no notice. SnowyCinema (talk) 01:57, 19 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Fight On Wilcox (Adrian C. Wilcox High School) edit

Possibly copyrighted. On a positive note, if these indeed originated in the early 1960s (the first was cited as 1961), I'd wager copyright renewal would have been quite unlikely which would place these in the public domain. But the sources used are a 2024 school handbook and a modern YouTube video respectively, so they could represent later editions subject to separate copyright. SnowyCinema (talk) 13:29, 10 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

I forgot to add that these are the contributions of a new user, The Sands of Time 0. SnowyCinema (talk) 13:30, 10 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Hi there! I'm unfamiliar with the specifics of copyright laws, but I'll try to find an original source. The high school's gym has a plaque with the lyrics to both songs, and for "Alma Mater" it has "Dedicated 1961" written at the bottom. Would this be good enough? Thank you for your help! The Sands of Time 0 (talk) 18:31, 10 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
@The Sands of Time 0: This would appear to place the Alma Mater in the public domain. Would you mind uploading a picture of it to Wikimedia Commons, through the Upload Wizard, and then link the picture here? I would encourage releasing the picture with the license "CC0" since this will make the image in the public domain as well as the content of it. SnowyCinema (talk) 23:36, 17 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
@SnowyCinema: Here is a link to the picture. Is it enough to place Alma Mater in the public domain? Thank you so much for your help! The Sands of Time 0 (talk) 19:29, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
@The Sands of Time 0: Okay, Alma Mater should be good to go, then. But for "Fight on Wilcox", you'll need to find out when that song was first published. If it was published after 1988 it's guaranteed to be copyrighted, to put it simply. So here's to hoping that it was published somewhere before then. 🤞 SnowyCinema (talk) 01:57, 19 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
@SnowyCinema: Amazing! Thank you so much! I'll look into when "Fight On Wilcox" was first published. Unfortunately, there isn't a reliable source of it online, so I'll need to get in contact with someone at the school who can help. I'll let you know if I have any more questions. Thank you again for your help! The Sands of Time 0 (talk) 02:15, 19 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
@The Sands of Time 0: Thanks. What you will need is some kind of document (such as an old school yearbook, catalog, or the like), or some other kind of physical evidence of publication. Someone's word wouldn't be enough to satisfy this discussion. SnowyCinema (talk) 02:17, 19 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
@SnowyCinema: Understood! Thanks again. The Sands of Time 0 (talk) 02:56, 19 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Robert E. Howard letters to Weird Tales edit

There are three letters showing with no license:

All three of those are in issues marked as having had copyright renewed here - https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/cinfo/weirdtales - I assume that the copyright includes the letters pages. -- Beardo (talk) 21:35, 10 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Delete per nomination -Pete (talk) 06:26, 11 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Room to Roam edit

This appears to be a 1990 song by the Waterboys, a more modern phrasing closely based on the poem quoted, which appears in chapter 22: Phantastes/Chapter XXII I see no reason for the poem to appear independently on Wikisource, though I also see no reason this page couldn't be made into a redirect. -Pete (talk) 06:26, 11 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

According to the wikipedia article on that album, that song is described as credited to "George MacDonald, arranged by the Waterboys". I don't know if the song had an independent existence before the Waterboys. -- Beardo (talk) 13:19, 11 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
  Comment If this page is to be made into a redirect, Roman numeral chapters (Chapter XXII) should be changed to Arabic (Chapter 22) since this move will eventually happen anyway. SnowyCinema (talk) 01:53, 12 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Gazimestan speech edit

Modern non-US speech without any license, with no translator listed.--Prosfilaes (talk) 14:37, 12 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Earliest source I found is, Google Books . https://web.archive.org/web/20020222073541/http://www.balkanpeace.org/cib/kam/kams/kams19.shtml from the same time period has "Compiled by the National Technical Information Service of the Department of Commerce of the U.S." MarkLSteadman (talk) 11:52, 13 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Sons and Daughters of Saint Lucia edit

I see no reason why this should be PD in the US. -- Beardo (talk) 05:45, 16 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

According to Spanish wikipedia, the author lived 1897-1985. I suppose it is possible that the words were written before 1928, and only adopted as a national anthem in 1967, but I haven't found any indication of that. -- Beardo (talk) 16:18, 16 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

He was born in England and only arrived in St. Lucia in 1928 so that is unlikely. The more likely path is that it was published in the St. Lucia Gazette and so would fall under EdictGov. in St. Lucia on the URAA date so it would no be restored. MarkLSteadman (talk) 22:09, 16 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
If the words were written previously, would them being published in the Gazette alter their copyright status ? -- Beardo (talk) 03:01, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Possibly? Depends on how it is exactly printed, which is the problem, someone needs to go digging into the archives of law libraries for each of these national anthems and look exactly how it is adopted via law. Is it like this with it printed in an act: Government Gazette of the Republic of Namibia/321/National Anthem of the Republic of Namibia Act? or does it just mention by reference? Re the general principle, I doubt people would say that if a group proposes a constitutional amendment whose wording is then adopted that group then has a copyright claim on the country's constitution (e.g. that if the National Women's Party text of the ERA was adopted then the National Women's Party would have copyright over the US Constitution), PD-EdictGov never invalidates a copyright claim of an author then it is kind of superfluous no if it only applies to already uncopyrighted edicts? MarkLSteadman (talk) 03:34, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
As an extreme example, HMG drafts a white paper of "Secret Crimes we won't tell people about Act", claims crown copyright, parliament passes the exact text of the bill. The idea of EdictGov is that HMG doesn't have an "out" to have a secret list of crimes now protected by copyright no one can publish so you can never know about them. MarkLSteadman (talk) 03:45, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Old Bugs edit

This is a short story written by H. P. Lovecraft likely in 1919. It was apparently first published in 1959 in The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces, a posthumous collection of Lovecraft's works. I can't find the exact book, there's a similarly-titled book on the Internet Archive but it doesn't contain Old Bugs. There is a copyright renewal from June 1987. There's a note on Wikisource suggesting that copyright will expire in 2055, I'm not sure the basis for that. But regardless, it seems to me that as of now the copyright is in effect. -Pete (talk) 21:19, 17 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

I am sure that the mention on the author page here refers to the title story (which apparantly is more Derleth than Lovecraft). See discussion above about "The Mysterious Ship", which was also first published in that collection. The copyright on Derleth's work published in 1959 and covered by that renewal will expire in 2055. It seems that Derleth's heirs were probably not entitled to make the renewal on the pure Lovecraft items (and claiming that "H. P. Lovecraft" was a pseudonym of August Derleth wouldn't alter that). The wikipedia article on Lovecraft says "Searches of the Library of Congress have failed to find any evidence that these copyrights were renewed after the 28-year period, making it likely that these works are in the public domain. However, the Lovecraft literary estate, reconstituted in 1998 under Robert C. Harrall, has claimed that they own the rights." -- Beardo (talk) 02:59, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
This is it at Google books Google Books and it contains Old Bugs on pages 76-84. MarkLSteadman (talk) 02:20, 19 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

An End to the Armed Campaign edit

I cannot find any reason why this work would not be subject to automatic copyright, and I do not see any release of the statement under a free license. ⟲ Three Sixty! Talk? Contribs! 02:51, 19 March 2024 (UTC)Reply