Category talk:Art of Vladimir Zarubin

Explanation of copyright situation

It's a peculiar Russian (or, specifically, Soviet, and thus, for pre-1991 — or, to be more precise, pre-dissolution of the Soviet Union, which happened at the end of 1991 — works) copyright law exemption for postal cards: since the stamp is printed on the card as a part of manufacturing process, rather than plastered onto the card postfactum, the entire card is considered знак почтовой оплаты ("the means of payment for postal services"), and, given that they were issued by Ministry of Communications of the USSR, an official government agency, by Soviet Russia's law, which makes documents (including "means of payment", which is primarily aimed at banknotes, but that category ends up covering postal stamps as well) public domain. While the scans were intitially deleted as a result of User:PlanespotterA320 (now, thankfully, banned) creative interpretaton of the law, recently it was reversed, so now due to this peculiar exemption, we have these (and only these!) works of his in public domain. Vladimir himself, sadly, died in powerty in 1996 of stroke (caused by the privatized printing company refusing to pay him a significant sum of money for his work). The total circulation of postcards bearing his art exceeds 1.5 billion units. -- Wesha (talk) 06:17, 29 December 2023 (UTC)