Commons:Deletion requests/File:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu

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File:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu

This is NOT PD in the United Kingdom. It should be localised to English Wikisource. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:45, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Confirmed, as far as it goes: the file is a scan of a book with multiple authors and editors, and several of these have death dates late enough to fall within a pma. 70 term. The work was first published in the UK with copies starting to be received by newspapers around November 3, 1927 (the earliest notice is actually on November 2, 1927 in a US newspaper but it is reporting an AP piece from their London office). A distinct US edition was announced just before new years, and a notice of books received at the local library lists it on April 8, 1928 in The Lincoln Star. So on available evidence we have to say this is a UK work (not simultaneously published in the US), with multiple known authors who died less than 70 years ago, and as such is still in copyright in the UK.

However, given the great interest in this new supplement in the US (first mention of it is in a US newspaper, and a brief blurb about the space devoted to Chamberlain, an American, in it was run in almost every covered newspaper in early November 1927), combined with its publisher, the Oxford University Press, being an international publisher that likes to claim its works are published in "Glasgow, New York, Toronto, Melbourne, Wellington, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Karachi, Cape Town, Ibadan"… I would not be uncomfortable with a conclusion that while bibliographically this is a UK work, the high probability that it was offered for sale or distribution to the public—i.e. the copyright definition of publication—in the US at the same time makes this a US work in copyright terms.

It is hard to conclusively prove that OUP sold copies of this supplement to US customers before the end of November 1927. Customers would have been large academic institutions (e.g. the libraries at Harvard or Yale etc.), and possibly wealthy private individuals (of which there were plenty), and without archival research in their financial records (possibly in their paper catalogs too, but these usually do not have precise date of acquisition), it is very hard to determine just exactly when they acquired a copy.

I think it is reasonable to assume that US persons and institutions could, and did, purchase copies of this work from the OUP in November 1927. That meets the definition of "publication" in the US copyright code, and it is within the defined 30-day window for "simultaneous publication" (Berne Art. 3 (4)). So this one depends on where you land on the COM:PRP standard of "significant doubt": absent positive proof we can't say there's no doubt, but it would not, I assert, be unreasonable to conclude that there is not significant doubt. Nor would it be unreasonable to conclude the opposite, of course, so it's a subjective call.

PS. I have transferred a copy locally to English Wikisource so if the outcome here is delete it can be deleted without further action. If the outcome is keep I would appreciate a ping so I can delete enWS' local copy. Xover (talk) 10:21, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

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Deleted: per nomination - Whether or not it was simulataneously published in the US, this is undoubedly a UK work and it is under copyrit there. .     Jim . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 21:08, 12 July 2023 (UTC)