This orphaned
talk page,
subpage,
image page, or similar is not eligible for speedy deletion under
CSD G8 as it has been asserted to be useful to Wikipedia. If you believe it should be deleted, please nominate it on Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion. |
This template was considered for deletion on 2006 February 13. The result of the discussion was "keep". |
This page was nominated at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion on 2016 October 18. The result of the discussion was restore and mark as historical. |
This template was considered for deletion on 2017 February 2. The result of the discussion was "delete". |
For discussions about this template see Wikipedia talk:Image copyright tags -- Denniss 10:57, 2005 May 1 (UTC)
Please add an interwiki link to the Vietnamese version of this template:
[[vi:Tiêu bản:PD-Soviet]]
Thanks.
– Minh Nguyễn ( talk, contribs) 08:55, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
User:Irpen decided after not even one day of discussion to remove the TfD notice from the template. [1] {{ Sovietpd}} now redirects to this template. Lupo 08:33, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
"User Ipren decided" because it was obvious from less than a day vote that the proposal to delete the template was dead. Many votes were cast and none of them was delete. To cotninue the vote would have been meaningless. The proposal to delete is thus dead. In no way it prevents you from rasing the entirely valid discussion on template modification. Go right ahead. -- Irpen 16:25, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
If you "do think" something, propose it first and wait for feedback, since WP works by consensus rather than by single individuals deciding the issues on their own. See what others "think" and than proceed. I am not trying to cut short any discussions. I am requesting that you withhold any unilateral actions while discussions are ongoing. -- Irpen 16:40, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
The current version is fine with me. Thank you. -- Irpen 17:04, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Maybe JYolkowski's rewrite helps to clarify matters, but it should be noted that it essentially is still equivalent to the previous version, but it may highlight the problem better. Although Soviet works published in the USSR pre-1973 were not copyrighted in the U.S. due to a lack of copyright treaties (as pointed out by 17 USC 104(b)(2)), such works became eligible for retroactive copyright restoration in the U.S. when Russia (and the other successor nations) joined the Berne Convention and the U.S. then passed the URAA (see WP:PD for a brief explanation of the URAA). See 17 USC 104a(h)(6)(C)(iii). Thus such works are only in the public domain in the U.S. if they were in the public domain in Russia on January 1, 1996 (see 17 USC 104a(h)(6)(B)).
Therefore, a tag that states precisely under which conditions a work (or at least, an image) entered the public domain in the USSR would make much more sense than this pre-1973 business. The USSR changed its copyright laws several times, and one would have to examine all these laws and their implementation acts to figure it out. (The implementation provisions are important to make sure one does not overlook a possible case where a new law was applied retroactively to works that had already gone out of copyright under the previous law.)
The whole issue is of course complicated by the fact that there are many successor states of the USSR. Why only consider Russia? Is a USSR work considered to have been simultaneously published in all successor states? As a hypothetical example consider a USSR work that were copyrighted in Russia on January 1, 1996, but out of copyright in the Ukraine on that date. (Granted, I believe that such a case is unlikely, but it illustrates the problems.) What then?
Since this pre-1973 tag also seems to exist on the commons, it may be worthwhile to consider the situation in other countries, too. In particular the European Union would be of interest here. The EU does implement the "rule of the shorter term" (again, see WP:PD) towards non-EU countries, and thus I think for the EU the rule would be "if a Soviet work was in the public domain in the USSR, it is in the public domain in the EU, too". Again, the issue may be complicated in the case of USSR works that are still copyrighted in some but not all successor states of the USSR.
In any case the reasoning "Soviet works published pre-1973 are PD outside the USSR because the USSR was not party to international copyright treaties" does not hold. That 1973 date is a completely bogus lead as far as the U.S. is concerned. (I think it's also pretty irrelevant for the EU, but I'm not sure.) For the U.S., the critical question is "was the work copyrighted on January 1, 1996 in its home country (or countries)?" If so, it is covered by U.S. copyright (with the U.S. copyright terms!), if not, we may consider it PD in the U.S. Lupo 08:11, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
May I point the interested parties to this message from Janice T. Pilch, librarian and assistant professor at the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Maybe she explains it better than I can. The bottom line is that the "pre-1973" reasoning is invalid. Pilch has also published on these topics in peer-reviewed journals [2], see e.g. [3]. Lupo 09:25, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
See also Michael Newcity's take on that issue (he agrees that "pre-1973 is PD" is wrong). Newcity is a Senior Lecturing Fellow at the Duke School of Law and adjunct associate professor on Slavic Languages & Literature. ( Faculty listing.) There is at least one court case where Newcity offered an option as an expert (for the plaintiff; the case apparently was decided in favor of the plaintiff). Lupo 09:25, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Zscout370 has also pointed me to this essay on Russian copyright law and the Berne Convention. (Link to google cache, it's a Word document from the Russian-Ukrainian Legal Group.) They also point out that the 1993 Russian copyright law was retroactive. Lupo 13:33, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Is there any info about the work of the Soviet government? All of the pictures at Grigori Nelyubov and most of the Soviet space program are from government sources. Thanks! -- Reflex Reaction ( talk)• 16:58, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Since the pre-1973 rule doesn't work, let's see if we can find a more precise workable rule.
The only workable rule for Soviet works that I can deduce from all this is that they are no different than any other work; i.e. Wikipedia can consider Soviet works PD only if the author died more than 70 years ago, or, in the case of an anonymous work, if the work was published more than 70 years ago (but then we'd need to be pretty sure that it was indeed an anonymous work, it doesn't just mean "I don't know who took this picture"). Since we need to consider all successor nations' laws, any attempt to find "safe cut-off dates" based only on Russian law are wrong, and thus both 1954 (2004 - 50) and 1943 (1993 - 50) are incorrect.
Comments, anyone? Lupo 10:06, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Huge number of people use pre-1973 Soviet publications as the public domain works. Many use them commercially. The legal reasons to depreciate the tag are obscure and certainly are untested in the USA courts. I can not imagine that the first test case will be Wikipedia (noncommercial organization working for the common good). Depreciating the tag will be a catastrophe for a whole section of wiki and the risk is most probably just our imagination. I would suggest to stop the self-harming actions until a real danger (test case) will be present abakharev 22:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Guys, please keep your cool. I also don't know what Lupo is doing and what's the issue he has with this tag. He even listed it for deletion in the past, and the result was an overwhelming "keep" [4] It's too early to draft an RfC which is a big PITA for everyone. This may be an option oif this goes too far but for now, please let's discuss it peacefully if Lupo really feels so strongly about this issue for whatever reason. -- Irpen 23:17, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Lupo is absolutely right. The legal incompetence of the Russian and Ukrainian are well known. We cannot accept clear copyvios - STOP WISHFUL THINKING. -- Historiograf 01:35, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Look what we've got here! All those editors who didn't care to comment at all during the past few months despite having been aware of the issue suddenly come out of the bushes. Unfortunately, I still have not seen a single coherent argument why the "pre-1973" rule should be considered correct. Only threats and personal attacks. Oh well. I have made my case. I cannot understand why you insist on spreading misinformation. Lupo 07:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
I contacted an old photographer who used to work for the Soviet press. Now, all of the press and prints in the USSR were state owned. When photographers or painters wanted to publish something, as the Soviet system saw that withholding copyright would go against the principle of communal images, a special form existed which upon agreeing to publish the author signs the norightsreserved equivelence. I.e. his name is not quoted and the copyright owner becomes the Soviet state, the image would then be used by Soviet press in any way they deem necessary and the photographer would simply be paid originally, and the cut-off date is not 1973, its 26th of December 1991. Now the Soviet press itself never ever forbade anybody to take its images and publish them in reverse for personal use, as they too had a norightsreserved policy to all its works. Now the law that Lupo said about 2004 only affects works previously unpublished, like personal collections that have not been circulated in the pool of the Soviet Press. So in retrospect if the tag is purged it would fully suitable to re-tag all of the images with the norightsreserved tag, as that was the policy of the Soviet Press and print. So the bottom line is that yes the images are copyrighted but legaly it would be impossible for the original author to persucute, since he has agreed to relinquish all of his rights to the Soviet state. Thus all work published in the USSR which would have been published by Soviet Press, is totaly free to be used on wikipedia. So the correct wording on the tag should be: All work published in the Soviet Union, was done by state owned press prints, which would have been the sole copyright owners of the work as the original author had to declare so upon submitting his work for publishment. Soviet law on communal sharing declared that no state organisation can withhold distribution of its works in any shape or form, or their modification. As the Soviet Union does not exist anymore nor do its successor states challenged all of the already published works, they are equivelent to being in the public domain Green copyright tag is then placed as in norightsreserved. Then a separate Russian heading Works that were not published in the Soviet Press, are still copyrighted and exist until 50 years after the authors death. I'll see wether there is a norightsreserved policy for that as well. -- Kuban Cossack 18:26, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
To correct this tag, it must be deprecated, so that no new images may use it. Then, the images using this tag must be re-evaluated whether they could fall under {{ PD-old-70}}, {{ PD-US}} (if published before 1923), {{ PD-art}} or some other existing PD tag, or whether for some images "fair use" cases according to U.S. law could be made. Once this is done and no existing images use this tag anymore, we could rewrite this tag as a redirect to {{ PD-old-70}}. Alternatively, we could write a new tag using text identical to {{ PD-old-70}}, but additionally explaining the reasoning for Soviet works, and use that instead of {{ PD-old-70}} during re-evaluation, and then just delete this tag here, which would then not be used anymore. On the commons, the procedure is basically the same, except that the commons does not allow "fair use". Of course, all this is a lot of work, and the longer we wait, the more work it will be. As a first step, this tag should be reverted to the deprecated version I had written. We should also provide a solution for images uploaded and using the deprecated tag after it has been deprecated; my suggestion would be to treat them as {{ nolicense}}. Lupo 19:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
A pre-1954 tag is not very useful because it would apply only in Russia, but not in the U.S. nor in the EU nor basically anywhere else. Pre-1954 may be a useful rule for the Russian Wikipedia, as it is targeted mainly to Russia and Russian re-users (as long as we ignore the fact that these images are also stored on servers that are located in the U.S. and that are owned and operated by a U.S.-based foundation). A way to "save" images that would be PD only in Russia is then of course to upload them and use them only on the Russian Wikipedia and not have them on the commons or here. For the English Wikipedia, a "pre-1954" rule would be not useful, and a "lifetime of author + 70 years" rule is much more appropriate. The detailed reasoning for this is again at commons:Template talk:PD-Soviet. Lupo 19:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
How about contacting the russian govt (since it's the succesor of the ussr) about coyrights and stuff
I can't figure out what status Image:Luna3_farside.gif holds. NASA thinks its PD, and it appears to be a 1940s Russian Space Agency photo. Reading this conversation is a flamewar. Did a conclusion ever come to order? Kevin_b_er 02:35, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
<de-indent> The link to marxists.org, which Alex gave, just repeats the pre-1973 claim; it doesn't justify it. The PDF Alex linked, BTW, is an article of 1973. Interesting, but since the developments in the mid-1990s (Russian copyright law of 1993, Russia joining the Berne Convention in 1995, URAA 1996; see commons:Template talk:PD-Soviet) have invalidated the pre-1973 claim, I'm afraid it's outdated. Lupo 11:35, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Однако при присоединении России к Бернской конвенции Генеральный директор ВОИС был "уведомлен", что "действие Бернской конвенции об охране литературных и художественных произведений не распространяется на произведения, которые на дату вступления этой Конвенции в силу для Российской Федерации уже являются на ее территории общественным достоянием"*1*. ( But at the joining Russia to the Bern declaration, the General Director of the VOIS was "informed" that the Bern convention does not protect the works that were in public domain in the Soviet Union at the moment of signing the treaty. ). Later the article tells that this mean that everything published before 1973 (he took an example of Agatha Christie whose all work are the public domain. Farther down the article tells about a court case of a number of Russian newspapers against an American Russian language publication Kurier: "Лучше всего пояснить это на следующем интересном примере. Несколькими известными российскими средствами массовой информации и издательствами (в числе которых были "Аргументы и факты", "Московские новости", "Комсомольская правда", "Независимая газета", "Эхо планеты", "Московский комсомолец", Российское информационное агентство "ИТАР-ТАСС", большая часть акций которого находится в федеральной собственности, и др.), а также Союзом журналистов России был предъявлен иск в окружной суд Нью-Йорка в связи с нарушениями их авторских прав*12*. Основным ответчиком по делу выступала компания, занимавшаяся публикацией и распространением в русскоязычных районах США газеты на русском языке "Курьер".
Суд установил, что "Курьер" за три года опубликовал не более десятка "собственных" статей, основную же часть публикаций газеты составляли перепечатки материалов из ведущих российских периодических изданий, которые просто вырезались из них и вклеивались в верстку*13*.
При рассмотрении данного дела американский суд применил нормы международного, американского и российского авторского права и предоставил российским истцам такую же защиту, которую при аналогичных обстоятельствах получили бы американские правообладатели. Суд не только запретил ответчику осуществлять несанкционированное копирование российской периодики, но и принял решение взыскать с него почти 700 000 долларов в качестве компенсации за причиненные убытки и возмещения истцам части расходов, связанных с оплатой юридических услуг. Таким образом, защита авторских прав на основании положений Бернской конвенции оказалась для российских организаций вполне доступна и реально осуществима.
Однако результаты данного дела могли бы быть еще более благоприятными для российских изданий, если бы американским судом не была полностью проигнорирована судьба тех работ, которые были опубликованы до 13 марта 1995 года*14*. Суд даже не затронул вопрос, подлежат ли данные произведения охране данные произведения на основании Бернской конвенции или на основании Всемирной конвенции. " The legal case was won by the Russian copyright owners, but only for the works published after 13 March 1995, the earlier works we considered not protected by the American law due to this Exception. Even later the authors argued how to revoke the exception and still keep the pre-1973 works as PD abakharev 12:57, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
As an example of application of Belarusian law see http://copyright.iatp.by/abc/abc24.html (article named the ABC of copyright) "... В последнее время в печати довольно часто встречаются публикации, в которых известные юристы авторитетно заявляют об имеющей, по их мнению, место обратной силе Бернской конвенции. Основанием для подобных утверждений является норма ст.18 конвенции, которая устанавливает, что конвенция распространяет свое действие на все произведения, которые к моменту вступления конвенции в силу еще не перешли в общественное достояние в стране их происхождения в связи с истечением срока охраны. И только в том случае, если в государстве, в котором испрашивается охрана, какое-либо произведение, которое ранее охранялось, перешло в общественное достояние вследствие истечения срока охраны до вступления для этого государства конвенции в силу, то такое произведение в соответствии с нормой ст.18 (2) не подлежит охране. ... обратной силой. Применительно к Бернской конвенции, обязательство Республики Беларусь охранять произведения, на которые распространяется действие конвенции, возникнет только с момента вступления конвенции в силу для нашей республики и произведения, подпадающие под действие конвенции, охраняются в Беларуси с 12 декабря 1997 г., а значит, о какой-либо обратной силе говорить не приходится..." (Recently there appeared many publications there some noted Lawyers stated that the Bern conventions are retroactive.This is based on the article 18 of the convention...But the Bern convention does not protect the works been Public Domain in Belarus before signing, thus, it would only act on the works that were protected in belarus before the 12 December of 1997 and there is no talk about any retroactivity of the Bern conventions in Belarus). abakharev 13:09, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
All right, I think I see what is the problem. You (the proponents of the template) are confusing the rights of the publisher with the personal rights of the author (so called moral rights). Therefore the fact that Soviet publishers rights are void ("public domain" in this narrow sense) does not imply that we should be violating the rights of the authors. This is basic to any copyright law, especially in Europe but also in the US and I believe similar distinction must be present in Russian law (but this does not matter anyway).-- Lysy talk 14:56, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
This is all going on in a third or fourth circle. This have been discussed to death and Lupo cannot on his own whim deprecate tags and claim that they are disputed as he sees fit. His RfC, this talk page, the talk at commons and many other places have shown the strength of his argument. Not only he is not able to convince the community, he is not even able to get a smallest number of supporters.
His persisting with keeping the ridiculous "disputed" addition on the tag for months cannot be continued just because he says he is still "not convinced". As neither Lupo can convince the community, nor the community allows itself to be convinced by Lupo, he is free to take his objections and get an advice either from the expert in the international copyright law or from the officer of the Wikimedia foundation.
However, holding the widely agreed and usable tag hostage simply because Lupo thinks it's not right is a dead-end solution. Otherwise, we could have a single creationist permanently placing a "disputed" tag on the evolution article, as just one example of what else could happen. -- Irpen 19:04, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
No, Lysy, what you say is correct with the addition: "the template claims that are not properly documented" according to Lupo. According to some, the roundness of Earth is not properly documented. Still all reasonable people agree on the issue. When Lupo brings here a single expert who would agree with him or solicits advice from the board member, the claims that are represented solely by himself will get more clout. However, he has done neither of that and now it is the community who thinks that the claims made in the template are reasonable and Lupo who thinks that they are not. He may disagree and research all he wants to convince the community that he is right and they are all wrong but he can't keep the template hostage just because he failed to convince anyone to this date. He managed to force the "disputed" disclaimer on the tag for long enough and the only justification for that is that " user:Lupo remains unconvinced". This may be enough if he argues with another user about a single narrow issue. This is a very widely discussed issue, the community made up its mind. If Lupo disagrees, he has to do a little more work to convince the community or, as I said many times, solicit the legal advice from the competent expert. Neither is done and enough is enough. -- Irpen 21:37, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Can we change "The works originally published in the Soviet Union before May 27, 1973, were not protected by International Copyright Conventions, and are thus in the public domain in many countries" into "The works originally published in the Soviet Union before May 27, 1973, were not protected by International Copyright Conventions, and are thus in the public domain in the U.S." ? It would be more relevant and less vague at the same time -- Lysy talk 19:30, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
also holds for template space. I am not qualified to have an opinion on this, but "it is believed" is obvious weasling, and it is the responsibility of those who make a claim to provide evidence, everywhere on Wikipedia. So unless and until solid evidence for the correctness of the claim is presented, the claim will have to be visibly tagged as just that, an unverified claim. I'm sorry, but those are simply our rules, Wikipedia would be (even more of) a madhouse without them. (ᛎ) qɐp 08:04, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
http://www.copyright.ru/publ-1174.html (part4) Однако результаты данного дела могли бы быть еще более благоприятными для российских изданий, если бы американским судом не была полностью проигнорирована судьба тех работ, которые были опубликованы до 13 марта 1995 года*14*. Суд даже не затронул вопрос, подлежат ли данные произведения охране данные произведения на основании Бернской конвенции или на основании Всемирной конвенции.
Дело в том, что поскольку большинство государств являются участниками как Бернской, так и Всемирной конвенции, то пришлось специально решать вопрос о разрешении конфликтов, связанных с их "одновременным" действием. В рамках Всемирной конвенции была принята специальная Декларация, согласно которой Всемирная конвенция "не применяется в отношениях между странами Бернского союза в той степени, в которой она касается охраны произведений, страной происхождения которых по Бернской конвенции является одна из стран Бернского союза"*15*. При этом подразумевалось, что поскольку Бернская конвенция предусматривает более высокий уровень охраны, авторские права окажутся защищены наилучшим образом.
Однако сделанная Россией при присоединении "оговорка" в ряде случаев может быть истолкована как основание для отказа в предоставлении полноценной охраны по Бернской конвенции и в то же самое время защита в соответствии со Всемирной конвенцией также оказывается невозможной.
Это только один из примеров того, насколько защита прав российских авторов за границей становится проблематичной, оказавшись вне общепризнанных международно-правовых норм в данной сфере.
From http://www.copyright.ru/publ-1178.html:
14. Общее число перепечатанных работ превысило 500, но суд решил, что только 345 публикаций защищены авторским правом. Из них только 28 работ были зарегистрированы в Бюро по авторским правам США.
15. См. статью XVII Всемирной конвенции об авторском праве и Дополнительную декларацию к этой статье
See also Act of the Russian Givernment N1224 (3 November 1994) on joining the Bern declaration http://www.law.copyright.ru/different-1272.html:
Поручить Министерству иностранных дел Российской Федерации оформить присоединение Российской Федерации к конвенциям и Протоколам, указанным в пункте 1 настоящего Постановления, уведомив при этом, что действие Бернской конвенции об охране литературных и художественных произведений не распространяется на произведения, которые на дату вступления этой Конвенции в силу для Российской Федерации уже являются на ее территории общественным достояние
The article claims that the Russian works before 13 March 1995 could be Public Domain abakharev 08:47, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Alex, I disagree on the article of L.I. Podshibikhin, K.B. Leontiev, Realization of Bern declaration in Russian Federation that you have added to the template as a source. I do not think that the quote you've given above (from part 4) backs the template's claim. The article's main subject is the copyright of foreign works within Russia, not the copyright of Soviet works in other countries. Podshibikin and Leontiev only briefly touch on U.S. legislation and say that it would have been better if the court in the Itar-TASS v. Russian Kurier case had also considered pre-Berne works. I fully agree with that. But the problem is that the American court was unable to do so because of the sad state of U.S. legislation at the time. The court could only look at registered copyrights. (As Podshibikin/Leontiev are probably well aware of, as their footnote 14 shows.) The U.S. has long since required copyright registration for copyrights to be valid. In 1989, the U.S. joined the Berne Convention, which says copyrights are automatic, without registration. The U.S. nevertheless kept its registration requirement (a direct contradiction of the Berne Convention!) until 1996, when the URAA became effective. The URAA dropped the registration requirement and restored copyright on foreign (including Soviet) works that previously were not copyrighted in the U.S. because they were not registered. But the Itar-TASS v. Russian Kurier case began in 1995 and concerned copyright violations that had occurred 1995 and earlier, i.e. before the URAA entered in force on January 1, 1996. The URAA could thus not be applied on these acts and the courts could not consider copyright violations on unregistered works (see ex post facto: can't apply a new law to acts committed before that law was in force). Since 1996, the situation has changed, and in recent cases, the URAA is applied and copyrights on unregistered foreign works are recognized, see e.g. (just as an example) this 2003 case concerning copyrights on unregistered Mexican works. The lasting rule of Itar-TASS v. Russian Kurier is not the March 13 1995 date, it's the priciple to apply the foreign law to determine copyright ownership, and then to apply local law to judge the infringement. Given all this, I just do not see how this Podshibikin/Leontiev article claims or backed the claim that pre-1973 Soviet works were PD outside of Russia (or outside of the CIS nations). I suggest the highly misleading citation of this article be removed from the template. Lupo 21:33, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
The Russian reservation regarding the Berne Convention, which you also quote ( N1224) says that Russia considered the Berne Convention to only apply to works still copyrighted in Russia on the day Russia joined the Berne Convention, i.e. March 13, 1995. For Soviet and Russian works, that is exactly the same §18(1) of the Berne Convention, but many such works are copyrighted since the new Russian copyright law of 1993, as I had already shown at commons:Template talk:PD-Soviet. The contentious interpretation (and what Podshibikin/Leontiev write about) is that this reservation also applied to foreign works, which were (and to some, still are) copyrighted in Russia only if published after May 27, 1973, the date the USSR joined the UCC. But the copyright on foreign works in Russia is not the subject of this template. Lupo 21:33, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Wikimedia has several people on a legal mailing list, as well as a legal council. While Brad Patrick isn't discussing this, of course, are any other members of the wikimedia legal group in on this discussion? It would be bad that there be a mistake in either direction on this. With that said, I think some of Lupo's arguements are important, as just because the images would be 'extremely great to have PD', does not mean that they are that by will, as sad as that may be. Unfortunately the Russians may not care enough if we can actually find an odd dispairity or ambiguity in the law. Kevin_b_er 17:37, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 148.61.251.202 ( talk • contribs) 04:10, August 31, 2006 (UTC). [12]
I would like to remove this recent addition. The statement that something PD in one country is not necessarily a PD in US, while possibly true, can universally be applied to any "PD-country" template. For instance {{ PD-Poland}} claims PD for most all images in PL produced before 1994 (!). While likely PD in Poland, I doubt they are all guaranteed to be PD in the US. Same applies to all other country PDs. Do we have a definite resolution on what to do with images, in principle copyrightable in US and PD per other country's national laws? Does that matter if that other country happens to be the image's country of origin?
In any case, adding a selective disclaimed to this tag only that while possibly PD elsehwere it may be copyrighted in the US seems too heavy handed. If we end up with this wording remaining in place, let's add them to all national PD templates.
I am particularly interested in what would other think about adding such disclaimer to PD-Poland template. -- Irpen 08:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Speaking of commons and of that (ridiculous) deletion request, Yakudza provided an interesting link about the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and its status, that reads:
Exactly what some of us were pointing out for quite some time now... -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 15:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Just to give some perspective to this discussion, there are just over 1200 images which use this tag in Category:Pre-1973 Soviet Union images. Physchim62 (talk) 10:51, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
People, please, let's figure this out. Many people, including myself, have lots of images to upload, and we are waiting for this issue to be resolved. Moreover, there are items posted to Wikisource subject to the same copyright question. I am appalled to see that the issue is being discussed non-professionally with interpersonal attacks. I think that the issue of this magnitude deserves better treatment. The only person quoted here who has legal background was Soufron. I personally spoke with him during Wikimania and he said: "It's a complex issue, I don't know". I believe that we either have to involve more people with legal background in this discussion, or go with existent common practice which is "PD prior to 1973". Evgeny 11:31, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
How would it have a devastating effect on articles? If the image is so vital, it will be fair use. What is potentially devastating is pretending that images are PD when they're not. Physchim62 (talk) 13:19, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Is there any difference between an official government work - i.e. Space program photographs, military manuals (and any photographs / illustrations) and works published by individuals which may or may not be 70 P.M.A. ? Does Russian copyright law make a distinction ? Megapixie 01:38, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Russian copyright law makes a distinction between the copyrighted work belonging to individuals (physical entities) and belonging to organisations (non-physical entities). If the copyright belongs to an organisation (I guess in 1954 all the organizations were Government-owned anyway) it already expired it was published before the magical date of January 1 1954. If the copyright belongs to a person, then it expired if the the author died before 1954. The copyright for works done by employees during their official duties belongs to the employer (organization), I guess it covers Space program photographs and military manuals. Copyright for works published anonymously (most newspaper photographs, etc.) belongs to the publisher. Copyright on films shot before 1995, belongs to the studios (organization).
abakharev 03:12, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
You should go on with this 1954 template as base on commons. It is law in russia. Just leave out berne convention trouble for a while. Most images qualifies in wikipedia as fair use images. -- 80.145.6.238 07:03, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I recommend people go look up the case Films by Jove, Inc. v. Berov, 154 F. Supp. 2nd (2nd Cir. 2001) and 250 F. Supp. 2nd 432 (2nd Cir. 2003). This was a complicated case about a copyright infringement (committed in the U.S.) on Soviet cartoons. The case was about many different Soviet animated films published from 1936 to 1991. Some of these films were of Cheburashka, which is considered by many people in Russia a kind of national property; the childrens' books that served as the base for these films were written by Eduard Uspensky in 1966. In that case (154 F. Supp. 2nd at 448) the court clearly stated that these were "restored works", i.e. works that had their copyright in the U.S. restored under the URAA (17 USC 104A). See also the discussion of Tydniouk, A.: From Itar-TASS to Films by Jove: The Conflict of Laws Revolution in International Copyright, Brooklyn Journal of International Law 29(2), pp. 917ff. Here we have a concrete U.S. court case in which copyrights on pre-1973 Soviet works were upheld. Furthermore, one of the plaintiffs was Soyuzmultfilm Studios, a private successor of a former governmental enterprise that had the same name. So much for the effects of privatization... (The case was then complicated tremenduously, but the arguments revolved around who exactly owned that copyright: a third-party claimed that the plaintiffs (Films by Jove and Soyuzmultfilm Studios) were not the copyright owners and thus had no standing in the case. The court ultimately also confirmed that the plaintiffs were considered the copyright owners and thus had standing.) Lupo 07:25, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
May I point the interested readers also to the decision (in Russian) by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation from June 19, 2006. (Also available at the Supreme Court web site itself.) Point 34 clearly confirms that the 50-year copyright term defined in the Russian copyright law of 1993 (No. 5351-1) was retroactive and even restored the copyright on works on which the old 25-year copyright from the old Soviet code had elapsed! §3 of the Implementation Act (No. 5352-1) (in Russian) for the Russian Copyright law of 1993 had said so long ago, but not as clearly. And maybe this commentary (in Russian) here is helpful to clear up confusions about copyrights of foreign works within Russia and the copyright of Russian/Soviet works outside of Russia. Lupo 11:45, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
I support the position of User:Alex Bakharev in this case. But just switch back to 50 years conclusion and lets take a look at the berne convention later. -- 80.145.6.238 07:06, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Commons is now deleting the remaining PD-Soviet images (some have been retagged): "PD-Soviet will be deleted as PD-Soviet is imcompatible with the copyright policy of Wikimedia Commons that requires freely licensed images only". See Commons:Template:PD-Soviet#Decission. -- Kjetil _r 21:18, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to point out that ru:Шаблон:SovietPU (that's the corresponding tag at the Russian Wikipedia!) has already been deprecated. [16] It's time to move here, too. I would suggest doing basically the same thing I already proposed earlier: deprecate this tag, declare any new uploads using it immediate speedy deletion candidates, and then start re-tagging the existing images using other existing PD templates, or, if an image doesn't fit any of these, make a fair use case. We might also import commons:Template:PD-Russia, which gives us a 1946/1942 cut-off year for the U.S. and might at least be ok for things first published in the RSFSR. Unsourced images should either be sourced or otherwise be tagged {{subst:nsd}}. Lupo 19:03, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
This is absolutely unacceptable. Lupo, your continued attempt to impose the conclusions of your original research is tiresome. Until someone with an expertise in the field (or the Foundation) says something, please do not waste any more of other people's time and stop this assault on the important images that illustrate the multitude of article. The tag's TfD at en-wiki failed. That is the only hard conclusion to this date. -- Irpen 07:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
I've re-tagged all "my" the PD-Soviet images with {{fairuse}} -- jno 08:46, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
I am sorry, Jkelly, but this is exactly the other way around as several TfD attempts have shown. Only a handful of people who looked at the issue saw it in yours and Lupo way. Now please stop the disruption and let people work on developing the encyclopedia. Too much time is wasted already on defending the articles (and encyclopedia) from this assault. You are no more qualified to judge the issue than any other editor. The tag has to be deprecated either by concensus of amateurs, like you, Lupo, myself and others, or through an expert advice which would certainly override the consensus of people whose opinion is non-professional. Another alternative is the long missing opinion of the foundation. Until then, please keep in mind that your personal opinion is worth no more (an no less) than the personal opinion of myself, Grafikm, Lupo or anyone. -- Irpen 17:47, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Complement: As I said earlier, there is no evidence that Lupo's research is correct. Until than, a status quo is preferable to avoid harmful deletions from WP.
Moreover, we still don't know how moral and patrimonial rights are dealt with. I'll give you an example: when you're a photographer and you work for a company, you don't "own" your photos. You conserve moral rights on it and they're imprescriptible most of the time, but they only cover the right of being quoted as the author, the right to oppose alteration, plus a few minor things. But you don't get paid and can't claim royalties.
Now, imagine you're a Soviet photographer and you work for the TASS. You take a photo of some stuff. Your patrimonial rights belong to TASS, which is why Khaldei's photo is listed as "(c) Evgeni Khaldei/TASS" by the way. Then the URSS goes apart. But who is the successor of TASS? Is there even a successor? If there is none, it is quite probable your photo does not have any patrimonial rights attached to it - meaning anyone can publish it everywhere as long as he's quoting the author's name.
Now, if you happened to publish your work by yourself, you're the holder of both and can demand royalties. That's true - if you took a photo in the USSR, you still retain all rights on it. But it was almost impossible to publish it in Russia in such a way.
And in quite a lot of countries, working for someone automatically deprives you of all patrimonial rights. Anything you create while working belongs to your employer. Now, what happens if the employer no longer exists? If memory serves, works created by some Nazi Germany institutions fell into PD because there was no successor. Who is the successor of TASS? or of Soyuzpechat', or of some Soviet magazine? Or of the institute of Marxism-Leninism? The 100 private companies that took over? Probably not. In the case of the State itself it might be easier, but where is the border between the state and its agency?
Sure, the work might, if Lupo's research is correct, be protected by copyright retroactively. But what copyright? If that's the moral one, for all intents and purposes, it's quite similar because we can keep this pic on Wikipedia as long as we mention the author.
All this is of course as speculative as is Lupo's research, and just one example of a logic that could have worked, but the goal is to show you that we cannot cut the problem so easily as Lupo wishes he could. In the meantime, the status quo is just fine. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 08:46, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Could someone please wrap the content of this redirect in {{ subst:rfd|content=...}} as I am nominating it for rfd Ppp ery 20:20, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
This orphaned
talk page,
subpage,
image page, or similar is not eligible for speedy deletion under
CSD G8 as it has been asserted to be useful to Wikipedia. If you believe it should be deleted, please nominate it on Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion. |
This template was considered for deletion on 2006 February 13. The result of the discussion was "keep". |
This page was nominated at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion on 2016 October 18. The result of the discussion was restore and mark as historical. |
This template was considered for deletion on 2017 February 2. The result of the discussion was "delete". |
For discussions about this template see Wikipedia talk:Image copyright tags -- Denniss 10:57, 2005 May 1 (UTC)
Please add an interwiki link to the Vietnamese version of this template:
[[vi:Tiêu bản:PD-Soviet]]
Thanks.
– Minh Nguyễn ( talk, contribs) 08:55, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
User:Irpen decided after not even one day of discussion to remove the TfD notice from the template. [1] {{ Sovietpd}} now redirects to this template. Lupo 08:33, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
"User Ipren decided" because it was obvious from less than a day vote that the proposal to delete the template was dead. Many votes were cast and none of them was delete. To cotninue the vote would have been meaningless. The proposal to delete is thus dead. In no way it prevents you from rasing the entirely valid discussion on template modification. Go right ahead. -- Irpen 16:25, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
If you "do think" something, propose it first and wait for feedback, since WP works by consensus rather than by single individuals deciding the issues on their own. See what others "think" and than proceed. I am not trying to cut short any discussions. I am requesting that you withhold any unilateral actions while discussions are ongoing. -- Irpen 16:40, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
The current version is fine with me. Thank you. -- Irpen 17:04, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Maybe JYolkowski's rewrite helps to clarify matters, but it should be noted that it essentially is still equivalent to the previous version, but it may highlight the problem better. Although Soviet works published in the USSR pre-1973 were not copyrighted in the U.S. due to a lack of copyright treaties (as pointed out by 17 USC 104(b)(2)), such works became eligible for retroactive copyright restoration in the U.S. when Russia (and the other successor nations) joined the Berne Convention and the U.S. then passed the URAA (see WP:PD for a brief explanation of the URAA). See 17 USC 104a(h)(6)(C)(iii). Thus such works are only in the public domain in the U.S. if they were in the public domain in Russia on January 1, 1996 (see 17 USC 104a(h)(6)(B)).
Therefore, a tag that states precisely under which conditions a work (or at least, an image) entered the public domain in the USSR would make much more sense than this pre-1973 business. The USSR changed its copyright laws several times, and one would have to examine all these laws and their implementation acts to figure it out. (The implementation provisions are important to make sure one does not overlook a possible case where a new law was applied retroactively to works that had already gone out of copyright under the previous law.)
The whole issue is of course complicated by the fact that there are many successor states of the USSR. Why only consider Russia? Is a USSR work considered to have been simultaneously published in all successor states? As a hypothetical example consider a USSR work that were copyrighted in Russia on January 1, 1996, but out of copyright in the Ukraine on that date. (Granted, I believe that such a case is unlikely, but it illustrates the problems.) What then?
Since this pre-1973 tag also seems to exist on the commons, it may be worthwhile to consider the situation in other countries, too. In particular the European Union would be of interest here. The EU does implement the "rule of the shorter term" (again, see WP:PD) towards non-EU countries, and thus I think for the EU the rule would be "if a Soviet work was in the public domain in the USSR, it is in the public domain in the EU, too". Again, the issue may be complicated in the case of USSR works that are still copyrighted in some but not all successor states of the USSR.
In any case the reasoning "Soviet works published pre-1973 are PD outside the USSR because the USSR was not party to international copyright treaties" does not hold. That 1973 date is a completely bogus lead as far as the U.S. is concerned. (I think it's also pretty irrelevant for the EU, but I'm not sure.) For the U.S., the critical question is "was the work copyrighted on January 1, 1996 in its home country (or countries)?" If so, it is covered by U.S. copyright (with the U.S. copyright terms!), if not, we may consider it PD in the U.S. Lupo 08:11, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
May I point the interested parties to this message from Janice T. Pilch, librarian and assistant professor at the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Maybe she explains it better than I can. The bottom line is that the "pre-1973" reasoning is invalid. Pilch has also published on these topics in peer-reviewed journals [2], see e.g. [3]. Lupo 09:25, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
See also Michael Newcity's take on that issue (he agrees that "pre-1973 is PD" is wrong). Newcity is a Senior Lecturing Fellow at the Duke School of Law and adjunct associate professor on Slavic Languages & Literature. ( Faculty listing.) There is at least one court case where Newcity offered an option as an expert (for the plaintiff; the case apparently was decided in favor of the plaintiff). Lupo 09:25, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Zscout370 has also pointed me to this essay on Russian copyright law and the Berne Convention. (Link to google cache, it's a Word document from the Russian-Ukrainian Legal Group.) They also point out that the 1993 Russian copyright law was retroactive. Lupo 13:33, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Is there any info about the work of the Soviet government? All of the pictures at Grigori Nelyubov and most of the Soviet space program are from government sources. Thanks! -- Reflex Reaction ( talk)• 16:58, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Since the pre-1973 rule doesn't work, let's see if we can find a more precise workable rule.
The only workable rule for Soviet works that I can deduce from all this is that they are no different than any other work; i.e. Wikipedia can consider Soviet works PD only if the author died more than 70 years ago, or, in the case of an anonymous work, if the work was published more than 70 years ago (but then we'd need to be pretty sure that it was indeed an anonymous work, it doesn't just mean "I don't know who took this picture"). Since we need to consider all successor nations' laws, any attempt to find "safe cut-off dates" based only on Russian law are wrong, and thus both 1954 (2004 - 50) and 1943 (1993 - 50) are incorrect.
Comments, anyone? Lupo 10:06, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Huge number of people use pre-1973 Soviet publications as the public domain works. Many use them commercially. The legal reasons to depreciate the tag are obscure and certainly are untested in the USA courts. I can not imagine that the first test case will be Wikipedia (noncommercial organization working for the common good). Depreciating the tag will be a catastrophe for a whole section of wiki and the risk is most probably just our imagination. I would suggest to stop the self-harming actions until a real danger (test case) will be present abakharev 22:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Guys, please keep your cool. I also don't know what Lupo is doing and what's the issue he has with this tag. He even listed it for deletion in the past, and the result was an overwhelming "keep" [4] It's too early to draft an RfC which is a big PITA for everyone. This may be an option oif this goes too far but for now, please let's discuss it peacefully if Lupo really feels so strongly about this issue for whatever reason. -- Irpen 23:17, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Lupo is absolutely right. The legal incompetence of the Russian and Ukrainian are well known. We cannot accept clear copyvios - STOP WISHFUL THINKING. -- Historiograf 01:35, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Look what we've got here! All those editors who didn't care to comment at all during the past few months despite having been aware of the issue suddenly come out of the bushes. Unfortunately, I still have not seen a single coherent argument why the "pre-1973" rule should be considered correct. Only threats and personal attacks. Oh well. I have made my case. I cannot understand why you insist on spreading misinformation. Lupo 07:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
I contacted an old photographer who used to work for the Soviet press. Now, all of the press and prints in the USSR were state owned. When photographers or painters wanted to publish something, as the Soviet system saw that withholding copyright would go against the principle of communal images, a special form existed which upon agreeing to publish the author signs the norightsreserved equivelence. I.e. his name is not quoted and the copyright owner becomes the Soviet state, the image would then be used by Soviet press in any way they deem necessary and the photographer would simply be paid originally, and the cut-off date is not 1973, its 26th of December 1991. Now the Soviet press itself never ever forbade anybody to take its images and publish them in reverse for personal use, as they too had a norightsreserved policy to all its works. Now the law that Lupo said about 2004 only affects works previously unpublished, like personal collections that have not been circulated in the pool of the Soviet Press. So in retrospect if the tag is purged it would fully suitable to re-tag all of the images with the norightsreserved tag, as that was the policy of the Soviet Press and print. So the bottom line is that yes the images are copyrighted but legaly it would be impossible for the original author to persucute, since he has agreed to relinquish all of his rights to the Soviet state. Thus all work published in the USSR which would have been published by Soviet Press, is totaly free to be used on wikipedia. So the correct wording on the tag should be: All work published in the Soviet Union, was done by state owned press prints, which would have been the sole copyright owners of the work as the original author had to declare so upon submitting his work for publishment. Soviet law on communal sharing declared that no state organisation can withhold distribution of its works in any shape or form, or their modification. As the Soviet Union does not exist anymore nor do its successor states challenged all of the already published works, they are equivelent to being in the public domain Green copyright tag is then placed as in norightsreserved. Then a separate Russian heading Works that were not published in the Soviet Press, are still copyrighted and exist until 50 years after the authors death. I'll see wether there is a norightsreserved policy for that as well. -- Kuban Cossack 18:26, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
To correct this tag, it must be deprecated, so that no new images may use it. Then, the images using this tag must be re-evaluated whether they could fall under {{ PD-old-70}}, {{ PD-US}} (if published before 1923), {{ PD-art}} or some other existing PD tag, or whether for some images "fair use" cases according to U.S. law could be made. Once this is done and no existing images use this tag anymore, we could rewrite this tag as a redirect to {{ PD-old-70}}. Alternatively, we could write a new tag using text identical to {{ PD-old-70}}, but additionally explaining the reasoning for Soviet works, and use that instead of {{ PD-old-70}} during re-evaluation, and then just delete this tag here, which would then not be used anymore. On the commons, the procedure is basically the same, except that the commons does not allow "fair use". Of course, all this is a lot of work, and the longer we wait, the more work it will be. As a first step, this tag should be reverted to the deprecated version I had written. We should also provide a solution for images uploaded and using the deprecated tag after it has been deprecated; my suggestion would be to treat them as {{ nolicense}}. Lupo 19:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
A pre-1954 tag is not very useful because it would apply only in Russia, but not in the U.S. nor in the EU nor basically anywhere else. Pre-1954 may be a useful rule for the Russian Wikipedia, as it is targeted mainly to Russia and Russian re-users (as long as we ignore the fact that these images are also stored on servers that are located in the U.S. and that are owned and operated by a U.S.-based foundation). A way to "save" images that would be PD only in Russia is then of course to upload them and use them only on the Russian Wikipedia and not have them on the commons or here. For the English Wikipedia, a "pre-1954" rule would be not useful, and a "lifetime of author + 70 years" rule is much more appropriate. The detailed reasoning for this is again at commons:Template talk:PD-Soviet. Lupo 19:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
How about contacting the russian govt (since it's the succesor of the ussr) about coyrights and stuff
I can't figure out what status Image:Luna3_farside.gif holds. NASA thinks its PD, and it appears to be a 1940s Russian Space Agency photo. Reading this conversation is a flamewar. Did a conclusion ever come to order? Kevin_b_er 02:35, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
<de-indent> The link to marxists.org, which Alex gave, just repeats the pre-1973 claim; it doesn't justify it. The PDF Alex linked, BTW, is an article of 1973. Interesting, but since the developments in the mid-1990s (Russian copyright law of 1993, Russia joining the Berne Convention in 1995, URAA 1996; see commons:Template talk:PD-Soviet) have invalidated the pre-1973 claim, I'm afraid it's outdated. Lupo 11:35, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Однако при присоединении России к Бернской конвенции Генеральный директор ВОИС был "уведомлен", что "действие Бернской конвенции об охране литературных и художественных произведений не распространяется на произведения, которые на дату вступления этой Конвенции в силу для Российской Федерации уже являются на ее территории общественным достоянием"*1*. ( But at the joining Russia to the Bern declaration, the General Director of the VOIS was "informed" that the Bern convention does not protect the works that were in public domain in the Soviet Union at the moment of signing the treaty. ). Later the article tells that this mean that everything published before 1973 (he took an example of Agatha Christie whose all work are the public domain. Farther down the article tells about a court case of a number of Russian newspapers against an American Russian language publication Kurier: "Лучше всего пояснить это на следующем интересном примере. Несколькими известными российскими средствами массовой информации и издательствами (в числе которых были "Аргументы и факты", "Московские новости", "Комсомольская правда", "Независимая газета", "Эхо планеты", "Московский комсомолец", Российское информационное агентство "ИТАР-ТАСС", большая часть акций которого находится в федеральной собственности, и др.), а также Союзом журналистов России был предъявлен иск в окружной суд Нью-Йорка в связи с нарушениями их авторских прав*12*. Основным ответчиком по делу выступала компания, занимавшаяся публикацией и распространением в русскоязычных районах США газеты на русском языке "Курьер".
Суд установил, что "Курьер" за три года опубликовал не более десятка "собственных" статей, основную же часть публикаций газеты составляли перепечатки материалов из ведущих российских периодических изданий, которые просто вырезались из них и вклеивались в верстку*13*.
При рассмотрении данного дела американский суд применил нормы международного, американского и российского авторского права и предоставил российским истцам такую же защиту, которую при аналогичных обстоятельствах получили бы американские правообладатели. Суд не только запретил ответчику осуществлять несанкционированное копирование российской периодики, но и принял решение взыскать с него почти 700 000 долларов в качестве компенсации за причиненные убытки и возмещения истцам части расходов, связанных с оплатой юридических услуг. Таким образом, защита авторских прав на основании положений Бернской конвенции оказалась для российских организаций вполне доступна и реально осуществима.
Однако результаты данного дела могли бы быть еще более благоприятными для российских изданий, если бы американским судом не была полностью проигнорирована судьба тех работ, которые были опубликованы до 13 марта 1995 года*14*. Суд даже не затронул вопрос, подлежат ли данные произведения охране данные произведения на основании Бернской конвенции или на основании Всемирной конвенции. " The legal case was won by the Russian copyright owners, but only for the works published after 13 March 1995, the earlier works we considered not protected by the American law due to this Exception. Even later the authors argued how to revoke the exception and still keep the pre-1973 works as PD abakharev 12:57, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
As an example of application of Belarusian law see http://copyright.iatp.by/abc/abc24.html (article named the ABC of copyright) "... В последнее время в печати довольно часто встречаются публикации, в которых известные юристы авторитетно заявляют об имеющей, по их мнению, место обратной силе Бернской конвенции. Основанием для подобных утверждений является норма ст.18 конвенции, которая устанавливает, что конвенция распространяет свое действие на все произведения, которые к моменту вступления конвенции в силу еще не перешли в общественное достояние в стране их происхождения в связи с истечением срока охраны. И только в том случае, если в государстве, в котором испрашивается охрана, какое-либо произведение, которое ранее охранялось, перешло в общественное достояние вследствие истечения срока охраны до вступления для этого государства конвенции в силу, то такое произведение в соответствии с нормой ст.18 (2) не подлежит охране. ... обратной силой. Применительно к Бернской конвенции, обязательство Республики Беларусь охранять произведения, на которые распространяется действие конвенции, возникнет только с момента вступления конвенции в силу для нашей республики и произведения, подпадающие под действие конвенции, охраняются в Беларуси с 12 декабря 1997 г., а значит, о какой-либо обратной силе говорить не приходится..." (Recently there appeared many publications there some noted Lawyers stated that the Bern conventions are retroactive.This is based on the article 18 of the convention...But the Bern convention does not protect the works been Public Domain in Belarus before signing, thus, it would only act on the works that were protected in belarus before the 12 December of 1997 and there is no talk about any retroactivity of the Bern conventions in Belarus). abakharev 13:09, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
All right, I think I see what is the problem. You (the proponents of the template) are confusing the rights of the publisher with the personal rights of the author (so called moral rights). Therefore the fact that Soviet publishers rights are void ("public domain" in this narrow sense) does not imply that we should be violating the rights of the authors. This is basic to any copyright law, especially in Europe but also in the US and I believe similar distinction must be present in Russian law (but this does not matter anyway).-- Lysy talk 14:56, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
This is all going on in a third or fourth circle. This have been discussed to death and Lupo cannot on his own whim deprecate tags and claim that they are disputed as he sees fit. His RfC, this talk page, the talk at commons and many other places have shown the strength of his argument. Not only he is not able to convince the community, he is not even able to get a smallest number of supporters.
His persisting with keeping the ridiculous "disputed" addition on the tag for months cannot be continued just because he says he is still "not convinced". As neither Lupo can convince the community, nor the community allows itself to be convinced by Lupo, he is free to take his objections and get an advice either from the expert in the international copyright law or from the officer of the Wikimedia foundation.
However, holding the widely agreed and usable tag hostage simply because Lupo thinks it's not right is a dead-end solution. Otherwise, we could have a single creationist permanently placing a "disputed" tag on the evolution article, as just one example of what else could happen. -- Irpen 19:04, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
No, Lysy, what you say is correct with the addition: "the template claims that are not properly documented" according to Lupo. According to some, the roundness of Earth is not properly documented. Still all reasonable people agree on the issue. When Lupo brings here a single expert who would agree with him or solicits advice from the board member, the claims that are represented solely by himself will get more clout. However, he has done neither of that and now it is the community who thinks that the claims made in the template are reasonable and Lupo who thinks that they are not. He may disagree and research all he wants to convince the community that he is right and they are all wrong but he can't keep the template hostage just because he failed to convince anyone to this date. He managed to force the "disputed" disclaimer on the tag for long enough and the only justification for that is that " user:Lupo remains unconvinced". This may be enough if he argues with another user about a single narrow issue. This is a very widely discussed issue, the community made up its mind. If Lupo disagrees, he has to do a little more work to convince the community or, as I said many times, solicit the legal advice from the competent expert. Neither is done and enough is enough. -- Irpen 21:37, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Can we change "The works originally published in the Soviet Union before May 27, 1973, were not protected by International Copyright Conventions, and are thus in the public domain in many countries" into "The works originally published in the Soviet Union before May 27, 1973, were not protected by International Copyright Conventions, and are thus in the public domain in the U.S." ? It would be more relevant and less vague at the same time -- Lysy talk 19:30, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
also holds for template space. I am not qualified to have an opinion on this, but "it is believed" is obvious weasling, and it is the responsibility of those who make a claim to provide evidence, everywhere on Wikipedia. So unless and until solid evidence for the correctness of the claim is presented, the claim will have to be visibly tagged as just that, an unverified claim. I'm sorry, but those are simply our rules, Wikipedia would be (even more of) a madhouse without them. (ᛎ) qɐp 08:04, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
http://www.copyright.ru/publ-1174.html (part4) Однако результаты данного дела могли бы быть еще более благоприятными для российских изданий, если бы американским судом не была полностью проигнорирована судьба тех работ, которые были опубликованы до 13 марта 1995 года*14*. Суд даже не затронул вопрос, подлежат ли данные произведения охране данные произведения на основании Бернской конвенции или на основании Всемирной конвенции.
Дело в том, что поскольку большинство государств являются участниками как Бернской, так и Всемирной конвенции, то пришлось специально решать вопрос о разрешении конфликтов, связанных с их "одновременным" действием. В рамках Всемирной конвенции была принята специальная Декларация, согласно которой Всемирная конвенция "не применяется в отношениях между странами Бернского союза в той степени, в которой она касается охраны произведений, страной происхождения которых по Бернской конвенции является одна из стран Бернского союза"*15*. При этом подразумевалось, что поскольку Бернская конвенция предусматривает более высокий уровень охраны, авторские права окажутся защищены наилучшим образом.
Однако сделанная Россией при присоединении "оговорка" в ряде случаев может быть истолкована как основание для отказа в предоставлении полноценной охраны по Бернской конвенции и в то же самое время защита в соответствии со Всемирной конвенцией также оказывается невозможной.
Это только один из примеров того, насколько защита прав российских авторов за границей становится проблематичной, оказавшись вне общепризнанных международно-правовых норм в данной сфере.
From http://www.copyright.ru/publ-1178.html:
14. Общее число перепечатанных работ превысило 500, но суд решил, что только 345 публикаций защищены авторским правом. Из них только 28 работ были зарегистрированы в Бюро по авторским правам США.
15. См. статью XVII Всемирной конвенции об авторском праве и Дополнительную декларацию к этой статье
See also Act of the Russian Givernment N1224 (3 November 1994) on joining the Bern declaration http://www.law.copyright.ru/different-1272.html:
Поручить Министерству иностранных дел Российской Федерации оформить присоединение Российской Федерации к конвенциям и Протоколам, указанным в пункте 1 настоящего Постановления, уведомив при этом, что действие Бернской конвенции об охране литературных и художественных произведений не распространяется на произведения, которые на дату вступления этой Конвенции в силу для Российской Федерации уже являются на ее территории общественным достояние
The article claims that the Russian works before 13 March 1995 could be Public Domain abakharev 08:47, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Alex, I disagree on the article of L.I. Podshibikhin, K.B. Leontiev, Realization of Bern declaration in Russian Federation that you have added to the template as a source. I do not think that the quote you've given above (from part 4) backs the template's claim. The article's main subject is the copyright of foreign works within Russia, not the copyright of Soviet works in other countries. Podshibikin and Leontiev only briefly touch on U.S. legislation and say that it would have been better if the court in the Itar-TASS v. Russian Kurier case had also considered pre-Berne works. I fully agree with that. But the problem is that the American court was unable to do so because of the sad state of U.S. legislation at the time. The court could only look at registered copyrights. (As Podshibikin/Leontiev are probably well aware of, as their footnote 14 shows.) The U.S. has long since required copyright registration for copyrights to be valid. In 1989, the U.S. joined the Berne Convention, which says copyrights are automatic, without registration. The U.S. nevertheless kept its registration requirement (a direct contradiction of the Berne Convention!) until 1996, when the URAA became effective. The URAA dropped the registration requirement and restored copyright on foreign (including Soviet) works that previously were not copyrighted in the U.S. because they were not registered. But the Itar-TASS v. Russian Kurier case began in 1995 and concerned copyright violations that had occurred 1995 and earlier, i.e. before the URAA entered in force on January 1, 1996. The URAA could thus not be applied on these acts and the courts could not consider copyright violations on unregistered works (see ex post facto: can't apply a new law to acts committed before that law was in force). Since 1996, the situation has changed, and in recent cases, the URAA is applied and copyrights on unregistered foreign works are recognized, see e.g. (just as an example) this 2003 case concerning copyrights on unregistered Mexican works. The lasting rule of Itar-TASS v. Russian Kurier is not the March 13 1995 date, it's the priciple to apply the foreign law to determine copyright ownership, and then to apply local law to judge the infringement. Given all this, I just do not see how this Podshibikin/Leontiev article claims or backed the claim that pre-1973 Soviet works were PD outside of Russia (or outside of the CIS nations). I suggest the highly misleading citation of this article be removed from the template. Lupo 21:33, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
The Russian reservation regarding the Berne Convention, which you also quote ( N1224) says that Russia considered the Berne Convention to only apply to works still copyrighted in Russia on the day Russia joined the Berne Convention, i.e. March 13, 1995. For Soviet and Russian works, that is exactly the same §18(1) of the Berne Convention, but many such works are copyrighted since the new Russian copyright law of 1993, as I had already shown at commons:Template talk:PD-Soviet. The contentious interpretation (and what Podshibikin/Leontiev write about) is that this reservation also applied to foreign works, which were (and to some, still are) copyrighted in Russia only if published after May 27, 1973, the date the USSR joined the UCC. But the copyright on foreign works in Russia is not the subject of this template. Lupo 21:33, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Wikimedia has several people on a legal mailing list, as well as a legal council. While Brad Patrick isn't discussing this, of course, are any other members of the wikimedia legal group in on this discussion? It would be bad that there be a mistake in either direction on this. With that said, I think some of Lupo's arguements are important, as just because the images would be 'extremely great to have PD', does not mean that they are that by will, as sad as that may be. Unfortunately the Russians may not care enough if we can actually find an odd dispairity or ambiguity in the law. Kevin_b_er 17:37, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 148.61.251.202 ( talk • contribs) 04:10, August 31, 2006 (UTC). [12]
I would like to remove this recent addition. The statement that something PD in one country is not necessarily a PD in US, while possibly true, can universally be applied to any "PD-country" template. For instance {{ PD-Poland}} claims PD for most all images in PL produced before 1994 (!). While likely PD in Poland, I doubt they are all guaranteed to be PD in the US. Same applies to all other country PDs. Do we have a definite resolution on what to do with images, in principle copyrightable in US and PD per other country's national laws? Does that matter if that other country happens to be the image's country of origin?
In any case, adding a selective disclaimed to this tag only that while possibly PD elsehwere it may be copyrighted in the US seems too heavy handed. If we end up with this wording remaining in place, let's add them to all national PD templates.
I am particularly interested in what would other think about adding such disclaimer to PD-Poland template. -- Irpen 08:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Speaking of commons and of that (ridiculous) deletion request, Yakudza provided an interesting link about the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and its status, that reads:
Exactly what some of us were pointing out for quite some time now... -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 15:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Just to give some perspective to this discussion, there are just over 1200 images which use this tag in Category:Pre-1973 Soviet Union images. Physchim62 (talk) 10:51, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
People, please, let's figure this out. Many people, including myself, have lots of images to upload, and we are waiting for this issue to be resolved. Moreover, there are items posted to Wikisource subject to the same copyright question. I am appalled to see that the issue is being discussed non-professionally with interpersonal attacks. I think that the issue of this magnitude deserves better treatment. The only person quoted here who has legal background was Soufron. I personally spoke with him during Wikimania and he said: "It's a complex issue, I don't know". I believe that we either have to involve more people with legal background in this discussion, or go with existent common practice which is "PD prior to 1973". Evgeny 11:31, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
How would it have a devastating effect on articles? If the image is so vital, it will be fair use. What is potentially devastating is pretending that images are PD when they're not. Physchim62 (talk) 13:19, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Is there any difference between an official government work - i.e. Space program photographs, military manuals (and any photographs / illustrations) and works published by individuals which may or may not be 70 P.M.A. ? Does Russian copyright law make a distinction ? Megapixie 01:38, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Russian copyright law makes a distinction between the copyrighted work belonging to individuals (physical entities) and belonging to organisations (non-physical entities). If the copyright belongs to an organisation (I guess in 1954 all the organizations were Government-owned anyway) it already expired it was published before the magical date of January 1 1954. If the copyright belongs to a person, then it expired if the the author died before 1954. The copyright for works done by employees during their official duties belongs to the employer (organization), I guess it covers Space program photographs and military manuals. Copyright for works published anonymously (most newspaper photographs, etc.) belongs to the publisher. Copyright on films shot before 1995, belongs to the studios (organization).
abakharev 03:12, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
You should go on with this 1954 template as base on commons. It is law in russia. Just leave out berne convention trouble for a while. Most images qualifies in wikipedia as fair use images. -- 80.145.6.238 07:03, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I recommend people go look up the case Films by Jove, Inc. v. Berov, 154 F. Supp. 2nd (2nd Cir. 2001) and 250 F. Supp. 2nd 432 (2nd Cir. 2003). This was a complicated case about a copyright infringement (committed in the U.S.) on Soviet cartoons. The case was about many different Soviet animated films published from 1936 to 1991. Some of these films were of Cheburashka, which is considered by many people in Russia a kind of national property; the childrens' books that served as the base for these films were written by Eduard Uspensky in 1966. In that case (154 F. Supp. 2nd at 448) the court clearly stated that these were "restored works", i.e. works that had their copyright in the U.S. restored under the URAA (17 USC 104A). See also the discussion of Tydniouk, A.: From Itar-TASS to Films by Jove: The Conflict of Laws Revolution in International Copyright, Brooklyn Journal of International Law 29(2), pp. 917ff. Here we have a concrete U.S. court case in which copyrights on pre-1973 Soviet works were upheld. Furthermore, one of the plaintiffs was Soyuzmultfilm Studios, a private successor of a former governmental enterprise that had the same name. So much for the effects of privatization... (The case was then complicated tremenduously, but the arguments revolved around who exactly owned that copyright: a third-party claimed that the plaintiffs (Films by Jove and Soyuzmultfilm Studios) were not the copyright owners and thus had no standing in the case. The court ultimately also confirmed that the plaintiffs were considered the copyright owners and thus had standing.) Lupo 07:25, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
May I point the interested readers also to the decision (in Russian) by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation from June 19, 2006. (Also available at the Supreme Court web site itself.) Point 34 clearly confirms that the 50-year copyright term defined in the Russian copyright law of 1993 (No. 5351-1) was retroactive and even restored the copyright on works on which the old 25-year copyright from the old Soviet code had elapsed! §3 of the Implementation Act (No. 5352-1) (in Russian) for the Russian Copyright law of 1993 had said so long ago, but not as clearly. And maybe this commentary (in Russian) here is helpful to clear up confusions about copyrights of foreign works within Russia and the copyright of Russian/Soviet works outside of Russia. Lupo 11:45, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
I support the position of User:Alex Bakharev in this case. But just switch back to 50 years conclusion and lets take a look at the berne convention later. -- 80.145.6.238 07:06, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Commons is now deleting the remaining PD-Soviet images (some have been retagged): "PD-Soviet will be deleted as PD-Soviet is imcompatible with the copyright policy of Wikimedia Commons that requires freely licensed images only". See Commons:Template:PD-Soviet#Decission. -- Kjetil _r 21:18, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to point out that ru:Шаблон:SovietPU (that's the corresponding tag at the Russian Wikipedia!) has already been deprecated. [16] It's time to move here, too. I would suggest doing basically the same thing I already proposed earlier: deprecate this tag, declare any new uploads using it immediate speedy deletion candidates, and then start re-tagging the existing images using other existing PD templates, or, if an image doesn't fit any of these, make a fair use case. We might also import commons:Template:PD-Russia, which gives us a 1946/1942 cut-off year for the U.S. and might at least be ok for things first published in the RSFSR. Unsourced images should either be sourced or otherwise be tagged {{subst:nsd}}. Lupo 19:03, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
This is absolutely unacceptable. Lupo, your continued attempt to impose the conclusions of your original research is tiresome. Until someone with an expertise in the field (or the Foundation) says something, please do not waste any more of other people's time and stop this assault on the important images that illustrate the multitude of article. The tag's TfD at en-wiki failed. That is the only hard conclusion to this date. -- Irpen 07:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
I've re-tagged all "my" the PD-Soviet images with {{fairuse}} -- jno 08:46, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
I am sorry, Jkelly, but this is exactly the other way around as several TfD attempts have shown. Only a handful of people who looked at the issue saw it in yours and Lupo way. Now please stop the disruption and let people work on developing the encyclopedia. Too much time is wasted already on defending the articles (and encyclopedia) from this assault. You are no more qualified to judge the issue than any other editor. The tag has to be deprecated either by concensus of amateurs, like you, Lupo, myself and others, or through an expert advice which would certainly override the consensus of people whose opinion is non-professional. Another alternative is the long missing opinion of the foundation. Until then, please keep in mind that your personal opinion is worth no more (an no less) than the personal opinion of myself, Grafikm, Lupo or anyone. -- Irpen 17:47, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Complement: As I said earlier, there is no evidence that Lupo's research is correct. Until than, a status quo is preferable to avoid harmful deletions from WP.
Moreover, we still don't know how moral and patrimonial rights are dealt with. I'll give you an example: when you're a photographer and you work for a company, you don't "own" your photos. You conserve moral rights on it and they're imprescriptible most of the time, but they only cover the right of being quoted as the author, the right to oppose alteration, plus a few minor things. But you don't get paid and can't claim royalties.
Now, imagine you're a Soviet photographer and you work for the TASS. You take a photo of some stuff. Your patrimonial rights belong to TASS, which is why Khaldei's photo is listed as "(c) Evgeni Khaldei/TASS" by the way. Then the URSS goes apart. But who is the successor of TASS? Is there even a successor? If there is none, it is quite probable your photo does not have any patrimonial rights attached to it - meaning anyone can publish it everywhere as long as he's quoting the author's name.
Now, if you happened to publish your work by yourself, you're the holder of both and can demand royalties. That's true - if you took a photo in the USSR, you still retain all rights on it. But it was almost impossible to publish it in Russia in such a way.
And in quite a lot of countries, working for someone automatically deprives you of all patrimonial rights. Anything you create while working belongs to your employer. Now, what happens if the employer no longer exists? If memory serves, works created by some Nazi Germany institutions fell into PD because there was no successor. Who is the successor of TASS? or of Soyuzpechat', or of some Soviet magazine? Or of the institute of Marxism-Leninism? The 100 private companies that took over? Probably not. In the case of the State itself it might be easier, but where is the border between the state and its agency?
Sure, the work might, if Lupo's research is correct, be protected by copyright retroactively. But what copyright? If that's the moral one, for all intents and purposes, it's quite similar because we can keep this pic on Wikipedia as long as we mention the author.
All this is of course as speculative as is Lupo's research, and just one example of a logic that could have worked, but the goal is to show you that we cannot cut the problem so easily as Lupo wishes he could. In the meantime, the status quo is just fine. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 08:46, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Could someone please wrap the content of this redirect in {{ subst:rfd|content=...}} as I am nominating it for rfd Ppp ery 20:20, 8 October 2016 (UTC)