Wikisource:Copyright discussions/Archives/2022

Index:The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.pdf

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Index:The Castle by Kafka, Franz.djvu

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Index:The Torrents Of Spring.pdf

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Index:Religion and the rise of capitalism.pdf

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Glosas Emilianenses

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Alta California Report of the Bear River Massacre

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Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

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The Tempest, 1993, "Preface and compilation" copyright

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Undelete Compendium Maleficarum

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Index:Man and His Changing Society- Volume 8- Mankind Throughout the Ages (IA manhischangingso00rugg).pdf

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Undelete Index:Multilevel algorithms for nonlinear optimization.djvu

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Index:Hamlet, Second Quarto Variant (British Library Shelfmark: C.34.k.2) (and scans)

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File:BasilAsceticalWorks.djvu and Index:BasilAsceticalWorks.djvu

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A Star is Born

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Last Will and Testament of Alfred Nobel

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Re: Mind, Character and Personality (1977)

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What is to Be Done? and Index:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf

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Declaration of Montreal

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The Art of War (Giles)

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Sermons of the Curé of Ars

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Open Letter on Cosmology

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Schweizerpsalm

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On War Against the Turk

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Index:The Production of Security.pdf

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Letter 121 (Letter to Algeria)

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Ian Johnston: On Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk

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Some books of World English Bible

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Schweizerpsalm

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Index:SIDS_Survival_Guide.djvu

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March of the Volunteers

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Index:ATSB RO-2018-004 - Collision of passenger train A42 with buffer stop.pdf

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Index:Arthur Rackham (Hudson).pdf

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Young Winston’s wars; the original despatches of Winston S. Churchill, war correspondent, 1897-1900

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Aesop's Fables translated by V. S. Vernon-Jones

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A Five-Stage Model of the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition (1980)

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First Lady Olena Zelenska addresses the officials of the member states of the Council of Europe

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America...You Kill Me

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Index:Mechanism (IA cu31924003901265).pdf

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Undelete the above

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Bible (Updated King James Version)

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Politics and the English Language

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Trotsky Protests Too Much

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On the death of Comrade Kobayashi

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Permanent Revolution

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The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke: With a Memoir

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Integration of hydrodynamical equations by the grid method

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No Pasaran

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Elements of Mathematical Physics

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Napoleon's addresses during the Italian Campaign and Napoleon's addresses during the Second Italian Campaign

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My homeland, my homeland, my homeland,

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The Holy Faith of the Romanists

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G.I. America organization seeking troop support

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Frida Kahlo, Paris, France letter to Nickolas Muray, New York, N.Y., 1939 Feb. 16

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Federal Charter of 1291

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A New Philosophy of Experience

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Führer Directive 32

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Foundational Document of the Katipunan

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Forged from the Love of Liberty

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Fatima Jinnah's Eid ul Fitr Message (1952)

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Extremism in the Defense of Liberty Is No Vice

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Erotica Romana

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Ehud Olmert's 2006 Speech to the US Congress

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Come Home America

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Butcher Report

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Undelete Index:Mechanism (IA cu31924003901265).pdf

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Briefly About Disagreements in the Party

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From the Editors

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UK cable on Tiananmen Square Massacre

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The Treasure of Tartary

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The Poem of Labid (Lyall)

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Old New Land

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Michael Maier- Epigram verse to Atalanta Fugiens

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Translation:Charter of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

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Translation:Constitution of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (1998 draft)

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Japanese Military's "Comfort Women" System

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Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music lyrical passages

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My homeland, my homeland, my homeland

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A Valentine to my Family

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On Righteousness

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== Index:Engines and men- the history of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. A survey of organisation of railways and railway locomotive men (IA enginesmenhistor00rayniala).pdf ==


 * This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 13:18, 20 November 2022 (UTC)


 * @Xover: I mentioned the source on the Author Talk page. It's in the British Newspaper Archive so I can't find a direct link. I found it in an obituary published on 19 August, 1944 in The Hastings and St Leonards Observer. It mentions him as the author of this specific work. MarkLSteadman (talk) 13:22, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
 * @MarkLSteadman: Thanks! Xover (talk) 13:23, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Index:Performance comparison of enhanced steam condensers. (IA performancecompa00bour).pdf

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De Indis De Jure Belli

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Letter to Akhenaten, King of Egypt

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Hyakunin Isshū

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Index:Astounding Stories 1936-02.pdf

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At the Mountains of Madness

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Two books from Gutenberg

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User:XavierV/Redefining Human Rights-Based Development : The Wresinski Approach to Partnership With the Poorest/Introduction/Part I

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Undelete On Righteousness

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Multiple unsourced national constitutions

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Red Riding-hood (Carroll)

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Fire Sermon

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User:Kaihsu/Oxford City Council Byelaws with respect to Ear Piercing and Electrolysis

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to behead or not to behead, an ethical copyright dilemma

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Buenos Aires Convention

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PD-Russia and Rehabilitation

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Undelete Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music and relevant page:s

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There Goes Old Georgetown
Fight song for Georgetown University athletics teams. Info at There Goes Old Georgetown (from where this was cut&pasted in 2009). It is apparently an amalgamation (derivative work) of three earlier songs, one of which has an unknown author and is dated 1930. As such it would still be in copyright until 2026. Xover (talk) 11:35, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep. Georgetown University being a U.S. institution, and the songs being published at or around the school, U.S. copyright law likely applies. In such a case, there is a presumption against copyright if there is no license given; and as there is no precautionary principle here, this work should not be deleted without an affirmative indication (such as a notice) which may show a firmer claim to copyright. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 16:25, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
 * The absence of a c:COM:PRP here does not mean we can assume absence of copyright, it just means we don't have a hard default of delete in the face of imperfect or incomplete evidence (which would make my life a heck of a lot simpler). In the complete absence of information about authorship and first publication we're still going to have to assume copyright, and then inch our way towards concluding public domain if sufficient evidence of that probability amasses. Xover (talk) 08:24, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Xover: For a normal work, I would tend to assume copyright first. However, these are all songs made for the university, and were likely published around that time in small college publications. Thus, I find it unlikely that any copyright subsists. If there was any copyright, it would likely be enforced against Georgetown, and would be listed. For the above reasons, I believe it would be unwise to be precautious. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 16:23, 18 September 2022 (UTC)


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Stalin's speech on the radio on 3 July 1941
Unlicensed, from 1941. It doesn't seem to be an edict of a government, and the translator is not mentioned. What is the copyright status of Soviet speeches post-1926? PseudoSkull (talk) 13:08, 29 September 2022 (UTC)


 * I remember an interesting discussion on the at US Supreme Court determination re copyright and government edicts in which I understood that all works of those who are authored to issue laws in the their country, are subject of PD-EdictGov automatically. Unfortunately, the discussion did not have any effect on our template, and so I am not sure if I understood it right. -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 08:58, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * @Jan Kameníček TBH, that news article didn't do a very good job of discussing the case... from the syllabus, "the Court cited a decision by the Georgia Supreme Court holding that the preparation of the annotations under Georgia law constitute an act of “legislative authority.”". Also, "First, Section 101 of the Copyright Act, which lists “annotations” among the kinds of works eligible for copyright protection, refers only to annotations that represent an original work of authorship, which the annotations cannot be when legislators are the authors. Second, the fact that the Copyright Act excludes from copyright protection works by federal officials but does not mention state officials does not lead to the negative inference that state officials must be eligible to be authors."
 * So, works are not PD "just because" the author was a legislator.... the work has to have been made in the course of their duties, as part of the "process" of developing laws and exercising legislative authority. A legislator who is acting "as a legislator", writing not just law but the "legislative history" (committee reports, crap like that), is acting as an agent of the people, part of the "sovereign authority" and is not an eligible author under the Copyright Act. Jarnsax (talk) 09:18, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * It's also worth noting that, in the particular case the works at issue were not actually created by individual legislators, they were "works for hire" created for, and edited by, the Georgia Legislature itself. Jarnsax (talk) 09:26, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * @PseudoSkull The US didn't have bilateral copyright relations with the Soviet Union until they acceded to the Universal Copyright Convention on May 27, 1973. Any and all Russian works from before that date were ineligible for copyright protection in the US, unless they had an author who was a "national or domiciliary" of some other country that did have bilateral relations. Since Russian is 50 years p.m.a., any work by an author who died on or after after January 1, 1946 was still copyrighted in Russia on the URAA date, and would have (assuming something else doesn't get in the way) a URAA-restored copyright. Given the detail that this is actually a speech, I'll just quote Circular 38B: "Although sound recordings fixed before 1972 were not then protected by federal copyright, those sound recordings will receive the remainder of the term they would have received had they been protected by such copyright when published. For example, a sound recording published in 1925 will be protected until 2020." Obviously, they need to update the thing with a more modern example, but still.... this has a URAA-restored copyright. Jarnsax (talk) 09:03, 2 October 2022 (UTC)


 * For the original, keep (I haven’t yet verified the status of the translation). Re: Jarnsax: “Under the government edicts doctrine, [executive officials] … may not be considered the ‘authors’ of the works they produce in the course of their official duties as [executive officials].” Especially given the content and context of this speech, I would definitely consider to have been written in Stalin’s official capacity. There is, incidentally, a court case currently ongoing about this exact topic: Carroll v. Trump, which considers whether statements made by Trump, while President, though at informal press gaggles and in personal interviews, were made in his official capacity as President; they (the Second Circuit) consider the matter sufficiently doubtful to certify the question to the D.C. Court of Appeals. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 12:29, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * @TE(æ)A,ea. I'm really really dubious about applying the government edicts doctrine to this speech, since it would actually contradict the URAA, but I will look at that case. The real point of me talking about Georgia, though was that the points of the case there were sufficiently different ("works for hire", written by a private company, and edited by the Legislature) that the claimed copyright would have accrued to the legislature itself, as a corporate body. Totally different situation, entirely. They actually wrote about how legislators, when acting to write legislation, can't be eligible authors to get rid of one of the bad arguments that had been made, pointing out that the process of writing and editing the annotations was actually itself written out in state law, so they were obviously acting "as legislators" when editing it as members of a legislative committee, a 'body corporate'. TLDR, the Georgia decision really has nothing to do with this, it was about something else entirely. Jarnsax (talk) 13:15, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Jarnsax: Re: URAA, if the work was GovEdict-covered, then it wasn’t copyrightable in the first place, and thus there was never any copyright which the URAA could restore. Unfortunately, Carroll doesn’t answer the question; it just mentions it (with different phrasing, of course), and leaves resolution for several years down the road. The Georgia case expanded the domain of the government edicts doctrine, and it is for that reason that I mention it. The copyright claim rejected by the Supreme Court in Georgia was more broad than you describe, as it also states that legislators, not merely legislatures, could not claim such copyright. The principles expounded in Georgia apply, even if the facts of the cases are different. Quoting from Georgia: “Under the government edicts doctrine, judges—and, we now confirm, legislators—may not be considered the ‘authors’ of the works they produce in the course of their official duties as judges and legislators.” If this speech was given by Stalin “in the course of [his] official dut[y] as” leader of the Soviet Union, then it seems clear to me that it would be ineligible for copyright. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 13:27, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The term "restored work" is kind of a misnomer, in that it only "restored" copyright to works that had actually been copyrighted in the US, and then became PD due to non-renewal. The URAA also vested a "new" US copyright in works that were from countries that were originally "ineligible", but became "eligible" before the URAA date... which is what happened here. That's the actual law, in [17 U.S. Code § 104A]. It also says "A restored work vests initially in the author or initial rightholder of the work as determined by the law of the source country of the work"... so to call this PD, you need to establish that the "government edicts doctrine" was the law in 1940's Soviet Russia. I promise you, I'm not the person who is going to be digging through WIPOlex to prove or disprove that point.
 * The "government edicts doctrine" is only written down in case law... it's "based on common law", and subject to judicial interpretation, that's why it's called a doctrine. Actual copyright, however, only exists where the law actually says it does, in federal law, which only explicitly denies it to "works of the US Government". It actually remains silent about states, it doesn't explicitly say they get copyright. Extending that doctrine to cover works that US law, in the URAA, explicitly grants copyright protection to, without any 'exception', is quite the stretch, IMO, in order to get a 'keep'. It requires you to ignore statute law in favor of common law. Georgia didn't expand anything, many state governments has been claiming copyright over their laws, for many years, and scholars had written about how such claims were bs, for just as many. Georgia just beat down a bunch of incorrect arguments, that had also been widely repeated, and restated what the common law "had always been" on a point where statute law remains silent.
 * The common law 'principle' behind the government edicts doctrine goes all the way back to the Roman Empire, and is based on that it is immoral to hold a man responsible to obeying a law if he doesn't know what it is, people have to be able to freely copy it. It only applies to things that "have the force of law"... and the annotations, and stuff created "while writing law", the legislative history used in writing the annotations, is explicitly intended to be used by state judges when interpreting the.... it's the "official copy". That entire doctrine has absolutely nothing do do with "works of the US Government" that don't have the force of law, they are denied copyright in federal law, explicitly. State governments, can claim copyright in stuff (like, say, a directory of offices) that doesn't have the force of law, because federal law doesn't explicitly deny it to them.
 * Again, nothing to do with a speech given in 1940's Soviet Russia, and "maybe a court might agree with me" isn't the best argument. Jarnsax (talk) 14:21, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Jarnsax: As the Supreme Court explained in Georgia, “when Congress ‘adopt[s] the language used in [an] earlier act,’ we presume that Congress ‘adopted also the construction given by this Court to such language, and made it a part of the enactment.’” This also includes the government-edicts restriction, which applied regardless of country of origin. For example, in Singapore, governmental edicts are copyrighted for decades after enactment; and yet, because of the government edicts doctrine, they can be hosted here. This applies to works which were made before and after the URAA date. This is because, in the case of government edicts, there is no copyright to restore. Similarly, the URAA cannot be interpreted to grant terms of copyright to British works which meet “sweat of the brow” creativity levels but which do not meet U.S. creativity levels. Your interpretation of “restored” copyright also misses the mark. A “restored” copyright is a separate, new copyright which applies to certain works which were already in the public domain in the United States, although I don’t believe that that distinction is determinative here. Again, all of the provisions of section 104A can only apply if the work in question is indepently copyrightable in the United States, because if it is not, then there is no way copyright could have attached to it if it was published in the U.S. (which is what the URAA was created to do). Re: “[a]ctual copyright,” see my earlier quotation. Your interpretation would ignore Supreme Court precedent in favor of an interpretation of a statute; remember that how the Supreme Court interprets statutes is more important than what either of us claim the statute says. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 14:30, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * @TE(æ)A,ea. To specifically reply to what you said about "when Congress adopt[s] the language used in [an] earlier act".... the rest is... "A century of cases have rooted the government edicts doctrine in the word “author,” and Congress has repeatedly reused that term without abrogating the doctrine. The term now carries this settled meaning, and “critics of our ruling can take their objections across the street, [where] Congress can correct any mistake it sees.” Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 576 U.S. 446, 456 (2015).[3]" As they said right before that, "But we are particularly reluctant to disrupt precedents interpreting language that Congress has since reenacted." They are talking about "authorship", and explaining why the State was incorrect in claiming that "legislators" could be "authors" under the Copyright Act when acting as legislators.
 * Looking at the previous paragraph, "That doctrine does not apply to non-lawmaking officials".
 * And the paragraph before that, "The whole point of the government edicts doctrine is that judges and legislators cannot serve as authors when they produce works in their official capacity."
 * The "government edicts doctrine" is common law, not statute law.... it is not in 17 USC. The court was dismissing the claim that 17 USC's definition of "authors" included legislators, on grounds that the Court had previously ruled that the definition did not include them, and when Congress revised the Copyright Act they never changed the definition, so the Court isn't going to listen to Georgia's novel theory that Congress "meant" to override that ruling, and just forgot or something. Jarnsax (talk) 17:22, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Jarnsax: My comment in response to that particular was to rebut your URAA claim re: a Soviet government edicts doctrine. If Congress has incorporated a history of “author” such that it didn’t apply to the most recent Copyright Act, that definition holds for the URAA, which means that Soviet works of a judicial or legislative nature, of the broad sort to be subject to the URAA, do not receive renewed copyrights because they are edicts of government. We differ on the next point, which is whether this doctrine has an analogous executive component, and thus whether this speech constitutes etc. etc. as we have argued earlier. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 17:27, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * You misunderstand. 17 USC does not have a definition of "author", it just defines certain things that are works of "authorship", and thus eligible. What the Court was talking about was that after previous rulings, when the Court had ruled that legislators and judges were not "authors" when acting "in their official capacity" to create law, per the edict doctrine, Congress didn't add a definition of "author" that included them, so it was nonsense to expect the Court to change their mind now, over a hundred years later, and call them authors in the absence of a new definition that included them. Jarnsax (talk) 18:04, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The URAA addresses it in 104A(b), where it says "A restored work vests initially in the author or initial rightholder of the work as determined by the law of the source country of the work." It also defines a restored work as "an original work of authorship that" and then gives the restoration conditions.
 * With no definition of "author" in the statute, you end up with the common law definition (i.e. what the Court said all the way back to the 19th century, and what Georgia again said, that "legislators and judges" are not authors of the laws they write. Jarnsax (talk) 18:21, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Jarnsax: Yes, indeed, I agree with you; and, again, the URAA cannot vest the copyright of a restored work to some one ineligible for authorship. It is my claim that Stalin, acting in his executive capacity, could not have been an “author” for the purposes of U.S. copyright law and jurisprudence, and, thus, there can be no copyright in this speech, as it is a “government edict” under the formulation of that doctrine given by the Supreme Court in Georgia. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 18:24, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * You said: "Stalin, acting in his executive capacity, could not have been an “author” for the purposes of U.S. copyright law"
 * In Georgia, the Court repeatedly said "legislators and judges" cannot be authors. The case was not about claims of authorship by judges, but they included them for completeness. They did not, ever, say "legislators, judges, and executive officials". If that was what they meant, they would have said so, and they did not restrict their statements to "just" the legislators that the arguments for authorship had been made about.
 * If the "government edicts" doctrine included works by executive officials, there would be no need for the definition to specifically state that works by US government officials are not eligible. The law could have just remained silent, as it does about judges and legislators in the definition of "US government works."
 * The discussion of government edicts in the Compendium is the same.... it actually has a paragraph each about how the doctrine applies to lawyers and judges, yet omits mentioning the executive at all.
 * That the government edicts doctrine extends to executive officials, yet both the Compendium and the Supreme Court neglect to ever mention them, while discussing at length the logic of who it applies to and why.... just, no. Jarnsax (talk) 18:45, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Jarnsax: Georgia discussed judges (the basis of the doctrine) and legislators (because that was the issue at hand). They didn’t discuss executive officials because that was not the issue at hand. The law about PD-USGov is entirely separate, both from PD-EdictGov and my comments about executive officials. Before Georgia, the Compendium did not have a paragraph about legislators, because they didn’t have a Supreme Court opinion to point to; and yet, the doctrine still applied. The same is true as to executive officials. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 18:52, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * What this tells me is that you realize that, by trying to extend 'government edicts' to the executive, that you are going beyond case law, and "stretching" really far. Please find me anything other than some random lawyer's essay that successfully attempts to apply the doctrine to the executive.
 * From Georgia... "The Court began by reviewing the three 19th-century cases in which we articulated the government edicts doctrine. See Wheaton v. Peters, 8 Pet. 591 (1834); Banks v. Manchester, 128 U.S. 244 (1888); Callaghan v. Myers, 128 U.S. 617 (1888). The Court understood those cases to establish a “rule” based on an interpretation of the statutory term “author” that “works created by courts in the performance of their official duties did not belong to the judges” but instead fell “in the public domain.” 906 F. 3d, at 1239. In the Court’s view, that rule “derive[s] from first principles about the nature of law in our democracy.” Ibid. In a democracy, the Court reasoned, “the People” are “the constructive authors” of the law, and judges and legislators are merely “draftsmen . . . exercising delegated authority.”"
 * That is a citing cases well over a hundred years old, and using them to talk about judges and legislators (and not the executive), from the "base principles". Judges and legislators draft laws with the "delegated authority" of the people, which is why they can't be authors. The executive doesn't draft laws, or anything with the "force of law", other than the limited case of "admin law", which only happens in cases where Congress has delegated rulemaking authority to some executive official. You need to create a whole new chain of argument to apply this to someone who doesn't draft laws.
 * Georgia specifically states that the government edicts doctrine "does not apply, however, to works created by government officials (or private parties) who lack the authority to make or interpret the law". "Make" and "interpret", not "execute". Even when the executive writes "admin law", they are executing the law that Congress passed telling them to do so. Jarnsax (talk) 19:22, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Jarnsax: You seem to have not read the cases cited. The three precedents cited in Georgia, which form the basis of the “government edicts” doctrine, were specific to judges; the Supreme Court, in Georgia, reasoned that the same logic which those cases applied to judges applies equally to legislators; and it is my claim that the same can be understood to apply to the executive, who certainly has no authority of his own beyond what is delegated to him by the constitution and laws promulgated by the people etc. This is not an application to anyone who could in some way be connected to legislative expenditures or executive work, but to specifically the chief executive. The Georgia Court used the “base principles” referenced from the earlier cases (which applied to judges) and applied them to legislators, because it was necessary, in the case at hand, to determine whether that applied to legislators. It cannot be said that something is not the case, only because there has not yet been a court case determining the point. The references to “making” and “interpreting” the law are, of course, references to the legislative and judicial provinces, respectively; there was no occassion to reference the executive province, as it was not present in the case at hand. That does not, however, make the logic inapplicable in this case. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 19:29, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, it does, because your logic is wrong. Legislators write laws, and so do judges (case law). "Executive officials" do not, and I've already quoted you where the Compendium explicitly says that works of officers of a foreign government can be registered, even if prepared while acting within their duties, in the section about government edicts. If your argument was correct, that statement would be wrong. Jarnsax (talk) 22:49, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * You revealed a gross misunderstanding here, when bringing up Carroll v. Trump, which has absolutely nothing, at all, whatsoever to do with the government edicts doctrine, which does not exist with regard to the US federal government. The common law doctrine is nullified, with regard to the US government, by Congress 'addressing the subject' in statute law, with the "US government works" rule. It has not existed in that context, as a 'thing', since Congress wrote the 'rule' into copyright law. Whatever arguments are made there about 'edicts' by Trump, as part of the case, by either lawyers, armchair lawyers, or you, are egregiously unfounded. Such a case about the federal government can only be about if the subject was or was not a "US government work". Not that it's relevant here... in fact my point is it's not, and your misconceptions are showing. You're also not listening, so I'm done. An admin surely has enough from us here, even if they want to leave it open. Jarnsax (talk) 23:16, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Jarnsax: Works of officers of foreign governments can be registered, in the same manner as works of officers of state governments (and the federal government but for the restriction against such copyright). There is a difference between petty officers and chief officers, who speak with the power to execute law (in the same manner as judges interpret and legislators promulgate). My reference to Carroll was a reference to that case’s discussion of what constitutes a work of President Trump in his role as President, which is quite close at hand. That Carroll does not, and could not, relate to copyright law, is obvious; and I did not claim that that case related directly, in that manner. You have completely missed my point in bringing up Carroll; and I do not appreciate your attacks ad hominem in that regard. “Such a case about the federal government can only be about if the subject was or was not a 'US government work'.” This is exactly on point, however; whether this work (a speech) is considered a Soviet governmental work, in the context of considering Stalin as an executive subject to the government-edicts doctrine, is entirely relevant and germane to this discussion. Unfortunately for your desire to close this discussion for, if my claim were true, this work would be in the public domain owing to that judicial exception. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 00:19, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Saying that you have a misunderstanding or misconception, or that you are not listening, is not an ad hominem. It's not attacking you as a person, it's saying you are wrong and not listening. Jarnsax (talk) 00:36, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Even worse, looking at the 2nd Circuit's decision in Carroll, five days ago, it's a Westfall Act case. It has nothing, at all, whatsoever to do with copyright, not even in the remotest sense. Please stop pinging me back here, this is way past the point of just being off-topic arguing, and you are not listening. Jarnsax (talk) 00:34, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I have responded to your contentions re: Carroll below, and will not repeat them here. A discussion of your attacks ad hominem is also not relevant to this discussion, so I will not belabor that point. On the topic of listening, you have refused to understand my reference to Carroll, and continue to “prove” that it is not related to a question different to the question for which I introduced it as a reference. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 02:13, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * TE(æ)A,ea. If you won't believe me, maybe you'll believe the USCO. From the Copyright Compendium, actually quoting Georgia directly, "any “work that [a] judge or legislator produces in the course of his [or her] judicial or legislative duties is not copyrightable,” regardless of whether it “carries the force of law.”" To continue, "The government edicts doctrine “applies to whatever work legislators perform in their capacity as legislators. That of course includes final legislation, but it also includes explanatory and procedural materials legislators create in the discharge of their legislative duties.” Stalin was not performing a "legislative duty", or a "judicial one", the only things discussed by Georgia, when giving this speech... he was neither a judge nor a legislator, and it did not have the force of law.
 * Later, the USCO says, "Other than works of the United States Government, a work that does not constitute a government edict may be registered, even if it was prepared by an officer or employee of a state, local, territorial, or foreign government while acting within the course of his or her official duties." Are we done?
 * My interpretation does not ignore a precedent that is specifically about "government edicts", and only government edicts. Like I was said repeatedly, and like the USCO says, this was not a government edict. It was not written by a judge or legislator, and it did not have the force of law. Jarnsax (talk) 14:42, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Jarnsax: I do not claim that Stalin was a judge or legislator; he was the executive, and the government edicts doctrine applies in the same manner as to the executive as to the judicial etc. The Compendium mentions J/L in quoting the Supreme Court, but of course the same logic applies to E. This is not some ancillary material prepared by a lesser governmental worker, which would be a USGov (which has no Soviet equivalent), but the work (very directly connected) of the chief executive. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 15:01, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I just add that the difference between legislature and executive was not so distinct in the Soviet Union as it is in the West. Stalin issued many decrees with the force of law during his rule. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 15:19, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * @Jan Kameníček That's a valid point, though just reading this, it wasn't any kind of 'decree'. A similar thing can happen here in the US, when the President is given the authority by Congress under something like the War Powers Act, or when an executive agency has been delegated "rulemaking authority"... that's when admin law comes from, but nobody cares (in terms of copyright) because of the "US government work" rule, which, being statute law, nullifies the common law doctrine when it comes to the US government. I suspect quite strongly that Stalin had such similar, delegated powers, and we all know he had an immense amount of personal influence, from controlling the Communist Party. Either way, I don't think it matters here.... just read it, it's not an edict, other than "Go fight for Mother Russia!" If some similar work appeared to actually have been intended to have legal force, like a number or named decree, I'd be far more willing to agree that "government edict" might apply. Otherwise, I think it falls into a 'class' that the Compendium specifically says "may be registered", as I quoted above. Jarnsax (talk) 16:35, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * For example, Order No. 227, issued while him "while acting as the People's Commissar of Defense", and applied only to the Red Army, was IMHO clearly a government edict. Jarnsax (talk) 16:45, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * In the United States, there is one office, President, who holds three 'roles'. He is the w:head of state (ceremonial head). w:head of government (executive and administrative head), and w:commander-in-chief (of the military).
 * Under the Soviet Constitution of the time, these roles were differently defined.... the head of government was one 'office', Stalin held it, as w:Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union, and then as w:Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, from 6 May 1941 until 5 March 1953. As the 'executive and administrative', this role didn't let him issue 'edicts', just like the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom can't.
 * He was also commander-in-chief, as w:People's Commissar of Defense of the Soviet Union starting 19 July 1941, then as Minister of Defence (Soviet Union), until 3 March 1947. He held the rank of w:Marshal of the Soviet Union starting in 1943, and it's this that let him issue Order No. 227, a military order. I call that one an edict, with the death threats and all.
 * He also held the "legally non-governmental" role, which is what gave him actual power, of w:General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952. None of these roles was judicial or legislative.
 * The speech itself doesn't fit w:Edict of government, and down at the end of the section about public policy, from the USCO, "such material as the laws and governmental rules and decisions must be freely available to the public and made known as widely as possible"... that's not what this speech is, it's rah-rah and PR.
 * Looking at w:Copyright of official texts, for Russia "official documents of state government agencies and local government agencies of municipal formations, including laws, other legal texts, judicial decisions, other materials of legislative, administrative and judicial character, official documents of international organizations, as well as their official translations" are exempted from copyright. I don't know how different it was back then, but this speech doesn't fit any of that, IMO.
 * I'm completely convinced that this was copyrighted in the Soviet Union, they don't have an equivalent to "works of the US Goverment", and it's not an edict. Jarnsax (talk) 02:51, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * @Jan.Kamenicek Much later...
 * I'd actually become very curious about this, a long time ago.
 * The Soviet Union was, constitutionally, a democracy, not 'incredibly' different from others. The source of power was the People, who voted in whichever candidate they wanted, through a secret ballot.
 * This "problem" was, it was a single-party state. To run for office, you had to be a member in "good standing" of the Communist Party, and they could kick out whoever they wanted, under their own rules, and they made their own rules. You had to have "their permission". Everyone on the ballot was a Communist.
 * The People had, constitutionally, created a government under which it literally made absolutely no difference who they voted for, that had zero reason to even remotely care about their opinion, and had actually done it on purpose (the whole idea behind it was nuts). So it was effectively a dictatorship by "boss Commie". Jarnsax (talk) 01:34, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Regarding Carroll v. Trump nonsense: that is a Westfall Act case. The Westfall Act is in a completely different title of US Code (it's about civil torts), and uses a definition of employee that is completely and utterly unrelated to anything encompassed by 17 U.S.C, the Copyright Compendium, or the "governmental edict" doctrine. As a separate Title of the US Code (28 U.S.C.), it is completely independent from copyright law. This is how 'law' works, if the 'particular law itself' doesn't define something, you look at the common law, or then a law dictionary, or then a normal dictionary, to define it. You don't hunt down some definition of a term that isn't even used in the Title you are looking at from somewhere in a completely different Title on a different subject. Discussing it in this context is about as relevant as the tax code. Jarnsax (talk) 00:56, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Jarnsax: Regarding pinging, two items. First, you should not mark your responses as minor edits. Second, I ping editors in discussion, especially when they misrepresent my arguments. As for my reference to Carroll, it was not an attempt to incorporate the Westfall Act’s definition of “employee” (which is not remotely relevant), but the discussion (in that case) of whether certain statements made by the chief executive, while chief executive, in the function of the chief executive, can be considered to have been made by him in his official capacity (as opposed to being made in his personal capacity). The work in question for this discussion is a speech, made by the chief executive of a state; and, as Carroll discussed whether such works qualify as works made pursuant to the official duty of said chief executive, it is a case highly relevant to the point currently in question. The questions you were asking were related to a different question, one to which Carroll is not applicable. The question you seek to litigate—whether Stalin could even be subject to the government edicts doctrine—is an entirely different question to the question in relation to which I referenced Carroll—whether this speech can be considered to be a work made by Stalin in his official capacity. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 02:13, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * You are also completely and deliberately ignoring my third or fourth request that you stop pinging me, which you have now done twice, since I last asked you to stop. It's called harassing someone. Stop. Jarnsax (talk) 02:58, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * A speech such as this, given by Trump, live on the air, to rally the people against a massive armed invasion, with tanks and artillery and bombers and explosions and lots of dead people, would obviously be within the scope of his duties, and the case would have never gone to appeal, the judge in the lower court would have made the obvious decision, and granted the motion to substitute.
 * If Carroll v. Trump was about circumstances that were even remotely similar (he was not giving a live on air speech), it is still about the Westfall Act, about if he was acting within the scope of his duties as one of the following: officers or employees of any federal agency, members of the military or naval forces of the United States, members of the National Guard while engaged in training or duty or officers and employees of a federal public defender organization.
 * It actually explicitly says so in the Westfall Act, in the definition of "employee" used there, who are the only people it applies to. The only "lessons" you can take, from Carroll v. Trump, that have anything to do with copyright are about "possibly outside the scope of their duties" and thus copyrightable works by the classes of people that the Wesfall Act actually applies to, since that is who the Court was talking about in the decision, and only those categories of people.
 * The works created by those people are either "works for hire" of the US government, or works of the US government itself.
 * It would ideally have gone without saying that Stalin was not an Officer of the United States, or any of the other categories of people explicitly mentioned by the Westfall Act, or at least only need to have been pointed out once.
 * It would be far easier to just avoid all this irrelevant arguing by listening to what the USCO explicitly tells us in the Compendium, that I've quoted, which is works by foreign officials are copyrightable unless they are edicts, regardless of if they are within the scope of their duties or not.
 * The entire idea is not even wrong. Jarnsax (talk) 05:02, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
 * There are two things that are completely lacking, before any 'principle' related to Carroll and "scope of duties" could become relevant here.
 * anything like a "works of government" provision in Russia. They only exempt edicts.
 * anything in US law that creates or extends a "works of government" exemption to anything other than, explicitly, the "works of the US Government" clause, which rather obviously only applies to the US.
 * Ignoring that, and imagining that some kind of works of government exemption did exist in Russia, you would be faced with trying to establish if giving this speech was within the duties of Stalin, under 1940s Soviet law, not the duties of Trump, under US law nearly a century later. Jarnsax (talk) 07:54, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The only question which such a 'Carroll-type' analysis could possibly answer is who owns the copyright, and to raise it as an issue presupposes that "a copyright existed", which renders the entire point moot to us. If a copyright existed, the only reason we have to care who owned it is to figure out if it still subsists in the US.
 * The reason the Compendium, written by experts who actually know what the hell they are talking about, can make the flat statement about "foreign officials" and "scope of duties", that explicitly tells it "can be registered" unless it's an edict, is because the United States is the only country on the planet that does not copyright it's "own works" other than edicts, and it does not impose the "works of government" exemption on other countries, since to do so would be both "unlawful" (it's not in the Copyright Act), and would violate international copyright treaties. Jarnsax (talk) 21:50, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
 * In a discussion about US copyright, when you are told that your "theory" is flatly contradicted by an explicit statement by the USCO in the latest edition of the Compendium, which is released as a new edition any time a federal court decision actually changes anything, again by experts who actually know what the hell they are talking about, and is the authoritative reference on US copyright law, and the Compendium really does say that, you need to drop the damn stick. You are wrong, and the horse is not only dead, it was never alive to begin with.
 * The only routes for this speech to be in the public domain in the United States are if it was an edict, or if it did not receive a "restored copyright" under the URAA. Jarnsax (talk) 22:48, 4 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I am writing this to 'summarize' what I've said about this, for the sanity of a closing admin.


 * Jan Kameníček: Does this mean that I can respond and not get banned? I stopped responding to this discussion only because this user said he was going to get me banned if I kept responding to him. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 14:21, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I haven't had the spare cycles to actually read through this mammoth discussion, so I may be missing context here, but… Nobody gets somebody banned just on their say-so. At a cursory glance I see nothing here that would make that a relevant factor. That being said… 1) if someone asks you to not ping them (using re or linking their user page) then you should generally try to honour that request, and 2) in a mammoth thread like this it is likely that the real arguments have been amply covered and further comments only amount to beating a dead horse (that is, additional responses are no longer productive). --Xover (talk) 16:09, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Donald Trump was the President of the United States. Stalin lived in Russia. Even if the Carroll case was related to copyright, it's analysis of what where his official duties would only be relevant to the "works of the United States Government" rule, which would have applied to Trump, and actually 'cares' whether or not something was an official duty.
 * As I have said way too many times here, there is no route to PD for a work from Russia through the "Works of the United States Government" doctrine. That US doesn't not apply that doctrine to anything but the US federal government (see Georgia), and Russia has no 'similar' rule that would have allowed this to escape into the PD 'at home' and evade the URAA. Russia only exempts governmental edicts, using essentially the same 'definition' as the United States. (see Copyright of official texts) It's 'the same' is because it's actually in one of (don't remember which) the international copyright conventions, in almost the same words.
 * The only path for this to be PD (since it was still within 50 pma on the URAA date) is if it was an edict, which Russia would have not copyrighted, and which the US would not honor the copyright in even if it existed. Since it's not an edict, it's not PD by that route. The "edicts" rule gives not the slightest crap about "the scope of someone's official duties"... to again quote the Copyright Compendium, Chapter 3, about edicts: "Other than works of the United States Government, a work that does not constitute a government edict may be registered, even if it was prepared by an officer or employee of a state, local, territorial, or foreign government while acting within the course of his or her official duties."
 * All of the rambling about "Carroll" here is completely off topic and grossly misguided. Any copyright issue that could possibly be tangentially related to it (scope of official duties of a federal official) is completely irrelevant to a copyright from 1940s Russia, and would only matter if some kind of works of the government rule existed in Russia, which it does not. The Carroll case is also about the Westfall Act, and actually hangs on if Trump was acting 'within the scope of his employment' using the radically different definition of employee of the government given in 28 U.S.C. You don't even need to be paid to fall within the scope of that definition. It's a civil tort case, and grossly irrelevant here.
 * What matters is if the speech is an edict. It's obviously not, if you read and compare it to an 'actual edict by Stalin, Order No. 227.
 * The work was in copyright in Russia well past 1996 (16 October 1952, plus 50 pma, gives 2003), and was in the public domain in the United States from creation until the URAA date, because Russia lacked "national eligibility" until gaining a bilateral copyright relationship with the US in the 1970s. It's copyright was restored by the URAA.
 * This is actually a very clear URAA case, if you don't try to stretch a rule that only applies to the US federal government to 1940s Soviet Russia. Jarnsax (talk) 19:30, 3 October 2022 (UTC)


 * This section was archived on a request by: --Jusjih (talk) 20:47, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Amazing Stories v15n10 and v16n11
Amazing Stories volume 15 issue 10 and volume 16 issue 11 didn't have their copyrights renewed, but they have a few stories (one in the first, "Invisible Men of Mars"; two in the second, "After an Age" and "Murder From the Moon") that were renewed. I've uploaded new versions of the djvu files removing the copyrighted sections (assuming 95 years after publication per the Hirtle chart), and carefully checked all other issues of this (and some other pulp mags) that are on Wikisource. These two issues are the only ones that are affected. Unsure what's the best way to deal with the pages that have already been proofread (about ten pages in total, volume 15 issue 10 only, including one page that has some text from another story at the start). -- Yodin T 21:31, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I've checked them again, and these are the only affected pages containing copyrighted text (all in volume 15 issue 10; none from volume 16 issue 11 were created before the scans had the copyrighted stories removed): pp. 8, 10, 11, 12, 17, 21, 27, 29, 36, 37 (and p. 58, which is the one that also contains another story). I've replaced the copyrighted text on the pages with text removed, and guess the previous revisions of these pages should be revdel'd (or maybe full deletion of all these except p. 58), along with the previous versions of the djvu files? -- Yodin T 14:35, 21 May 2022 (UTC)


 * This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 14:17, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

The Social Importance of the Modern School
Article, or possibly a speech, by Emma Goldman. The text here gives. RevoltLib gives no further info, but marxists.org claims it was published in Mother Earth in 1916. Mother Earth being a monthly published by Goldman herself (with contributions from many luminaries). However, I dug up the 1916 issues on HathiTrust (they have multiple copies) and can find no trace of it there. The 1935 original publication is entirely unattested. So the first actual publication I find is the 1972 Vintage Books publication. Unless the claimed 1916 publication, or a 1935 publication without a copyright notice, is located this would seem to be a copyvio.Incidentally, if anyone is at all interested in this area, systematically proofreading Mother Earth from the first issue looks like it would be a worthwhile project. Let me know if you would like help making DjVus out of the HathiTrust scans. Xover (talk) 14:43, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
 * The “c. 1935” is not a publication date, but an authorship date. Red Emma Speaks gives the following as the source:
 * “The Social Importance of the Modern School” (and fragment on sex education), unpublished typescripts, Emma Goldman Papers, New York Public Library, Manuscript Division (n.d.).
 * This would seem to indicate that the first publication was in Red Emma Speaks, meaning that the copyright for this essay dates to that publication. However, if that publication did not give a copyright notice specific to this previously unpublished work (instead giving a copyright notice for editorial work), then the work is in the public domain for failure to state a specific copyright claim. The new work would also have needed permission from the holders of the copyright in the unpublished work. The case is not perfectly clear; I want to do a little more research first. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 16:25, 17 September 2022 (UTC)


 * This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 15:04, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Higglety Pigglety, My Black Hen
Anybody up for doing some research on this one? It was transwikied here from enWP in 2007. The few (very unreliable) references I found in a dumb google search suggested this is 16th/17th-century, so if we can find some reasonably reliable source to back that up we can maybe slap a PD-old on it and be done. But wise from Happy Birthday and similar situations, we can't really assume that's so without checking. And if it's really 16th/17th-century there has to be a pre-1927 printed collection of nursery rhymes somewhere that includes (so we could even scan-back it). Xover (talk) 18:29, 21 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Maybe 801 on pg. 217 here ? MarkLSteadman (talk) 18:39, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Google won't let me see the contents of that, but Edward Williams Byron Nicholson would seem to be a pretty good source, yes. Does IA have a decent scan of it? Xover (talk) 18:43, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
 * The scan is here of good quality. I see a bunch under Higglepy piggleby or Hickety pickety (e.g. )as well. MarkLSteadman (talk) 18:58, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
 * So from some searching, we have numerous versions to choose from. There are:
 * The version most common in "Mother Goose" books in the 1800s
 * The Book of Nursery Rhymes Complete (1846)
 * Old Nurse's Book of Rhymes, Jingles and Ditties (1858)
 * Mother Goose's Chimes, Rhymes & Melodies (1861?)
 * Mother Goose's Melodies (c.1869-1878)
 * Mother Goose's Melodies (1869)
 * Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes (1877)
 * The Nursery Rhymes of England (1886)
 * 4 versions in The Counting-Out Rhymes of Children (1888)
 * 2 versions (plus includes 4 from above with attribution) in Golspie: Contributions to its Folklore (1897)
 * The closest I've found to the one that was on the page, in First-Grade Manual: A Help-Book for Teachers (1923)
 * - ei (talk) 02:53, 24 October 2022 (UTC)


 * This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 15:09, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Free and Open Software: Paradigm for a New Intellectual Commons
2009 speech by Eben Moglen, transcribed by an IP from a YouTube recording of the conference. The speech is obviously prepared (i.e. not off the cuff), and there are no traces of any compatible licensing. Moglen has not himself published the speech that I have found. Xover (talk) 14:28, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
 * See also here; I believe that this work (and many of his works) could be licensed, if we asked, considering his support for free software. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 14:53, 22 September 2022 (UTC)


 * This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 15:19, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Fangs of Gold
Story by Robert E. Howard, first published as "The People of the Serpent" in Strange Detective Stories in the February 1934 issue. Apparently there was a mixup of the titles of two stories in that issue ("The Tomb's Secret"), and subsequent attempts to remedy by switching titles in later collections (and to make the chaos perfect, there's a Howard collection including related stories titled Strange Detective Stories, but which does not contain "Fangs of Gold"/"The People of the Serpent"). In any case, the 1934 first publication was with a copyright notice.So… In order to determine the copyright status for this one we'll have to search the copyright renewals, and given the mess of classification, that means both renewals for books and serials (Stanford only has books), and under all the possible titles and/or all the possible registrants (Howard himself, Otis Adelbert Kline, Glenn Lord, Nickel Publications, Ralph Daigh, etc.). Renewal would have had to happen in 1962 give or take a year (so 1961–1963). Anybody up for trawling through it? Xover (talk) 14:13, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep. Searching manually though all serial and (books/)contributions publications, there is no renewal of either the magazine or a story under Howard’s name. As renewals are made under the name of the author, not the claimant, there is no need to search through other names. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 15:12, 23 September 2022 (UTC)


 * This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 15:13, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Georgia v. Public Resources.org and PD-EdictGov
The PD-EdictGov template, while not wrong, and used across multiple wikis in the exact same form... is bad. It doesn't actually explain anything, or tell you "why": it only refers to the Compendium. Old conversations, linked from the talk pages of this template across multiple wikis, make it clear that questions about "why", since it's not stated in 17 USC, and "what does this actually mean", since it's buried in the depths of history, and "why are we listening to the Compendium about something that isn't in 17 USC", abounded, and were never really answered.

The decision in Georgia did not change this rule. What the Supreme Court did, in Georgia, is to validate a argument that actually places the "government edicts principle" on a basis that isn't buried in the depths of 200+ year old legal trivia...it instead divorces the "government edicts principle" from the vague "for reasons of public policy" justification, and places it on the grounds of fundamental copyright principles; giving us, in a way, a test that is actually usable, instead of just having to know "what is or is not an edict" and requiring a knowledge of the incredibly obscure history to actually get it.

Edicts of government are basically the same thing as monkey selfies.

To actually understand this.... unfortunately, the Compendium, and the Georgia decision, and even the English Wikipedia article on "edicts of government" don't give the needed context, which gets into obscure facts of history and the way copyrights actually came into being in the US: the history of "common law" in the US, and the exact intention of Congress when passing the Copyright Act of 1790.

I have started a discussion, on the English Wikipedia, at w:Talk:Edict of government, with what is essentially a long screed, explaining what the Court was telling us in Georgia, what they were actually telling us about this in Wheaton v. Peters, back in 1834, when actually first validating the "government edicts principle" as law in the US, and giving the "common law in the US" context to understand why it's not written down.

I'm mentioning this here, and intend to post this message across multiple wikis, to attract interested editors.... not to canvass for a discussion there, to change the article, but to achieve a consensus there, about rewriting that article so that it is based on something other than "the Compendium says so", that it can be used (the article, and the consensus) to rewrite this template on every wiki so that it actually says something useful, instead of the just "because the USCO says so" that seems to have been the conclusion of most discussions about this subject.


 * As a footnote, this doesn't apply to most edicts of the US federal government... since the definition of "works of the US Government" specifically says "prepared by", and doesn't require authorship, it includes such edicts. They are denied protection separately. Jarnsax 22:31, 8 October 2022 (UTC)


 * @Jarnsax: Changing our template is not necessarily that hard. But I am not quite seeing what change it is you are wanting. Could you sketch out the concrete change to wording you think is needed? I haven't read Georgia v. PRO since it came out, so I am a little hazy on the details. But as I recall the biggest takeaway at the time was that it in effect expanded the test from a narrow force-of-law to a much wider and additional authored by or under instruction of a competent legislative assembly. I.e. that things that are not actually laws qua laws, so long as they would otherwise be authored by (and copyrighted by) a competent legislative body, also fall under the government edicts doctrine. Xover (talk) 09:10, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
 * @Xover They go into detail about how the "creators" of edicts are not their authors, that the "we the people" are.. i.e. no "human" authorship.
 * Edicts, when "made", actually define what the law is. Moving a punctuation mark, or omitting a "the", etc. changes the meaning. So they are not "original expressions of creativity". If they were, they wouldn't be the edict "we" made, they would be a derivative work of it, and misstate what the edict "is".
 * Edicts do not have to have the force of law. They are "methods of operation" of the legal system, and "methods of operation" are specifically uncopyrightable.
 * This is basically 17 U.S. Code § 102. The Court said edicts fail all on all three... that's why I called them "monkey selfies". They are not "valid subject matter".
 * So we can basically just say that, probably much better, and then the Compendium list like we do now, leave the UN stuff alone, and tell people use the other template for US government edicts.
 * The actual 'applicability' didn't change, and the Court didn't 'overturn' anything to expand it. The existing template was just always vague, because nobody knew why the Compendium said that. It's the same everywhere else, there are long old discussions full of people asking the question. Jarnsax (talk) 01:43, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The whole thing goes back beyond when enwiki was the only one. Jarnsax (talk) 01:51, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The actual "why" was what the first sentence of Wharton was actually saying, in the context of the obscure 200 year old legal trivia I went into over at the article. Jarnsax (talk) 02:02, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * "Edict-adjacent" stuff, that's far enough away that it's not even a "method of operation", just isn't an edict, and all this doesn't apply... that why they eventually wrote the "works of the US Goverment" rule, to exclude such "stuff" since it is valid subject matter. Some of the later court rulings had also validated that since it was an "obligation" to publish stuff without copyright, anything "not an edict" that was published with it, in it's official version (I think it was headnotes, specifically, without looking it up) also entered the PD... any copyright in it was invalidated, even if it belonged to someone else. They could sue, but just for damages. Jarnsax (talk) 02:23, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Wheaton didn't validate that, since the lawsuit was about someone (the old court reporter) trying to claim a copyright in the Court's actual decisions themselves... the new reporter had removed everything but the actual decisions to publish a cheaper copy. It was just never asked Jarnsax (talk) 02:33, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * As far as "what is an edict", in general... let's put it this way.
 * The actual preprinted form, that a policer officer uses, when he writes out a traffic ticket, is an edict...it's telling him how to write out a ticket. So is the ticket itself, since it's basically an order to "respond" with the force of law. Jarnsax (talk) 02:54, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * All the "legislative sausage" stuff, that goes into writing the statute, but doesn't actually have the force of law (like committee reports)... the "legislative history". One point of "annotations" is when the actual language of the statute isn't clear, courts have to look at that stuff it points at to figure out what the legislature meant to say, the actual "law", so it is actually part of the "edict" as a "thing". Jarnsax (talk) 06:10, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Hmm. Is what you're saying that edicts, as articulated in Georgia v. PRO, is much wider even than what I sketched above (force-of-law + created by competent legislative assembly)?The UN stuff in the template is just saying that the UN isn't a government of any kind, so edicts doesn't apply. We could as well have mentioned "all non-government organisations" (and most IGOs), but the UN is an obvious case. Xover (talk) 06:30, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I'd actually been rereading it, basically to dig this out, lol.
 * The really specific language is where the Court was describing what had been held in the Eleventh Circuit (and upholding it)... I'm going to yank all the repeated citations out of this so it's readable. The bolding is mine.
 * The Court began by reviewing the three 19th-century cases in which we articulated the government edicts doctrine. See Wheaton v. Peters, 8 Pet. 591 (1834); Banks v. Manchester, 128 U.S. 244 (1888); Callaghan v. Myers, 128 U.S. 617 (1888). The Court understood those cases to establish a “rule” based on an interpretation of the statutory term “author” that “works created by courts in the performance of their official duties did not belong to the judges” but instead fell “in the public domain.” In the Court’s view, that rule “derive[s] from first principles about the nature of law in our democracy.” In a democracy, the Court reasoned, “the People” are “the constructive authors” of the law, and judges and legislators are merely “draftsmen . . . exercising delegated authority.” The Court therefore deemed the “ultimate inquiry” to be whether a work is “attributable to the constructive authorship of the People.” The Court identified three factors to guide that inquiry: “the identity of the public official who created the work; the nature of the work; and the process by which the work was produced.” The Court found that each of those factors cut in favor of treating the OCGA annotations as government edicts authored by the People. It therefore rejected the Commission’s assertion of copyright, vacated the injunction against PRO, and directed that judgment be entered for PRO.
 * (inserted later) This is what the 11th Circuit actually said "Because our ultimate inquiry is whether a work is authored by the People, meaning whether it represents an articulation of the sovereign will, our analysis is guided by a consideration of those characteristics that are the hallmarks of law. In particular, we rely on the identity of the public officials who created the work, the authoritativeness of the work, and the process by which the work was created. These are critical markers. Where all three point in the direction that a work was made in the exercise of sovereign power -- which is to say where the official who created the work is entrusted with delegated sovereign authority, where the work carries authoritative weight, and where the work was created through the procedural channels in which sovereign power ordinarily flows -- it follows that the work would be attributable to the constructive authorship of the People, and therefore uncopyrightable."
 * So, not just fail, but epic fail. :)
 * A couple of bits from later on:
 * "Pursuant to “a judicial consensus” dating back to Wheaton, judges could not assert copyright in “whatever work they perform in their capacity as judges.” Rather, “[t]he whole work done by the judges constitutes the authentic exposition and interpretation of the law, which, binding every citizen, is free for publication to all.”"
 * "Moreover, just as the doctrine applies to “whatever work [judges] perform in their capacity as judges,” it applies to whatever work legislators perform in their capacity as legislators. That of course includes final legislation, but it also includes explanatory and procedural materials legislators create in the discharge of their legislative duties. In the same way that judges cannot be the authors of their headnotes and syllabi, legislators cannot be the authors of (for example) their floor statements, committee reports, and proposed bills. These materials are part of the “whole work done by [legislators],” so they must be “free for publication to all.”
 * That such things "must be free for publication to all" is the old common law "government edicts doctrine"... the first sentence of Wheaton says "the law appears to be well settled in England that since the statute of 3 Anne, the literary property of an author in his works..." when first validating it in US law.
 * They also apply the "public policy reasons" thing to the case at hand towards the end as an illustration:
 * Imagine a Georgia citizen interested in learning his legal rights and duties. If he reads the economy-class version of the Georgia Code available online, he will see laws (list of crazy old stuff snipped) with no hint that important aspects of those laws have been held unconstitutional by the Georgia Supreme Court. See OCGA ... (available at www.legis.ga.gov). Meanwhile, first-class readers with access to the annotations will be assured that these laws are, in crucial respects, unenforceable relics that the legislature has not bothered to narrow or repeal. See ... (available at (long url) for $412.00).
 * If you read the whole thing, they really make the point that none of this is 'new', and that it should have been 'obvious by now' to their audience. They tell the State of Georgia: "A century of cases have rooted the government edicts doctrine in the word “author,” and Congress has repeatedly reused that term without abrogating the doctrine. The term now carries this settled meaning, and “critics of our ruling can take their objections across the street, [where] Congress can correct any mistake it sees.” Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 576 U.S. 446, 456 (2015)." They make similar comments a couple of times.
 * This is why "the Compendium says so, and always did", as I put it. They just never explained why, and it's really obscure, even to me, lol, and I know all kinds of esoteric trivia.
 * Regarding the UN stuff, what 104(b)(5) actually says is if "the work is first published by the United Nations or any of its specialized agencies, or by the Organization of American States" then it gets a copyright. We should probably just say exactly that (this does not apply if...) and link https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/104. Simple is easy. :)
 * Jarnsax (talk) 07:51, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The State of Georgia just wanted to continue charging $412 a pop for people to find out that stuff like consensual sex between adults who aren't married isn't a serious crime. Jarnsax (talk) 08:15, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I should probably point out, specifically, that in what they actually "held", they specifically said public official. They had applied this to judges, and in this case they applied it to legislators, but they told us it's not about a "job title" at all. Jarnsax (talk) 08:25, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * As a incredibly obscure point of trivia, about the UN, they actually have their own rules about what parts of their stuff they will actually assert a copyright claim in. Things like UN Security Council Resolutions are in the public domain. It's commons:Template:PD-UN-doc and friends at commons:Category:PD United Nations license tags. Jarnsax (talk) 08:40, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Or, more technically, the UN itself, which can probably be trusted, has disavowed that they will every assert a copyright claim in certain "stuff", even if someone says they can. It's their version of US government works. Jarnsax (talk) 09:00, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * In England, the "constructive author" of all edicts, period, was "the Crown", the monarchy, not the person, and edicts didn't get a copyright under the statute of 3 Anne. Wheaton told us so, the "sovereign", now "us", the People, wasn't an author under the copyright law. It changed later 'over there' when they made Crown Copyright a thing. Jarnsax (talk) 08:53, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * That they are "methods of operation of government/the legal system" isn't really about authorship, it's in next provision of that same Code section:
 * In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.
 * So even if they were, somehow, original works of authorship of someone other than "the People"... still no. And it's explanatory. That you can't copyright "how" the government and legal system actually works, it's "method of operation", and the law specifically says you can't. Jarnsax (talk) 09:17, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * You can, as a person, who "has" authority, but is clearly not "using" it, write your own, unofficial, description of "how" stuff works, and claim authorship in the original bits of that. It's actually called an "official proclamation" in ye olde law dictionary when talking about edicts. Jarnsax (talk) 09:27, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * How a Bill becomes a Law, lol, since it's "author" is the House of Representatives, still isn't an edict. It just doesn't matter because of "US government works", unless you are wondering if these are the rules they actually follow, and this document is what made it that way (if it actually is an edict). Jarnsax (talk) 10:07, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The "entire" pile of dead trees that is effectively "us", the People, muttering to ourselves as we make up "our" mind, and then "saying what we decided" as a statute/decision/ruling, whatever you call it; or telling all the little fiddly bits of "our" government what their job is and how to carry it out..... that's basically what edicts are. The stuff you have to read to actually know "the law" in the very general sense. Jarnsax (talk) 19:04, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I keep talking about "the People", like the court did, just because this is all about stuff in a democracy. In a more general sense, it's about the "sovereign authority" of the particular country, whatever person, legislative body, or whatever else it is called. The College of Cardinals chooses new Popes, and the Pope is a head of government....so the "College of Cardinals" has the authority to make edicts: it's what they are doing when they choose the new Pope.
 * If the Vatican wasn't actually a "government" this would not apply. They would still be "edicts" but not governmental ones. That's why they specifically point at UN stuff, to rule out arguments based on "treaties give UN stuff binding force" trying to drag them into the scope of the rule. Jarnsax (talk) 19:26, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The US government has always made it extremely clear (and this come up) that "we" are emphatically not delegating authority to the UN, or to the bodies that write international treaties that we join.
 * Even if the Senate "accedes to" a treaty, and that treaty actually says "upon acceptance of this treaty by a State, all of it's provisions shall immediately enter into force, as law, in that State"... in the US, it does not happen unless "we" actually say so ourselves, explicitly.
 * For it to be otherwise would be unconstitutional. The Senate can't make law by itself. Jarnsax (talk) 19:40, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * This is 'how' the US doesn't accept the authority of things like the "International Court of Justice", even though the UN "says" it has global  jurisdiction over stuff like war crimes, crimes against humanity, etc. "We" never said so. Jarnsax (talk) 19:52, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The actual "requirement" that we write all that stuff down.... it's part of that abstract concept that is "the law" in it's entirely, even if not actually "the statute" or "the decision", and (public policy reasons) "secret laws" are vastly worse than "ex post facto laws", since there is no "proof" that they actually exist.
 * Actually "writing that stuff down", and looking at it later, is part of the "mode of operation" of the government and legal system... the entire "mass" of "governmental edicts" is actually defining that mode of operation. Jarnsax (talk) 20:14, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I think the best I can get to as a 'definition', at this point is:
 * Edicts of governments are works of the "constructive authorship of the sovereign power", created by those public officials who have been delegated the authority to make them. Public officials are not the "author" of such works that they create. Edicts include all constitutional and statutory laws, and other such works that "constitute the authentic exposition and interpretation of the law", in it's general sense, by public officials. Such works define and create the "mode of operation" of government and the legal system, and need not carry the "force of law". All edicts of government are not valid "subject matter of copyright" under 17 U.S. Code §102(a), as held by the Supreme Court in Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., and are specifically denied copyright protection as "modes of operation" by 17 U.S. Code §102(b).
 * Jarnsax (talk) 22:48, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Still giving the Compendium list as 'illustration'. Jarnsax (talk) 22:51, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * And something like, "Though assertions of copyright protection made by foreign governments, in their own edicts and under their own laws, are not enforceable under US law per 17 U.S. Code § 104(c), longstanding Wikimedia Foundation policy requests that the English Wikisource respect such claims. This does not apply to such unenforceable claims made by sub-national governments of the United States. Most foreign governments do not make such claims." Jarnsax (talk) 23:17, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * People linked the source of that back in the old conversations, it predates the meta page and the stuff that cause it to be written. It's something Jimbo decided while in "God mode", all the way back in 2005 or so. Jarnsax (talk) 23:20, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * All of this is kinda related to the "primacy", as it was put ^up there somewhere^ of the Compendium, since it doesn't have the force of law, and it's come up more than once.
 * Courts don't have to listen to the Compendium, and actually only consider it as an 'argument with persuasive force.' What actually matters is that the records of the Copyright Office are considered prima facie evidence for what they say... what those records say is "presumed" to be correct, and it's on you to prove otherwise to attack the validity of that copyright in court; that the records actually say otherwise (an ad. int. registration was never perfected, for example), that the USCO actually made an obvious mistake shown in the record (such as, author didn't actually sign the card), that someone actually lied to the USCO (they really didn't comply with the manufacturing clause, the author wasn't a citizen or domiciliary, etc.), or something similar (Feist v. Rural, you can't copyright a phone book).
 * Otherwise, you have to show the court that this "presumably valid" copyright (in the work as actually deposited, as a "whole", which includes any copyrightable design elements) didn't actually apply to what you copied... the "work as deposited" was really a "compilation" to begin with, and what you copied wasn't "new and original" and wasn't of the authorship of the claimant (or otherwise not "valid subject matter" - see Feist etc.).
 * Since the Compendium actually details what the USCO thinks the law is, and describes how they apply it... we should listen to them about that because the courts do, and they listen to the Supreme Court and Congress because it's their job.
 * If you think the Compendium is actually wrong on some point, you are probably in error, or raising something that is actually an "open question" where their 'practice' is to act conservatively (they err on the side of registering stuff, deliberately, and leave it to the courts). When they say "No, we won't register that"... it's not a 'conservative' statement, and we are probably on very firm ground listening to them.
 * There's usually explicit law or a Court decision behind their opinion, or 'widely held' scholarly opinion that hasn't actually been addressed by Congress or a lawsuit (usually because everyone agrees it's obvious, or the whole history behind Georgia, the Blue Book, etc. - when people just assert copyright claims regardless and say "sue us", which wasn't an issue under mandatory registration). The Compendium reflects hundreds, if not thousands, of "man-years" of accumulated 'corporate' experience, and they actually read the "legislative history". Jarnsax (talk) 21:18, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment: You seem pretty knowledgable. In all of this, I'm trying to determine if any of the following things can be legally considered public domain in the US as "authored by an arm of the legislature in the course of its legislative duties":
 * Contracts between city governments and private companies
 * City resolutions (as opposed to ordinances which are edicts)
 * City council meeting minutes and agendas
 * Do you have an answer to whether the specific things listed above could, per Georgia v. Public Resources.org, be considered in the public domain? And if so, do we need a template explaining their legal situation? I'm about ready to get to work on archiving some legislative documents of small towns on Commons, which is why I ask. PseudoSkull (talk) 22:02, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @PseudoSkull The best statement of the principle is straight from Georgia (cited in 313.6(C)(2) of the Compendium)...
 * Legislators and judges “empowered to speak with the force of law cannot be the authors of—and therefore cannot copyright—the works they create in the course of their official duties.”
 * Regarding a contract, I believe it would be generally be copyrightable, as not actually written by the "legislative body" itself... I would expect normally it would be negotiated between lawyers of the two parties.
 * Resolutions, and minutes/agendas, though, are authored by the body "itself"... even if not having the force of law, they are created by the body "in the course of it's official duties", so would be PD per Georgia's statement of the rule. Jarnsax (talk) 22:24, 23 May 2023 (UTC)


 * This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 15:18, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Threats to the peaceful observance of the bicentennial
Minutes of 1973 Congressional hearing. Contains prepared testimony of private individuals (researchers, leaders of think tanks, etc.). Public record but not public domain. Xover (talk) 09:47, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep. If not, it is clearly  . TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 13:06, 19 October 2022 (UTC)


 * This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 15:29, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

The Third International After Lenin
Programme of the Third International (1928), first published in English (it says) in 1929, which lacks a license. It is also not a previously published edition (marxists.org calls it their own edition). The translation is claimed to be no-notice, but not the original. Xover (talk) 09:52, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
 * At least the first part of chapter 1 is identical to the version translated by John C. Wright, first published in 1936 (1957 version: https://archive.org/details/thirdinternation00trit/). Definitely doesn't match the version serialised in The Militant from 1928-1929 by James P. Cannon. -ei (talk) 12:43, 19 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I have requested what appears to be the first English translation of this book. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 13:06, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Xover: I just picked up a copy of the 1936 edition, which has no copyright notice (and would thus be ). It seems fairly similar to the 1957 second edition above, whose copyright was not renewed. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 19:49, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
 * . The original has just slipped into the PD in the US. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 14:31, 6 January 2024 (UTC)


 * This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 15:43, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Works by Richard Bedford Bennett
There are two works by Bennett on Wikisource: Telegram to David Webster and First Bennett Radio Address. They're tagged as PD-1996, but Bennett died in 1947, meaning that his works only because PD in Canada with pma. 50 in 1998. Is there some other, more obscure provision by which these works were PD in Canada in 1996? Do either of these works qualify for PD-CAGov? —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 06:45, 8 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Well, the first issue is that the uploaders appear to have confused date of creation with date of publication. The telegram was not published at the time it was sent and is more likely to have been first published relatively recently from archival research (it's sourced to the actual telegram form, which is unlikely to have been published at the time). The radio address was a performance of the underlying work, not a publication, but here it is much more plausible that publication happened somewhat contemporaneously with the broadcast. In any case, we need to know when and where these were first published in order to determine copyright status. Xover (talk) 07:10, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Meh. I started to delete this and then thought better of it. We need to dig into whether Bennett was a sitting PM (i.e. whether CAGov applies), where and when published, US status in addition to CA status, and any effects of the CA copyright term extension that happened at the turn of the year. I still don't see an obvious path to PD for these two texts, but we do need to have all the relevant factors on the table before concluding. Xover (talk) 07:50, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Bennett was Prime minister when he delivered the January 1935 speeches, but that probably doesn't affect the ordinary copyright if the speeches were not published by the Crown. -- Asclepias (talk) 21:08, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Regarding First Bennett Radio Address, it was kept in a 2011 discussion on the assumption of it having been under Crown Copyright, which explains why the closing admin then tagged it the same day as PD-1996 . But that assumption seems wrong. The fives speeches of January 1935, The Premier speaks to the people, were published in five booklets by the "Dominion Conservative Headquarters" . Not by the government. The applicable Canadian copyright would probably be the ordinary copyright, which was 50 years p.m.a. when it expired in 1998. -- Asclepias (talk) 21:08, 4 March 2023 (UTC) On the other hand, the Act speaks of "prepared or published" and I suppose that the question might be asked if a political speech of the Prime minister, or of another minister, could be considered to have been "prepared [...] by or under the direction or control of" the government. Maybe or maybe not. The fact that the speeches were published by the political party and not by the government may be an indication that they are not considered prepared by the government either. I don't know really. Scholars may have written something about that.  -- Asclepias (talk) 23:49, 4 March 2023 (UTC)


 * This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 16:37, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Avon_Fantasy_Reader/Issue_11/Uncommon_Castaway
Per Proposed_deletions ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:10, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: Following this one up at WS:PD#Avon Fantasy Reader/Issue 11/Uncommon Castaway, but leaving this thread open until that is resolved in order to leave a trace in the WS:CV archives since the issue is about copyright. --Xover (talk) 07:31, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The thread is now archived at Proposed deletions/Archives/2022 Xover (talk) 16:42, 6 January 2024 (UTC)


 * This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 16:43, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Index:Finding the missing link to a successful Philippine counterinsurgency strategy (IA findingmissingli109453393).pdf
Not by US personell. I appreciate the creator was acting in good faith, but some degree of checking of the Commons details against those actually in the file is needed. Also nominated for DR at Commons. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 23:40, 9 December 2022 (UTC)


 * It is by someone who is an employee of the government of the Philippines which also doesn't have copyright. So we can just tag it PD-PhilGovDoc no? "No prior approval or conditions shall be required for the use for any purpose of  … dissertations …" MarkLSteadman (talk) 00:16, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Depends if wiriting a thesis at a US college is considered "official" I think..ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 00:56, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I would think that if you the government is sending you there then yes, writing a dissertation is a regular part of your duties. Presumably if the government sends you to attend a school program and you spend all your time partying and don't attend classes / do the dissertation etc. you are not doing your job. (Philippines includes all work done by government employees as part of their duties as government works).
 * I could understand saying that PD-PhilGovDoc is only relevant as far as determining what works are eligible for URAA restoration as otherwise Philippine copyright status is irrelevant to US copyright law as only Edicts would be noncopyrightable in the US. MarkLSteadman (talk) 11:17, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Hmm. I see echoes of PD-USGov in your reasoning here. Philippine copyright law doesn't talk about "officers" of the government or their duties. It specifically deals with "works of the Government". I am not at all sure we can derive a general copyright exemption for Philippine army officers, even if they go to Naval School in the US on the government's dime.I am also not immediately certain whether this thesis would count as a US work or a Philippine work under Berne (and therefore under US copyright). Peni may be a Philippine citizen, but they are also a "domiciliary" of the US at the time of publication (and writing).But I think, perhaps, the most decisive point is your latter one: Philippine government works that are not edicts must have some independent path to compatible licensing in the US: either due to expiry, ineligibility, free licensing, or similar. Otherwise this work would be just like a novel that's PD abroad due to expiry of a pma. 70 term, but still in copyright in the US due to a pub. +95 term (with or without URAA restoration). Xover (talk) 20:10, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
 * From IPOPHL MEMORANDUM CIRCULAR NO. 2020 024, 4.1 []:
 * No copyright on works of the Government. - No copyright shall subsist in any work of the Government created by an officer or employee thereof as a part of his or her regularly prescribed official duties, as defined above. MarkLSteadman (talk) 21:32, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * My head hurts. @MarkLSteadman: Awesome find Mark! I had completely ignored that link thinking it was essentially irrelevant in light of the text of the copyright act itself, but I see now that is like the US Copyright Circular and maybe a bit more too: it essentially changes the law (within some constraints).But I am now even more confused about how to deal with a work first published in the US in 2007 (so pma. 70 US copyright), authored by the (extended) Philippine government and exempted from copyright in the Philippines (but possibly requiring permission before commercial use in the Philippine jurisdiction). I think maybe we'll have to sift through Berne looking for guidance on the "country of origin" to crack this nut.Incidentally, note that the definition of "regular duties" is quite narrow in this circular: it refers specifically to a form for describing a person's duties, rather than a general "anything that could be considered to be …". I am not at all convinced we can assume this to fall within the scope of their "regular duties". Xover (talk) 12:11, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Berne, it turns out, isn't all that concerned with the nationality of the author, only where the work was first published. So this would be a US work, and US copyright laws apply. For a work published in 2007 this means pma. 70 (so presumably a good long way in the future). There are no obvious exceptions in US law or copyright office practice that would exempt this work from copyright in the US.The Berne rules apply to all signatories, including the Philippines, but they are free to apply other rules, such as government work exceptions. So this may be PD in the Philippines as a government work (but note my hesitation above); just not in the US which is the relevant bit for our purposes. Xover (talk) 10:56, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Well US copyright could have been transferred to the Naval Postgraduate School and hence the US Government who could then have released it. That is a possibility given of https://libguides.nps.edu/copyright/students/international (the student chooses how to use their copyright via a distribution agreement as part of the signed thesis release."These documents are approved for publication by signature via the NPS Thesis Release form on file with the Thesis Processing Office.") and https://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/3393?show=full with it's distribution statement ("Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.").  MarkLSteadman (talk) 12:36, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, let's assume for the sake of argument that that's so… Where does that get us? The US government can hold copyrights it acquires through transfer of title (deed etc.), it just can't be an author for copyright purposes. If we assume Peni transferred their copyright to the US government by way of NPS, that just means we now need the US government to release it under a compatible license. "Public release" is just "access to information" and independent of copyright. "Distribution unlimited" just means "not classified", but even if it was taken as an implied license to distribute copies under copyright law, it would still be equivalent to a -ND license which isn't permitted here.Bottom line is that if there's a path to us keeping this then I am not seeing it. As https://libguides.nps.edu/copyright/students/international says: . Xover (talk) 14:12, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I was hoping to see if there was a release my thesis under a CC license box in the agreement but if so there is no record on it so that path is also closed. As an aside, it would have been helpful if the NPS when uploading it to the Internet Archive to have used a CC ND license. MarkLSteadman (talk) 16:01, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm continually amazed at the sloppy licensing practices of big institutions and government entities. Most of the time, this stuff ain't that difficult; and by being more careful about documenting this stuff it generally becomes a lot easier for everyone. Oh well. Xover (talk) 19:06, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, and let me also correct my own sloppy phrasing up above, so as to not confuse future readers. It's not that the US Federal government can't be authors for copyright purposes, it's rather that the copyright act explicitly exempts works authored by the government from copyright protection. The distinction is rarely relevant, and I found the issue confused in a number of sources early on, so I tend to be sloppy here. But in some on-going unrelated discussions the distinction is material and so I want to be pedantically clear. PD-USGov is for works authored by the government, which are not protected by the copyright act, but works authored by others can have their copyright end up in the government's hands and the government can enforce those copyrights. Xover (talk) 08:17, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Agree with MarkLSteadman (talk) 19:34, 31 May 2023 (UTC)


 * This section was archived on a request by: --Xover (talk) 16:51, 6 January 2024 (UTC)