User:Rezonansowy/new/Copyright Center/Copyright Rules by Territory
Laws about copyright differ from country to country. Images uploaded to Commons, unless uploaded from the United States, involve the interaction of two or more copyright jurisdictions. The laws of individual countries differ especially in the following points:
- The time for which a copyright applies. In most countries, copyright on works published during the author's lifetime expires 50 or 70 years after the death of the author (p.m.a.).
- Status of works of the government. In many (but not all) countries, documents published by the government for official use are in the public domain.
- Material applicable for copyright. In some jurisdictions, pictures of artistic work like architecture, sculptures, clothing etc. can not be used freely without the consent of the creator of the original artwork.
Almost all countries in the world are party to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (see here for the text). Following this convention, countries enforce copyrights from other countries, according to certain rules.
Full details for each country or territory are covered below. Some countries also have individual pages (highlighted in bold), which you can reach directly from the summary table below.
International law
[edit]Country-specific laws
[edit]Laws about copyright differ from country to country. Images uploaded to Commons, unless uploaded from the United States, involve the interaction of two or more copyright jurisdictions. Generally, the policy applied on Commons is to only allow images that can be used in all (or at least most) countries. The laws of individual countries differ especially in the following points:
- The time for which a copyright applies. In most countries, copyright expires no later than 70 years after the death of the author (p.m.a.).
- Status of works of the government. In many (but not all) countries, documents published by the government for official use are in the public domain.
- Material applicable for copyright. In some jurisdictions, pictures of artistic work like architecture, sculptures, clothing etc. can not be used freely without the consent of the creator of the original artwork.
The safest way to apply international copyright law is to consider the laws of all the relevant jurisdictions and then use the most restrictive combination of laws to determine whether something is copyrighted or not. The jurisdictions that might need to be considered are:
- The place where the work was created;
- The place where the work is being uploaded from;
- The place that any web server the work has been downloaded from physically is;
- The United States.
A work is only allowed on Commons if it is either public domain in all relevant jurisdictions or if there is a free licence which applies to the work in all relevant jurisdictions.
In the case of a painting published in France please do apply US-American copyright laws as those copyright laws apply to the servers of Commons. Also apply the copyright laws of the country you are in and the copyright laws of any web server you got the work off. In the case of a French painting uploaded to Commons from a French web server by someone living in the UK three copyright jurisdictions would apply: France, UK and US. US law would mean that if the painting had not been published before 1923 it would be in copyright. British law would mean that if the painting was by an artist who had been dead for less than 70 years it would be in copyright. French law would mean that, if the painting was by an artist who died while in service for France (a concept called Mort pour la France), it would be in copyright for 100 years after the artist's death: an additional 30 years past the term provided by British law. In this case the most restrictive combination of jurisdictions would be French and US. Only if the painting was legally in the public domain in both France and the United States could it be uploaded from a French web server to Commons.
UNESCO has a collection of national copyright laws that should be referred to when creating country-specific tags such as those below.
The Public Domain Calculator by the Europeana Connect project/Österreichische Nationalbibliothek is useful (for people who are not legal newbies) for determining the copyright status of European works in their source nations.
Authorship
[edit]- Rules are generally different for works with known authors and works published anonymously or pseudonymously. Works published anonymously or pseudonymously may gain the standard known-author copyright term if authorship is subsequently made public.
- Rules may also be different for works of collective, corporate or government authorship.
- Note that copyright rules based on the death of the author normally assume the work to have been published, and often require the work to have been published during the author's lifetime. Unpublished works, or works published posthumously, may have different rules.
See also Commons:Anonymous works.
Derivative works
[edit]- Main page: Commons:Derivative works.
Many creative works are derivatives of other creative works. This may be a copyright infringement if the work used is not in the public domain. Exceptions exist for allowing derivatives to be made without infringing copyright; whether and how these apply varies widely across countries, by subject matter, and may depend on a range of circumstances.