Talk:Press releases/Public domain day

Let's see if I have this all straight.

• Life + 70 years (done by calendar year) defines entry into the public domain for the UK. It also does, in fact, for Ireland and Austria, so that Freud and Yeats should be OK. See http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Help:Public_domain.
• For the USA, whatever it is, it's not that. So Zane Grey needs to be replaced.
• Wikisource's main yardstick is US public domain. The legal position for it as US-based archive is based on http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Code/Title_17/Chapter_1/Section_108; and the interpretation is that not quite all works we are talking about could be placed there. Wikilivres operates from Canada and provides a fallback.
• As for Commons: Speex would be the preferred file format for speech recordings, and in any case the restriction to free file types means something uploaded needs to be in the Ogg family. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:File_types#Sound for details.
• Under http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing, it looks like there would be an issue on a recording of late Yeats. It says

"Wikimedia Commons accepts only media

• that are explicitly freely licensed, or
• that are in the public domain in at least the United States and in the source country of the work."

On the face of it we are in trouble on the second point.

Charles Matthews 08:30, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

• I can do WAV or MP3 to OGG trivially. Speex is misdirection; it's a codec for Voice over IP. I'm just going to look for this copyright concern. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:03, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
• This is the nasty 'gotcha' in US copyright law....

• for works first published before 1978: until 95 years after the first publication, and
• for works first published 1978 or later: until 70 years after the author's death, or for anonymous works or work made for hire, until the shorter of 95 years since the first publication or 120 years since the creation of the work.
• Works published before 1923 are in the public domain.

So, for Yeats there is a requirement to know when his stuff was published in the US. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:10, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

• I'm seeking definitive answers; submitted a query to the Library of Congress asking what of Yeats is PD from next year. Found the following listing on Gutenburg Project. That is safe-bet stuff as far as being PD goes. I might email them as well to see if they can answer faster than LoC. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:05, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

• Redirected to the US Copyright office by the LoC. Submitted a query with them for the definitive list of "safe" Yeats works. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:37, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, AFAIK it can be copyright free in the US under a variety of rules - Template:PD-US-no notice, Template:PD-US-not_renewed or Template:PD-US-1923. So we have a few bites of the cherry for each work, but it is anything but simple, especially for the layman (who could probably under 1923 but that's about it). Jarry1250 11:34, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

• Emailed the UK's Poetry Society to ask if the Poet Laureate might consider donating a recording. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:50, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
• Submitted an appeal to the Irish National Theatre. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:01, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Priorities

My brief thoughts about the key things we need to do about this press release:

a) Timing - needs to go out on evening of Tuesday 29th so most likley to get published - catch the light news period and maximise newsworthiness

b) Accuracy - need to check and double check that all our facts are correct w.r.t copyright law in UK and US

c) Eye-catching - Headline, byline, details focus on the most interesting examples

d) Promotion - release should promote WMUK and its activities, e.g. Britain Loves Wikipedia, as much as possible

e) Approval - should be approved by the board (ideally delegated to a couple of board members)

f) Dissemination - suggest first posted on the blog, then shared on facebook, twitter, email list and emailed to our media contacts

Have I missed anything? AndrewRT 14:51, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Steve's suggested rewrite

Howard Carter, Ford Madox Ford and Havelock Ellis (celebrate or star) on 'Public Dominion Day 2010.'

What do Howard Carter, discoverer of the famed tomb of King Tutankhamen, novelist Ford Madox Ford, and sexologist Havelock Ellis all share in common? They all died in 1939. On New Year's Day 2010 all their works enter the public domain in the UK and become free for any use

At the opening of Public Records in Britain each year, the press pore over interesting items replacing decades-old speculation with facts. There is a lesser-known benefit to Britain's cultural history; all authors and artists who died seventy years ago have their work freed of copyright restrictions. This means that in the Internet age, their works can now be used any way people can conceive. For instance, text might be freely downloaded to e-book readers, an electronic item rising in popularity; or anyone could create audio versions.

Wikimedia UK anticipates January 1, "Public Domain Day", 2010 being a great year for additions to the Wikimedia digital Commons. The poetry of W. B. Yeats, the works of Sigmund Freud, and Arthur Rackham's classic children's book illustrations are all set to enter the public domain. When the complexities of copyright no longer encumber the reuse of old works, new classics are often created. Perhaps the definitive example of this is "It's a Wonderful Life", the 1946 Frank Capra film that became a Christmas classic in the 1980s.

Wikimedia UK actively promotes the uploading of copyright-free text to Wikisource, a complementary project site to Wikipedia. Audio recordings of public domain works may be added to the Wikimedia Commons site, and Wikimedia UK invites you to join us and help digitise and preserve our common cultural heritage. Through our collaborative projects Wikimedia seeks to make our cultural heritage available for everyone to share, build on, and simply enjoy.