Template talk:PD-USSR

For discussions about this template see Wikipedia talk:Image copyright tags --Denniss 10:57, 2005 May 1 (UTC)

I believe this template is completely wrong. See Wikipedia_talk:Copyrights. Lupo 08:57, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

And then there's the duplicate template {{Sovietpd}}. Lupo 10:44, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Interwiki link to vi:

Please add an interwiki link to the Vietnamese version of this template:

[[vi:Tiêu bản:PD-Soviet]]

Thanks.

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 08:55, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

No, please don't; and please delete the tag on the Vietnamese WikiPedia. This tag is wrong. Lupo 07:55, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Previous discussions on this template

• March/April 2005 - No clear outcome
• January 2006 - arguments for why pre-1973 is very doubtful, if not outright incorrect
• TfD discussion from February 2006.

User:Irpen decided after not even one day of discussion to remove the TfD notice from the template. [1] {{Sovietpd}} now redirects to this template. Lupo 08:33, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

• About a possible 1954 cut-off date for works becoming PD in Russia, see Wikipedia_talk:Copyrights/archive5#Link_to_Russian_Wikisource. Lupo 10:45, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

"User Ipren decided" because it was obvious from less than a day vote that the proposal to delete the template was dead. Many votes were cast and none of them was delete. To cotninue the vote would have been meaningless. The proposal to delete is thus dead. In no way it prevents you from rasing the entirely valid discussion on template modification. Go right ahead. --Irpen 16:25, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

The discussions are already ongoing. Please do not try to cut it short just because you don't seem to care. Thank you. I do think until this IMO patently false tag is corrected, it should be deprecated with a warning and a pointer to the discussion like I did. I do resent your undoing this. Lupo 16:35, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

If you "do think" something, propose it first and wait for feedback, since WP works by consensus rather than by single individuals deciding the issues on their own. See what others "think" and than proceed. I am not trying to cut short any discussions. I am requesting that you withhold any unilateral actions while discussions are ongoing. --Irpen 16:40, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I have re-instated the link to the talk page, but left the deprecation bit out. I voiced my concerns long ago. You didn't voice any opposition or disagreement then. Apparently it's necessary to advertise this more broadly, and using the tag itself to do so it an obvious way. Lupo 16:43, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

The current version is fine with me. Thank you. --Irpen 17:04, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

JYolkowski's rewrite

Maybe JYolkowski's rewrite helps to clarify matters, but it should be noted that it essentially is still equivalent to the previous version, but it may highlight the problem better. Although Soviet works published in the USSR pre-1973 were not copyrighted in the U.S. due to a lack of copyright treaties (as pointed out by 17 USC 104(b)(2)), such works became eligible for retroactive copyright restoration in the U.S. when Russia (and the other successor nations) joined the Berne Convention and the U.S. then passed the URAA (see WP:PD for a brief explanation of the URAA). See 17 USC 104a(h)(6)(C)(iii). Thus such works are only in the public domain in the U.S. if they were in the public domain in Russia on January 1, 1996 (see 17 USC 104a(h)(6)(B)).

Therefore, a tag that states precisely under which conditions a work (or at least, an image) entered the public domain in the USSR would make much more sense than this pre-1973 business. The USSR changed its copyright laws several times, and one would have to examine all these laws and their implementation acts to figure it out. (The implementation provisions are important to make sure one does not overlook a possible case where a new law was applied retroactively to works that had already gone out of copyright under the previous law.)

The whole issue is of course complicated by the fact that there are many successor states of the USSR. Why only consider Russia? Is a USSR work considered to have been simultaneously published in all successor states? As a hypothetical example consider a USSR work that were copyrighted in Russia on January 1, 1996, but out of copyright in the Ukraine on that date. (Granted, I believe that such a case is unlikely, but it illustrates the problems.) What then?

Since this pre-1973 tag also seems to exist on the commons, it may be worthwhile to consider the situation in other countries, too. In particular the European Union would be of interest here. The EU does implement the "rule of the shorter term" (again, see WP:PD) towards non-EU countries, and thus I think for the EU the rule would be "if a Soviet work was in the public domain in the USSR, it is in the public domain in the EU, too". Again, the issue may be complicated in the case of USSR works that are still copyrighted in some but not all successor states of the USSR.

In any case the reasoning "Soviet works published pre-1973 are PD outside the USSR because the USSR was not party to international copyright treaties" does not hold. That 1973 date is a completely bogus lead as far as the U.S. is concerned. (I think it's also pretty irrelevant for the EU, but I'm not sure.) For the U.S., the critical question is "was the work copyrighted on January 1, 1996 in its home country (or countries)?" If so, it is covered by U.S. copyright (with the U.S. copyright terms!), if not, we may consider it PD in the U.S. Lupo 08:11, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

One thing I do not like at all about the rewrite is that it implies (although the statement in question is marked with {{fact}} as needing verification) that works published pre-1973 indeed were in the public domain in the USSR (or its successor states) on January 1, 1996. That doesn't necessarily follow either. Lupo 08:17, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Some external opinions by experts

May I point the interested parties to this message from Janice T. Pilch, librarian and assistant professor at the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Maybe she explains it better than I can. The bottom line is that the "pre-1973" reasoning is invalid. Pilch has also published on these topics in peer-reviewed journals[2], see e.g. [3]. Lupo 09:25, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

See also Michael Newcity's take on that issue (he agrees that "pre-1973 is PD" is wrong). Newcity is a Senior Lecturing Fellow at the Duke School of Law and adjunct associate professor on Slavic Languages & Literature. (Faculty listing.) There is at least one court case where Newcity offered an option as an expert (for the plaintiff; the case apparently was decided in favor of the plaintiff). Lupo 09:25, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Zscout370 has also pointed me to this essay on Russian copyright law and the Berne Convention. (Link to google cache, it's a Word document from the Russian-Ukrainian Legal Group.) They also point out that the 1993 Russian copyright law was retroactive. Lupo 13:33, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Wow: difficult to unwind all that spaghetti. But it sounds to me like

1. The international copyright status of pre-1973 Soviet documents is not completely clear, or wasn't in 2001
2. Pre-1943 Soviet documents published anonymously, by a company, or by the state are in the public domain

Does anyone know if there have been further developments regarding international copyright treaties? —Michael Z. 2006-02-28 00:38 Z

Yes, it's a mess. All that we know by now is that the "pre-1973" reasoning is incorrect. Figuring out what exactly would be a workable rule is difficult. Lupo 08:00, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Marxists Internet Archives have published the English translation of the actual legislation, see http://marx.org/history/ussr/government/law/1961/civil-legislation/ch04.htm. --80.202.107.156 21:21, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I know. They say it was an excerpt from the old copyright law of the USSR, which has since been superceded by laws in 1991/2, 1993, and 2004. The 1993 law and its modification in 2004 were retroactive for a period of 50 years. Unfortunately, they don't show what the terms were back in the 1960s (it says lifetime of author, but then mentions fixed durations and the possibility of such fixed duration copyrights passing to heirs). Someone has access to the original sources mentioned there? Lupo 22:05, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Work of Soviet government

Is there any info about the work of the Soviet government? All of the pictures at Grigori Nelyubov and most of the Soviet space program are from government sources. Thanks! --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 16:58, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

What would be a workable rule?

Since the pre-1973 rule doesn't work, let's see if we can find a more precise workable rule.

1. Works published in the former Soviet Union must be considered simultaneously published in all successor nations, because all these successor nations were considered members of the UCC with effective date of May 27, 1973 (the date the USSR had joined the UCC). See Circular 38a of the U.S. Copyright Office.
2. The U.S. Uruguay Round Agreement Act (URAA) (TRIPS), codified in U.S. law as 17 USC 104A, says that a work's copyright is automatically and retroactively restored in the U.S. if it was still copyrighted in its country of origin on January 1 1996. In the case of simultaneous publication, a work has multiple countries of origin, and must be out of copyright in all of them to avoid this automatic retroactive copyright restoration.
3. Georgia is one of those successor nations of the USSR. It has passed in September 1999 a retroactive copyright law defining a general copyright term of 70 years p.m.a. Anonymous works are copyrighted for 70 years since their first publication, unless the author becomes known within that period, in which case 70 years p.m.a. applies again. If an unpublished work is published for the first time after its original copyright had expired, the publisher is granted the economic rights (known as the publication right in the EU) for a period of 25 years.
4. Since that law is explicitly retroactive, any works of authors who died 1929 or later were covered. (By now, according to that Georgian law, works of authors who died before 1936 are in the public domain.)
5. The 70 year period of Georgian copyright law matches the periods of Russia and of the Ukraine. All the other successor nations have a period of 50 years (and various special cases). The Russian (1993/2004 law) and Ukrainian (2001 law) laws are retroactive "for a period of 50 years", whatever that means exactly. See Wikipedia:Copyright situations by country.

The only workable rule for Soviet works that I can deduce from all this is that they are no different than any other work; i.e. Wikipedia can consider Soviet works PD only if the author died more than 70 years ago, or, in the case of an anonymous work, if the work was published more than 70 years ago (but then we'd need to be pretty sure that it was indeed an anonymous work, it doesn't just mean "I don't know who took this picture"). Since we need to consider all successor nations' laws, any attempt to find "safe cut-off dates" based only on Russian law are wrong, and thus both 1954 (2004 - 50) and 1943 (1993 - 50) are incorrect.

Comments, anyone? Lupo 10:06, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I am not convinced of the Georgia argument. Speaking from an EU point of view I would like to follow the EU rule of the shorter term and accept only the 50 years pma rule (valid in Russia and most other successor states) as workable. We cannot avoid ALL risks and should go pragmatic ways diligently monitoring possible troubles. UNTIL we get troubles it seems the right "via media" between the pre-1973 NONSENSE and the 70 years pma rule (which has to be valid indeed for creators who are citizens of the three baltic former Soviet and now EU countries!!) to accept the 50 years pma rule --Historiograf 14:35, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

PS: PLEASE COMMUNICATE THIS DISCUSSION TO COMMONS VILLAGE PUMP! --Historiograf 14:38, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand— Russia has 70 years p.m.a. since 2004. Lupo 18:16, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry my mistake --Historiograf 23:38, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

So can we be confident that the 1925-1962 soviet law defining only 3 years (in special cases 5 years)(Ajvol, 09:32, 14 February 2006 in this discussion) for photos has been abrogated by the present Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Estonian laws, and that copyright that had expired after 3 or 5 years has been revived by the newer laws of those countries whenever the photographer is still alive or died after 2006 - 71 = 1935 (Georgia, Estonia) ; 2004 - 51 = 1953 (Russia, Ukraine) ? Teofilo talk 12:23, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. First, you can ignore Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the context of this discussion: these Baltic states are not successor states of the USSR. (Such is politics...) For Georgia, yes, I think your statement is true. For Russia and the Ukraine, I do not know how to interprete their "50 year retroactivity": does that mean the current laws cover any work whose author died less than 50 years ago (1954 or later for Russia, 1951 or later for the Ukraine), or does it mean they cover all works published after that? Or does it mean any works that were still copyrighted in 1954 or 1951 by the then current laws? And what about the earlier 1993 law in Russia, which also was retroactive for a period of 50 years? And I'm unsure about any interactions between this retroactivity period and the 70-year p.m.a copyright term in these two countries. But given the fact that for the U.S., we would have to consider all successor states, and Georgia is a pretty clear-cut case with an (unfortunately!) long copyright term of 70 years, I think this deliberation is moot. Lupo 12:57, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Even if Estonia is not considered a "successor state", wouldn't a US court consider that the present Estonian law applies for works first published in Estonia at the time that state was part of the Soviet Union ? Teofilo talk 12:11, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Ask a U.S. court! Seriously, I don't know what a U.S. court would do e.g. for a work published by a publishing house based in Tallinn at a time when it was part of the USSR. Estonia is not a legal successor of the USSR. First and foremost, a U.S. court would apply U.S. law, that much is sure. It would also take into account foreign laws to figure out whether or not a work was copyrighted in the U.S. at all. But which foreign laws the court would consider in such a case, I do not know. Lupo 17:31, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

IMHO we are inventing non-existent problem

Huge number of people use pre-1973 Soviet publications as the public domain works. Many use them commercially. The legal reasons to depreciate the tag are obscure and certainly are untested in the USA courts. I can not imagine that the first test case will be Wikipedia (noncommercial organization working for the common good). Depreciating the tag will be a catastrophe for a whole section of wiki and the risk is most probably just our imagination. I would suggest to stop the self-harming actions until a real danger (test case) will be present abakharev 22:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Well said Alex! -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 22:47, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Alex in your opinion, would this be a violation and abuse of admin power? Have a look at Commons and I would like someone to draft this. --Kuban Cossack 23:03, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Alex, I would very much appreciate if you or Ezhiki (or another admin) to draft that too. I think it is really, really important! -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 23:11, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

This cannot go unnoticed. Please keep an eye out on the commons talk page as well. --Kuban Cossack 23:15, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. I daresay that it's the cornerstone of the problem... :) -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 23:17, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Guys, please keep your cool. I also don't know what Lupo is doing and what's the issue he has with this tag. He even listed it for deletion in the past, and the result was an overwhelming "keep"[4] It's too early to draft an RfC which is a big PITA for everyone. This may be an option oif this goes too far but for now, please let's discuss it peacefully if Lupo really feels so strongly about this issue for whatever reason. --Irpen 23:17, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

No, the first time he was openely blamed for not putting the Russian and Ukrainian as well as other communities and discussing it with them. This time he openely used his admin powers to [5] deprecate the tag, again with no comments on Russian and Ukrainian as well as other community noticeboards. Not only is that extreamely bad faith action, it was a direct insult to all people who use the tag and those who uploaded those 1000+ images. He also made us think that as an admin he has got an upper hand in pushing his original research thesis into wiki. THAT IS A DIRECT VIOLATION OF ADMIN PRIVLIEGES and it personally makes people feel exreamely insecure about renegade administrators. As he has stepped over the line twice I am not certain that he will not do it the third time, and yes this calls for a wider opinion of other admins (and if need to be - the arbcom). --Kuban Cossack 23:27, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Lupo is absolutely right. The legal incompetence of the Russian and Ukrainian are well known. We cannot accept clear copyvios - STOP WISHFUL THINKING. --Historiograf 01:35, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, with supporters like this above, this will go a long way, I suppose. --Irpen 01:37, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Please stop trolling... -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 12:10, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Look what we've got here! All those editors who didn't care to comment at all during the past few months despite having been aware of the issue suddenly come out of the bushes. Unfortunately, I still have not seen a single coherent argument why the "pre-1973" rule should be considered correct. Only threats and personal attacks. Oh well. I have made my case. I cannot understand why you insist on spreading misinformation. Lupo 07:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Your fate Lupo

You have abused your admin rights. That is the mess that you are not going to get out of and I shall, if need to strat a full arbcom against you. Original research done by you, plus, twice neglegince of the whole Russian and Ukrainian communities, who unlike you write articles and improve them. Who unlike you are from Russia and do not care about work that was published in their country and unlike you are not copyright nazis. What's next first you attack all of our images, then you will attack all of the articles that we wrote, then you will try to get all of us off wikipedia. Right? It is called fascism and the fact that you spat in our face twice IS NOT GOING TO BE FORGOTTEN, Let I remind that 61 years ago we defeated one nazi and now will defeat you as well. --Kuban Cossack 12:05, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Wishful thinking? You wish. You got no clear proof that these pictures are not PD, and your attempt to do the same thing at commons encountered the same reaction. At the very least, another discussion should have take place. In the meantime, what you did is abuse of admin rights. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 12:09, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Well Lupo it has started Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Lupo--Kuban Cossack 12:41, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

New Research

I contacted an old photographer who used to work for the Soviet press. Now, all of the press and prints in the USSR were state owned. When photographers or painters wanted to publish something, as the Soviet system saw that withholding copyright would go against the principle of communal images, a special form existed which upon agreeing to publish the author signs the norightsreserved equivelence. I.e. his name is not quoted and the copyright owner becomes the Soviet state, the image would then be used by Soviet press in any way they deem necessary and the photographer would simply be paid originally, and the cut-off date is not 1973, its 26th of December 1991. Now the Soviet press itself never ever forbade anybody to take its images and publish them in reverse for personal use, as they too had a norightsreserved policy to all its works. Now the law that Lupo said about 2004 only affects works previously unpublished, like personal collections that have not been circulated in the pool of the Soviet Press. So in retrospect if the tag is purged it would fully suitable to re-tag all of the images with the norightsreserved tag, as that was the policy of the Soviet Press and print. So the bottom line is that yes the images are copyrighted but legaly it would be impossible for the original author to persucute, since he has agreed to relinquish all of his rights to the Soviet state. Thus all work published in the USSR which would have been published by Soviet Press, is totaly free to be used on wikipedia. So the correct wording on the tag should be: All work published in the Soviet Union, was done by state owned press prints, which would have been the sole copyright owners of the work as the original author had to declare so upon submitting his work for publishment. Soviet law on communal sharing declared that no state organisation can withhold distribution of its works in any shape or form, or their modification. As the Soviet Union does not exist anymore nor do its successor states challenged all of the already published works, they are equivelent to being in the public domain Green copyright tag is then placed as in norightsreserved. Then a separate Russian heading Works that were not published in the Soviet Press, are still copyrighted and exist until 50 years after the authors death. I'll see wether there is a norightsreserved policy for that as well. --Kuban Cossack 18:26, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Do not confuse the issue further by posting completely unsourced fabrications. Keep on dreaming. You confuse several things here: "personal use" is not applicable here. For works for hire, the copyright was not held by the photographer but by his employer. The photographer may have had "no rights" allright, but the news agency/newspaper or the state (or for whoever the photograph was taken) acquired all the copyrights. Copyright held by corporations of the state was perpetual until 1994, when it was retroactively changed to 50 years since publication. The whole issue has nothing whatsoever to do with "unpublished works". And then you neglect the international aspects: any proposition for a post-1973 date is ridiculous beyond all bounds because since May 27, 1973 the USSR was a member of the UCC and thus Soviet works were and are copyrighted internationally. Furthermore, the retroactive Russian copyright law of 1993 put a lot of works that otherwise might have been PD under copyright again.Russian-Ukrainian Legal Group Lupo 06:55, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Did you read it correctely. The works are copyrighted but the Soviet Press had a Norightsresrved to all its publications inside the country at least (which expains why in Russia you can find any of these works so widespread, that they might as well be in the public domain). --Kuban Cossack 17:50, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's kind of hard to know exactly what you're talking about since you don't provide any references or sources for your statements. I won't guess what legal basis you might refer to. Just two points: first, do not confuse licensing with copyright. This discussion is about copyright: which works would be in the public domain, i.e. out of copyright; not about which copyrighted works are or were published under a free license. Secondly, copyright enforcement in the former USSR was, AFAIK, not very strict, and the old Soviet copyright law contained broad fair use permissions that in fact did allow the use of many published copyrighted works without paying royalties. But that does not mean such works were not copyrighted, it just means that they could be used legally under section 103 of the Soviet copyright law of 1961 without having to pay money. (It's not called "fair use" in that translation, but that's what it is: a broad limitation of the extent of copyright.) I think that's why you "can find any of these works so widespread, that they might as well be in the public domain", as you say. But they're not PD, and this very broad "fair use" concept certainly doesn't apply in other countries. It does not even apply in Russia today, as the corresponding legislation for such "fair use" exceptions in the current Russian copyright law (§§19-25) is much stricter. Lupo 05:24, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

However the fair used media is already been so widespread again with no royalties that presently in Russia there are no court cases for copyright of Soviet works. So that would mean that all works published prior to that law passing. Also read Article 21.- Reproduction for public knowledge shall be allowed without the authors consent or payment for royalties in places of public resort So all of the images that are a) in galleries, b) published expositions (eg.postcards) or c) in exposition can be used for this public encyclopedia. Lupo I am impressed.--Kuban Cossack 13:46, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Apparently you did not understand the point I was trying to make above. Here's a condensed version: it's still only fair use under Soviet/Russian legislation; that does not make such works PD, and it would not even necessarily make the use of such works fair use in the U.S. You also seem to misunderstand my intentions completely: I am not against using Soviet images or other works, if and where we can do so legally. But I am against wrongly labelling works as being in the public domain when they are not. Therefore, I want this tag to be corrected. Lupo 14:08, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

So you want to correct it to fair use, and then reset the date to 1993? Well that would make sense and suitable, provided that we explain that in Russia there are no such strict restirctions on fair use thus allowing people to make userboxes, for example, with them. And then make a separate tag for PD on 1954 works. That will suit quite a few people here. --Kuban Cossack 14:50, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean. We don't "reset" any date to 1993, and we don't rewrite this "public domain" tag into a fair use tag either, that's for sure. See below on #How to correct the tag. Lupo 19:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you shouldn't even try to introduce Russian or Soviet "fair use" here, as it is utterly irrelevant for Wikipedia, which operates primarily under U.S. law. As far as I am aware, we don't make use of other countries' specialized exceptions in copyright law either if they don't apply in the U.S., too. Any fair use image must be "fair use" according to U.S. legislation. If you disagree, take it up with the fair use specialists over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Fair use. Lupo 19:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

BTW, you should have cited §21 in full. Here it is, with some emphasis added:

Reproduction, broadcasting or cablecasting for general public knowledge shall be allowed, without the author's consent or payment of royalties, of works of architecture, photography and figurative art permanently located in places of public resort, except where portrayal of the work is the basic object of such reproduction, broadcasting or cablecasting for general public knowledge or where portrayal of the work is used for commercial purposes. — Current Russian copyright law, §21, bolding and underlining by Lupo

That speaks for itself, I think. Lupo 19:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Also where does it say that we must count backwards. Ceratainly the 50 years after death would mean for present living authors and not deceased, as prior to their death their works would not have been protected and are thus considered legally in public domain (Lupo once you realise something into the public, you can't recopyright it). --Kuban Cossack 13:46, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

On the retroactivity of the Russian copyright law of 1993, see the report from the Russian-Ukrainian Legal Group, amongst others. Lupo 14:08, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

If that was not what you meant, I'm sorry. You must provide reliable and reputable sources that show exactly what the legal bases for your claims are if you want to avoid confusions. Lupo 05:24, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Lupo, it's you dispute this template. So you should provide. You refering to Soviet and Russian laws. Those are not working outside of Russia and Soviets. Many works are copyrighted and protected in Russia. But not outside of Russia. Anything was made before 1973 is not protected outside of Soviet Union. Elk Salmon 08:19, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

All participants should source their claims. I haven't seen any reference for that "pre-1973" claim yet. I do reference my arguments. Read what I wrote. Read the whole argument at commons:Template talk:PD-Soviet: it is an extensively sourced summary taking into account all the international complications I am aware of. Here I am disputing this so called "new research", and I'm still sourcing my points. But the person who claimed this "new research" did not. He should do so, too. Accusing me of not citing my sources is outright dishonest. If you have anything substantial to contribute to the discussion, please do so, but refrain from mud slinging and source your claims. You support that template: cite reliable and reputable sources for your otherwise completely unproven assertion that you so boldy just made. Lupo 08:27, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

there is no new research. is it really so hard to understand - ussr joined international copyright treaties in 1973. so everything was made in ussr on pre 27 may 1973 is in public domain outside of ussr and russia. and everything was made outside of ussr and russia in pre 27 may 1973 is public domain within russia (except of few countries by additional treaties - CIS and EU for example). it is absolutely common and undisputable understanding in russia. [6], [7], [8], [9] etc etc etc Elk Salmon 00:45, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I am no expert unlike some people here apparently, but it is impolite at best to reference pages and pages and pages of Russian text to non-Russian-speaking crowd and provide no translation or summary. What is the point of these references if noone can read them?

• 99% of the text I've read following those links attempts to explain the legal situation within Russia, which is irrelevant here.
• This is not about what is PD in Russia, this is about the US laws.
• Claims I found here (your link) that the first 10 volumes (pre-1973) of the 3rd edition of the GSEncyclopedia are PD in the US directly contradict the official GSE usage guidelines of the Russian wikipedia, which say only the pre-1954 part of the older second edition is PD, and my stubs there have been deleted on several occasions because of this.
• The only useful statement I found here (your link) was that "Russia indicated non-acceptance of the 18 paragraph of the Berne Convention, which contained the rule of the retrospective protection" (my translation). I would like to see someone closely familiar with the US copyright laws comment on this.
• Afaik, the burden of coherent proof lies on those who use this tag (meaning us), not on Lupo, who so far provided reasonable argument. I have no idea whether he is right or wrong, but so far I find his arguments more coherent and credible, and certainly not citing obscure legislation of some far away country in unknown language.

This is how this whole thing looks to almost a complete outsider such as myself. I will go with whatever decisions are made. Guinness man 04:56, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

As Guinness man already said, most of that is about the protection of foreign works in the USSR and Russia and thus is irrelevant for the discussion of which Soviet or Russian work are copyrighted elsewhere. See point 2 of my extended summary at commons:Template talk:PD-Soviet. I have just amended that point to cover the "non-acceptance of paragraph 18" mentioned at www.disc.ru that Guinness man pointed out. That disc.ru extlink, BTW, goes to a FAQ "may I copy western CDs?". Methinks that website neglects in its answer the effects of the modification of Russian coypright law from July 28, 2004, which placed even pre-1973 foreign works under copyright in Russia (see the modifications to article 5; I've summarized them over at commons:Template talk:PD-Soviet). The rudiplom.ru link Elk Salmon gave also only has references up to 1995; the last law they cite is that of 1993: they too do not take into account the 2004 modifications of the Russian copyright law. The gdf.ru link is interesting. I don't see any date on that web page, and they don't mention the 2004 law either. However, they do mention Itar-Tass Russian News Agency v. Russian Kurier, Inc., a copyright case decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York in 1998 in favour of Itar-Tass... Lupo 09:09, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

How to correct the tag

To correct this tag, it must be deprecated, so that no new images may use it. Then, the images using this tag must be re-evaluated whether they could fall under {{PD-old-70}}, {{PD-US}} (if published before 1923), {{PD-art}} or some other existing PD tag, or whether for some images "fair use" cases according to U.S. law could be made. Once this is done and no existing images use this tag anymore, we could rewrite this tag as a redirect to {{PD-old-70}}. Alternatively, we could write a new tag using text identical to {{PD-old-70}}, but additionally explaining the reasoning for Soviet works, and use that instead of {{PD-old-70}} during re-evaluation, and then just delete this tag here, which would then not be used anymore. On the commons, the procedure is basically the same, except that the commons does not allow "fair use". Of course, all this is a lot of work, and the longer we wait, the more work it will be. As a first step, this tag should be reverted to the deprecated version I had written. We should also provide a solution for images uploaded and using the deprecated tag after it has been deprecated; my suggestion would be to treat them as {{nolicense}}. Lupo 19:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

A pre-1954 tag is not very useful because it would apply only in Russia, but not in the U.S. nor in the EU nor basically anywhere else. Pre-1954 may be a useful rule for the Russian Wikipedia, as it is targeted mainly to Russia and Russian re-users (as long as we ignore the fact that these images are also stored on servers that are located in the U.S. and that are owned and operated by a U.S.-based foundation). A way to "save" images that would be PD only in Russia is then of course to upload them and use them only on the Russian Wikipedia and not have them on the commons or here. For the English Wikipedia, a "pre-1954" rule would be not useful, and a "lifetime of author + 70 years" rule is much more appropriate. The detailed reasoning for this is again at commons:Template talk:PD-Soviet. Lupo 19:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

a quick solution

How about contacting the russian govt (since it's the succesor of the ussr) about coyrights and stuff

So what?

I can't figure out what status Image:Luna3_farside.gif holds. NASA thinks its PD, and it appears to be a 1940s Russian Space Agency photo. Reading this conversation is a flamewar. Did a conclusion ever come to order? Kevin_b_er 02:35, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

No, there's no conclusion yet. Nobody has provided any proof that the template were correct. The claim is completely unsourced. Not a single reference backing up the template's claim has been brought forward, and certainly none that would back up the claim in view of the developments in the 1990s (Russia's retroactive copyright law of 1993, Russia joining the Berne Convention in 1995, the URAA in the U.S. of 1996). All we have are extensive documentation pointing exactly the other way, indicating that the template is indeed wrong. I'm also still waiting for input by User:Zscout370... I still favour deprecating this template as described above. Lupo 08:37, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Lupo, it would seem to me that the RFC provided a pretty obvious consensus on the fact that there was not enough elements to sway the balance in your way. I will just quote Phr from there, "The "legal research" conducted by nonspecialist users looks useless and if anything will do more harm than good." So I suggest you stop that crusade, as it is might be false and also dangerous to WP as well... -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 08:45, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't you think that massive violation of licenses of copyrighted material would be far more dangerous to WP ? --Lysy^talk 09:31, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Then one should start cleaning up all those fair-use images with no rationales, held by specific companies that have quite well defined copyrights on them. And unlike Russia (not mentioning the vasished USSR), they pose a threat. But not USSR images for which every allegation still has to be researched by a professional. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 09:36, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

You did not understand me. What I'm suggesting is that the proponents of the tag should try to provide firm evidence, that Soviet authors do not hold rights to their works. Only if you fail to do this the individual image copyrights would have to be reassessed, and maybe sometimes removed. To me, it seems very strange that author's rights could be voided by the fact that someone (a Soviet publisher) published the work. I'm sure you know that the Soviets would publish everything without any respect for the international copyrights. --Lysy^talk 09:48, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

What rights, patrimonial or moral? And where, here or in the US. For me, they retain moral rights everywhere, but no patrimonial rights outside the USSR. Meaning we can't alter their work or say we created it. That's all. But one has the right to display it at will, with no fair use limitations. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 15:04, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

No, that's not all, not only the integrity right but also the disclosure right, the paternity right, and the retraction right. --Lysy^talk 15:50, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely, but how does WP violates any of those? -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 15:55, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Grafikm, provide evidence for this template's claims being correct nowadays. And please don't engage in selective quoting. Maybe you should re-read the whole RFC, including the opinions expressed there that don't agree with your view. Lupo 09:39, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a lawyer specialized in international copyright and I won't try and come up with a conclusion that might be inadequate because it is not my job. And I think you shouldn't either. Unless we have a specific answer from a profesional lawyer (or preferably several, since law is an oh-so-glib thing sometimes), all this "research" is about as useless as an umbrella is for a fish. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 09:42, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

No, it's obviously up to those who claim that the copyrights are voided by the fact of publication by a Soviet publisher to support their claims, not the other way round. If there are doubts, the tag has to go. --Lysy^talk 09:50, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

They're no doubts as far as I'm concerned. A law, by default, is non-retroactive. If it is expressely made retroactive, that is one thing. And one has to prove that the retroactivity is valid outside the country, which AFAIK is not the case. And you see weird things in Russia too. For instance, there was recently someone who tried to prove that for an author who died in labor camps, the 70 years pma should be counted not from death but the rehab date. Thankfully, the demand was rejected. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 09:55, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, On May 23 1973 Soviet Union signed the Geneva copyright agreement. The recognition of the copyright law was not retroactive, thus Soviet Union and Russia were free to publish anything from abroad published before 1973 and people outside of Russia were free to use anything published in Russia as a public domain [10]. It is the common understanding of the matter through out the world (see [11] as an example). Nobody AFAIK have challenged this state in a court. It is a fact, that in Russia or Ukraine, no money is paid to foreign authors for works published before 1973. For some reason Robert Sheckley was much more popular in USSR than in his home country, USA. His works for war published by millions and still are published in thousands (currently e.g. online shop ozon.ru sells 152 different publications by Rober Sheckley. In April 2005 during his visit to Ukraine he suddenly became ill. It was revealed that he never received any money from the USSR or xUSSR countries. During the fundraising campaign to pay for his hospital bills it was stated that even if he would receive a single cent for each copy of his boox sold in xUSSR it would be big enough for the matters of life and death. Even with the online publications of the modern work of Russian authors in Russia the copyright questions are fuzzy see e.g. Gevorkyan v. Moshkov article Nor AFAIK any xSoviet author has received any western money for his pre1973 publication. Why should we be holier than the Pope? abakharev 11:19, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

<de-indent> The link to marxists.org, which Alex gave, just repeats the pre-1973 claim; it doesn't justify it. The PDF Alex linked, BTW, is an article of 1973. Interesting, but since the developments in the mid-1990s (Russian copyright law of 1993, Russia joining the Berne Convention in 1995, URAA 1996; see commons:Template talk:PD-Soviet) have invalidated the pre-1973 claim, I'm afraid it's outdated. Lupo 11:35, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Lupo, are you a lawyer specialized in international copyright? If not, you have no power to make such statements. I'm not saying you're wrong (although it is IMHO quite probable) but you simply can't make them. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 12:18, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of the Bern convention I found a couple of articles. http://www.copyright.ru/publ-412.html L.I. Podshibikhin (deputy director of the department for protection of the Intellectual Properties of FIPS (Russian Patent Service)) and K.B. Leontiev (deputy director of Russian Society on Multimedia and Digital Networks) named "Realization in Russian Federation of Bern declaration". This is a long article, but here some citatations:

Однако при присоединении России к Бернской конвенции Генеральный директор ВОИС был "уведомлен", что "действие Бернской конвенции об охране литературных и художественных произведений не распространяется на произведения, которые на дату вступления этой Конвенции в силу для Российской Федерации уже являются на ее территории общественным достоянием"*1*. ( But at the joining Russia to the Bern declaration, the General Director of the VOIS was "informed" that the Bern convention does not protect the works that were in public domain in the Soviet Union at the moment of signing the treaty. ). Later the article tells that this mean that everything published before 1973 (he took an example of Agatha Christie whose all work are the public domain. Farther down the article tells about a court case of a number of Russian newspapers against an American Russian language publication Kurier: "Лучше всего пояснить это на следующем интересном примере. Несколькими известными российскими средствами массовой информации и издательствами (в числе которых были "Аргументы и факты", "Московские новости", "Комсомольская правда", "Независимая газета", "Эхо планеты", "Московский комсомолец", Российское информационное агентство "ИТАР-ТАСС", большая часть акций которого находится в федеральной собственности, и др.), а также Союзом журналистов России был предъявлен иск в окружной суд Нью-Йорка в связи с нарушениями их авторских прав*12*. Основным ответчиком по делу выступала компания, занимавшаяся публикацией и распространением в русскоязычных районах США газеты на русском языке "Курьер".

Суд установил, что "Курьер" за три года опубликовал не более десятка "собственных" статей, основную же часть публикаций газеты составляли перепечатки материалов из ведущих российских периодических изданий, которые просто вырезались из них и вклеивались в верстку*13*.

При рассмотрении данного дела американский суд применил нормы международного, американского и российского авторского права и предоставил российским истцам такую же защиту, которую при аналогичных обстоятельствах получили бы американские правообладатели. Суд не только запретил ответчику осуществлять несанкционированное копирование российской периодики, но и принял решение взыскать с него почти 700 000 долларов в качестве компенсации за причиненные убытки и возмещения истцам части расходов, связанных с оплатой юридических услуг. Таким образом, защита авторских прав на основании положений Бернской конвенции оказалась для российских организаций вполне доступна и реально осуществима.

Однако результаты данного дела могли бы быть еще более благоприятными для российских изданий, если бы американским судом не была полностью проигнорирована судьба тех работ, которые были опубликованы до 13 марта 1995 года*14*. Суд даже не затронул вопрос, подлежат ли данные произведения охране данные произведения на основании Бернской конвенции или на основании Всемирной конвенции. " The legal case was won by the Russian copyright owners, but only for the works published after 13 March 1995, the earlier works we considered not protected by the American law due to this Exception. Even later the authors argued how to revoke the exception and still keep the pre-1973 works as PD abakharev 12:57, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Alex, you're barking up the wrong tree, and I don't see why you brought up Robert Sheckley's works and their treatment in the USSR or in Russia. The article the Russian quote above comes from (a very interesting read, BTW, and thanks for finding it, even if it misses our subject here) is about the copyright of foreign works in Russia, but this template is about the copyright of Soviet works in other countries. That's something completely different. Lupo 14:21, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

BTW, as a courtesy to other people who cannot read Russian, would you please translate Russian texts into English? I'm not going to do that work for you. Lupo 14:21, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

A propos: these authors also state that the fact that foreign works published before 1973 were not copyrighted in Russia even after it joined the Berne Convention due to that infamous reservation "might have been to a certain degree acceptable during an initial transition period, but increasingly generates numerous problems that may lead to extremely unfavourable consequences in the near future." Part 2 of the article Alex provided, at the bottom From when is the article? (I didn't see any date... from the text, it's clear that is was written after 2000—they mention at one point that it was already more than five years since Russia joined the Berne Convention.) Lupo 14:21, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Final à propos: the case Itar-Tass Russian News Agency v. Russian Kurier, Inc. (decided in 1998 by a U.S. court in favour of the Russian plaintiff Itar-TASS) has been linked above long ago. AFAIK, the court didn't consider pre-1973 Soviet works at all and didn't say anything about it because the object of the case were recent news articles from Itar-TASS copied by Russian Kurier, not any old ones. The case does show, however, that indeed Russian copyright holders can enforce their rights in the U.S. Lupo 14:30, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

As an example of application of Belarusian law see http://copyright.iatp.by/abc/abc24.html (article named the ABC of copyright) "... В последнее время в печати довольно часто встречаются публикации, в которых известные юристы авторитетно заявляют об имеющей, по их мнению, место обратной силе Бернской конвенции. Основанием для подобных утверждений является норма ст.18 конвенции, которая устанавливает, что конвенция распространяет свое действие на все произведения, которые к моменту вступления конвенции в силу еще не перешли в общественное достояние в стране их происхождения в связи с истечением срока охраны. И только в том случае, если в государстве, в котором испрашивается охрана, какое-либо произведение, которое ранее охранялось, перешло в общественное достояние вследствие истечения срока охраны до вступления для этого государства конвенции в силу, то такое произведение в соответствии с нормой ст.18 (2) не подлежит охране. ... обратной силой. Применительно к Бернской конвенции, обязательство Республики Беларусь охранять произведения, на которые распространяется действие конвенции, возникнет только с момента вступления конвенции в силу для нашей республики и произведения, подпадающие под действие конвенции, охраняются в Беларуси с 12 декабря 1997 г., а значит, о какой-либо обратной силе говорить не приходится..." (Recently there appeared many publications there some noted Lawyers stated that the Bern conventions are retroactive.This is based on the article 18 of the convention...But the Bern convention does not protect the works been Public Domain in Belarus before signing, thus, it would only act on the works that were protected in belarus before the 12 December of 1997 and there is no talk about any retroactivity of the Bern conventions in Belarus). abakharev 13:09, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

See above. We're not interested in the copyright of foreign works in Belarus, we're interested in the copyright of Soviet works in other countries. Lupo 14:21, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Also here is another point in Lupo's argument. Right now he is trying to replace the tag with one that states that all of the works published in USSR are PD only from the country with longest lenght. That is Georgia. So he wants to use a modern Georgian law to take down WWII Soviet images. Do I need to remind him that the direct successor to the USSR is Russia not Georgia. Therefore all works published in USSR are by default under Russian law, not Georgian or Ukrainian or Estonian. Even those published in the Georgian Ukrainian or Estonian SSRs. Private collections previously unpublished in the Soviet times might qualify for the 70 years p.m.a but those published in RSFSR are for sure PD regardless. --Kuban Cossack 13:07, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

You fail to mention that I explicitly asked Soufron, the head of the foundation's legal team, if we could look only at Russia or also had to consider the other CIS nations. His answer was that we cannot just look at Russia. If you doubt this, take it up with Soufron. Lupo 14:21, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Like I said, works published exclussively in the Georgian SSR might be affected (although you are going to be very popular with our Georgian colleagues as well the moment you begin to take down their images), but for a 1945 image of Moscow, that was published in Moscow...to be in Public Domain in Russia, be restricted worldwide because Georgia put a restriction on it...sorry but I do not follow your authentic allegation. --Kuban Cossack 17:47, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Lysy's confusion

All right, I think I see what is the problem. You (the proponents of the template) are confusing the rights of the publisher with the personal rights of the author (so called moral rights). Therefore the fact that Soviet publishers rights are void ("public domain" in this narrow sense) does not imply that we should be violating the rights of the authors. This is basic to any copyright law, especially in Europe but also in the US and I believe similar distinction must be present in Russian law (but this does not matter anyway).--Lysy^talk 14:56, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

No double standards, please. Talking about "moral rights", I advise all copyright freaks to review the validity of Template:PD-Poland, first of all. The template is clearly abused. If the statement contained in the template is true, there is no effective copyright in that country at all. And if there is no copyright in Poland, I don't see how it was admitted into the EU and World Trade Organisation. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 18:42, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

No, unlike PD-USSR, PD-Poland has its legal base explicitly given, and it is discussed and explained (here). That's what PD-USSR is missing. It should clearly state the legal grounds on which the claim is made. Copyright information must be reliable and verifiable. Facts, viewpoints, theories, and arguments may only be included if they have already been published by reliable and reputable sources. These sources should be cited whenever possible. Any unsourced material may be challenged and removed.--Lysy^talk 19:12, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

What do moral rights do in this whole thing? -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 14:59, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm equally puzzled... Lupo 15:03, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

In 90% of cases the authors of pre-1973 works and their heirs are interested in promotion of their works (particulary on the English-language wikipedia E.g. I had e-mail exchange with the heir Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya who was very pleased with our work and with examples of her work appeared on wiki. The rest of the authors just do not care. In most cases the legal rights (if any) belongs to a state organization or to some shadow figure who privatized a publisher. Indeed I think that if either the author or a some sort of a legal rights owner will ask to pull an image out, I think we should delete it. I am not aware of any of such cases yet. abakharev 15:26, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Obviously the authors should be properly attributed. --Lysy^talk 15:35, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean? "Named" or something else? -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 15:43, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the author should be attributed. But what's more important the template should clearly explain why is the work in public domain. I'm not saying that works published in Soviet Union are not PB but it should be shown why, beyond any doubt. --Lysy^talk 19:17, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Third circle

This is all going on in a third or fourth circle. This have been discussed to death and Lupo cannot on his own whim deprecate tags and claim that they are disputed as he sees fit. His RfC, this talk page, the talk at commons and many other places have shown the strength of his argument. Not only he is not able to convince the community, he is not even able to get a smallest number of supporters.

His persisting with keeping the ridiculous "disputed" addition on the tag for months cannot be continued just because he says he is still "not convinced". As neither Lupo can convince the community, nor the community allows itself to be convinced by Lupo, he is free to take his objections and get an advice either from the expert in the international copyright law or from the officer of the Wikimedia foundation.

However, holding the widely agreed and usable tag hostage simply because Lupo thinks it's not right is a dead-end solution. Otherwise, we could have a single creationist permanently placing a "disputed" tag on the evolution article, as just one example of what else could happen. --Irpen 19:04, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree, enough is enough, there are much more important issues like fair use images than copyright guidelines to countries, where when one visits a garbushka market in Moscow, he will wonder whether they exist at all? Hands off our images. You Bourgeous Chauvinistic Imperialistic Gargoyle (per your image). --Kuban Cossack 19:28, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

What it surprising is that it is mostly Russian editors that support the tag possibly breaking the rights of Russian authors. --Lysy^talk 19:34, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Maybe because they're the most concerned as they write about Russia? Does this hypothesis seems to be unrealistic to you? -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 21:04, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

That they are concerned is obvious but that they support it seem strange. Anyway, this is off-topic. --Lysy^talk 08:33, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Irpen, you are making it personal here. The problem is not that Lupo did this and that but with the template claims that are not properly documented. You need to show why the works published in the Soviet Union before May 27, 1973 are in the public domain in the US. The law supporting this claim has to be explicitly shown. That "many people believe so" is not good enough. Compare WP:V. --Lysy^talk 19:23, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

No, Lysy, what you say is correct with the addition: "the template claims that are not properly documented" according to Lupo. According to some, the roundness of Earth is not properly documented. Still all reasonable people agree on the issue. When Lupo brings here a single expert who would agree with him or solicits advice from the board member, the claims that are represented solely by himself will get more clout. However, he has done neither of that and now it is the community who thinks that the claims made in the template are reasonable and Lupo who thinks that they are not. He may disagree and research all he wants to convince the community that he is right and they are all wrong but he can't keep the template hostage just because he failed to convince anyone to this date. He managed to force the "disputed" disclaimer on the tag for long enough and the only justification for that is that "user:Lupo remains unconvinced". This may be enough if he argues with another user about a single narrow issue. This is a very widely discussed issue, the community made up its mind. If Lupo disagrees, he has to do a little more work to convince the community or, as I said many times, solicit the legal advice from the competent expert. Neither is done and enough is enough. --Irpen 21:37, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

While we try to m:Avoid copyright paranoia, we should assume that works are copyrighted unless we have good evidence to the contrary. No-one has presented valid evidence to refute Lupo's claims, so until they do by rights we should assume that the images are copyrighted and delete the images. I think that leaving the dispute tag on is a good compromise between freely allowing tons of possibly problematic images and deleting them all. JYolkowski // talk 02:32, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

IMO, the situation is quite the opposite. Lupo did not present any evidence to refute claims and evidence presented by many. We cannot continue going in circles as we have a better use for our time. If anyone wants to argue for the sake of the arguing, there are internet fora more suitable for such activity.

The "solution" of leaving a dispute tag is neither a solution of any sort nor a compromise. The "disputed" tags by their vary nature are supposed to be temporary. We cannot protract the dispute forever and it needs solved. The evidence was presented at multiple places. Nothing can prevent someone in any particular dispute, no matter how obvious, to persist that s/he is "unconvinced". Should all articles about issues where people tend to disagree be permanently tagged as disputed? Or you think that all objectors are satisfied in articles that lack "disputed" tags?

Surveys were conducted as well and they demonstrated the state of affairs. Now, the objectors have to either withdraw or appeal to an expert. I see none of this done. --Irpen 03:17, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I think you got it twisted. It is up to those supporting the claim to source it appropriately, not the other way round. Everything is copyrighted by default but nothing is in PD by default. There must be legal grounds for this. No matter how many of us believe that it's PD, the belief is not good enough. You also cannot "vote" on copyright. You have to show it beyond doubts. Otherwise it's a hypothesis only and no matter how strong it is, it should not be applied. --Lysy^talk 08:31, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

many countries ?

Can we change "The works originally published in the Soviet Union before May 27, 1973, were not protected by International Copyright Conventions, and are thus in the public domain in many countries" into "The works originally published in the Soviet Union before May 27, 1973, were not protected by International Copyright Conventions, and are thus in the public domain in the U.S." ? It would be more relevant and less vague at the same time --Lysy^talk 19:30, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I've changed the template to read: The works originally published in the Soviet Union before May 27, 1973, were not protected by International Copyright Conventions. It is believed that they belong to the public domain in many countries including the U.S. However in some of the ex-Soviet countries, some of these works might still be protected by copyright. It seems that the text better reflects our present knowledge rather than the previous firm statement. We still need to find the sources to support our beliefs. --Lysy^talk 20:29, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

If the works are still protected in ex-Soviet countries then the US copyright will have been restored under 17 U.S.C. §104A, and so the tag is factually incorrect and dangerous. My guess is that they still are protected in ex-Soviet countries, that their US copyrights have been restored and that this tag should go. Physchim62 (talk) 10:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

One can "guess" as many things as he or she fancies, but there is no proof of your statement yet. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 10:31, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I have given sources for the whole of my reasoning long ago at commons:Template talk:PD-Soviet. If only you would read them. Start with Ms. Pilch's article series in SEEIR. In any case, "It is believed", "many countries", "might still" and a dubious extlink are weaseling. Lupo 10:39, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

WP:CITE

also holds for template space. I am not qualified to have an opinion on this, but "it is believed" is obvious weasling, and it is the responsibility of those who make a claim to provide evidence, everywhere on Wikipedia. So unless and until solid evidence for the correctness of the claim is presented, the claim will have to be visibly tagged as just that, an unverified claim. I'm sorry, but those are simply our rules, Wikipedia would be (even more of) a madhouse without them. (ᛎ) qɐp 08:04, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

That's because Lysy changed it, see section just above. The old version was just fine. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 08:10, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I have changed it to signify the lack of evidence. Do you think that everything will be all right if we all pretend the claim is documented ? --Lysy^talk 08:26, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Alex provided some evidence, see the template. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 08:31, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I think this is a move in the right direction. But it is a multipage document. Alex, would it be possible to provide the exact citation from that text that you consider to be relevant ? --Lysy^talk 08:38, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

http://www.copyright.ru/publ-1174.html (part4) Однако результаты данного дела могли бы быть еще более благоприятными для российских изданий, если бы американским судом не была полностью проигнорирована судьба тех работ, которые были опубликованы до 13 марта 1995 года*14*. Суд даже не затронул вопрос, подлежат ли данные произведения охране данные произведения на основании Бернской конвенции или на основании Всемирной конвенции.

Дело в том, что поскольку большинство государств являются участниками как Бернской, так и Всемирной конвенции, то пришлось специально решать вопрос о разрешении конфликтов, связанных с их "одновременным" действием. В рамках Всемирной конвенции была принята специальная Декларация, согласно которой Всемирная конвенция "не применяется в отношениях между странами Бернского союза в той степени, в которой она касается охраны произведений, страной происхождения которых по Бернской конвенции является одна из стран Бернского союза"*15*. При этом подразумевалось, что поскольку Бернская конвенция предусматривает более высокий уровень охраны, авторские права окажутся защищены наилучшим образом.

Однако сделанная Россией при присоединении "оговорка" в ряде случаев может быть истолкована как основание для отказа в предоставлении полноценной охраны по Бернской конвенции и в то же самое время защита в соответствии со Всемирной конвенцией также оказывается невозможной.

Это только один из примеров того, насколько защита прав российских авторов за границей становится проблематичной, оказавшись вне общепризнанных международно-правовых норм в данной сфере.

From http://www.copyright.ru/publ-1178.html:

14. Общее число перепечатанных работ превысило 500, но суд решил, что только 345 публикаций защищены авторским правом. Из них только 28 работ были зарегистрированы в Бюро по авторским правам США.

15. См. статью XVII Всемирной конвенции об авторском праве и Дополнительную декларацию к этой статье

See also Act of the Russian Givernment N1224 (3 November 1994) on joining the Bern declaration http://www.law.copyright.ru/different-1272.html:

Поручить Министерству иностранных дел Российской Федерации оформить присоединение Российской Федерации к конвенциям и Протоколам, указанным в пункте 1 настоящего Постановления, уведомив при этом, что действие Бернской конвенции об охране литературных и художественных произведений не распространяется на произведения, которые на дату вступления этой Конвенции в силу для Российской Федерации уже являются на ее территории общественным достояние

The article claims that the Russian works before 13 March 1995 could be Public Domain abakharev 08:47, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

From the ITAR-TASS vs Kuirier http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=2nd&navby=case&no=977498 : Preliminarily, the Court ruled that the request for a preliminary injunction concerned articles published after March 13, 1995, the date that Russia acceded to the Berne Convention. See id. at 1125. The Court then ruled that the copied works were "Berne Convention work[s]," 17 U.S.C. § 101, and that the plaintiffs' rights were to be determined according to Russian copyright law. See Itar-Tass I , 886 F. Supp. at 1125-26. - at least in this case the cut out date was set to March 13, 1995

From the text it seems it's a matter of interpretation, or actually of Russia falling in a gap between international copyright law and the Bern Convention. I believe we should be assuming the PD interpretation then, even if it may be infavourable for Russian authors (as the text above complains). Shall we change the date to 13 March 1995 then ? --Lysy^talk 09:15, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

• I am affraid 1995 it is to strong an interpretation. It looks odd that after signing the Bern declaration in addition to the Geneva one, the works published between 1973 and 1995 suddenly became unprotected. Lets better copyright specialist than us approve it if it is the case. abakharev 11:25, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

  Indeed. 1995 would be totally ludicrous. See below. Lupo 21:33, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Podshibikhin/Leontiev source does not back the template

Alex, I disagree on the article of L.I. Podshibikhin, K.B. Leontiev, Realization of Bern declaration in Russian Federation that you have added to the template as a source. I do not think that the quote you've given above (from part 4) backs the template's claim. The article's main subject is the copyright of foreign works within Russia, not the copyright of Soviet works in other countries. Podshibikin and Leontiev only briefly touch on U.S. legislation and say that it would have been better if the court in the Itar-TASS v. Russian Kurier case had also considered pre-Berne works. I fully agree with that. But the problem is that the American court was unable to do so because of the sad state of U.S. legislation at the time. The court could only look at registered copyrights. (As Podshibikin/Leontiev are probably well aware of, as their footnote 14 shows.) The U.S. has long since required copyright registration for copyrights to be valid. In 1989, the U.S. joined the Berne Convention, which says copyrights are automatic, without registration. The U.S. nevertheless kept its registration requirement (a direct contradiction of the Berne Convention!) until 1996, when the URAA became effective. The URAA dropped the registration requirement and restored copyright on foreign (including Soviet) works that previously were not copyrighted in the U.S. because they were not registered. But the Itar-TASS v. Russian Kurier case began in 1995 and concerned copyright violations that had occurred 1995 and earlier, i.e. before the URAA entered in force on January 1, 1996. The URAA could thus not be applied on these acts and the courts could not consider copyright violations on unregistered works (see ex post facto: can't apply a new law to acts committed before that law was in force). Since 1996, the situation has changed, and in recent cases, the URAA is applied and copyrights on unregistered foreign works are recognized, see e.g. (just as an example) this 2003 case concerning copyrights on unregistered Mexican works. The lasting rule of Itar-TASS v. Russian Kurier is not the March 13 1995 date, it's the priciple to apply the foreign law to determine copyright ownership, and then to apply local law to judge the infringement. Given all this, I just do not see how this Podshibikin/Leontiev article claims or backed the claim that pre-1973 Soviet works were PD outside of Russia (or outside of the CIS nations). I suggest the highly misleading citation of this article be removed from the template. Lupo 21:33, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

The Russian reservation regarding the Berne Convention, which you also quote (N1224) says that Russia considered the Berne Convention to only apply to works still copyrighted in Russia on the day Russia joined the Berne Convention, i.e. March 13, 1995. For Soviet and Russian works, that is exactly the same §18(1) of the Berne Convention, but many such works are copyrighted since the new Russian copyright law of 1993, as I had already shown at commons:Template talk:PD-Soviet. The contentious interpretation (and what Podshibikin/Leontiev write about) is that this reservation also applied to foreign works, which were (and to some, still are) copyrighted in Russia only if published after May 27, 1973, the date the USSR joined the UCC. But the copyright on foreign works in Russia is not the subject of this template. Lupo 21:33, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Want to see this resolved.

Wikimedia has several people on a legal mailing list, as well as a legal council. While Brad Patrick isn't discussing this, of course, are any other members of the wikimedia legal group in on this discussion? It would be bad that there be a mistake in either direction on this. With that said, I think some of Lupo's arguements are important, as just because the images would be 'extremely great to have PD', does not mean that they are that by will, as sad as that may be. Unfortunately the Russians may not care enough if we can actually find an odd dispairity or ambiguity in the law. Kevin_b_er 17:37, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Commons

• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Deletion_requests#.7B.7BPD-Soviet.7D.7D

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 148.61.251.202 (talk • contribs) 04:10, August 31, 2006 (UTC). [12]

PD somewhere/still may be copyrighted in the US addition

I would like to remove this recent addition. The statement that something PD in one country is not necessarily a PD in US, while possibly true, can universally be applied to any "PD-country" template. For instance {{PD-Poland}} claims PD for most all images in PL produced before 1994 (!). While likely PD in Poland, I doubt they are all guaranteed to be PD in the US. Same applies to all other country PDs. Do we have a definite resolution on what to do with images, in principle copyrightable in US and PD per other country's national laws? Does that matter if that other country happens to be the image's country of origin?

In any case, adding a selective disclaimed to this tag only that while possibly PD elsehwere it may be copyrighted in the US seems too heavy handed. If we end up with this wording remaining in place, let's add them to all national PD templates.

I am particularly interested in what would other think about adding such disclaimer to PD-Poland template. --Irpen 08:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Some such wording should be added to all the PD-templates, but it is also important to have an idea as to what "problems" each particular country poses. In the case of this template and {{PD-Poland}}, I think there is a clear risk that some images have been uploaded in good faith believed to be PD when in fact they are not PD in the US. For {{PD-Germany}} there is less of a risk, as we cleared out the category a few months ago following other problems. Adding the warning template seems like good middle ground between doing nothing and deleting the original tag. Physchim62 (talk) 08:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Certainly, this should be cleared up for all the similar templates, not only this one. As long as PD-USSR has different problems than PD-Poland or PD-Germany, each should be discussed separately in the appropriate talk page. Irpen, why are you so interested in PD-Poland here ? --Lysy^talk 08:32, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Lysy, I am interested in PD-Poland for the same reason as you are interested in PD-USSR (I hope). --Irpen 00:43, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not going to discuss PD-Poland here. However, I'd suggest that this can be fixed simply by replacing "may be copyrighted in the U.S. ..." by "are copyrighted in the U.S. ..." (since the URAA—that's 17 USC 104A—was passed in 1996). We should also add a second warning box saying that such works are copyrighted in other signatory states of the Berne convention if they were copyrighted in Russia in 1995. Lupo 08:27, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

With respect, Lupo, that's not necessarily true, and in any case this is not really the place for such an intricate discussion. Current law is that we have to respect US copyrights, and current policy is that we also respect the copyrights of the source country. There are over 190 different national copyright laws, I would suggest that we stick to trying to get things right for the the two that matter in any given case (US and source country) and leave the problem of third countries to reusers (although obviously giveing them as much detail as possible about the image, so that they can make an informed decision). Physchim62 (talk) 10:42, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

And, since the template weasels anyway, let's do it right: we should chage "It is believed ..." into "Some believe<ref to Podshibikin> ...; some others believe this claim to be false<ref to Pilch>"! :-) Lupo 08:27, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Seriously, though, adding a statement that something being PD in a country not necessarily means that it was PD anywhere else is a good idea. I did that long ago at {{PD-Canada}}. Only that this template here is not about what would be PD in Russia, but about what is believed by some to be PD outside of the CIS nations. Lupo 08:27, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of commons and of that (ridiculous) deletion request, Yakudza provided an interesting link about the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and its status, that reads:

"Статьи первых 10 томов (с «А» по «Италики»), издававшихся до 1973, — общественное достояние на территории США, но защищены Законом об авторском праве в России."

Translation: "the articles of the first 10 tomes (from "A" to "Italic"), published before 1973, are public domain on USA territory, but protected by copyright in Russia".

Exactly what some of us were pointing out for quite some time now... --Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 15:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

So after marxists.org, Yakudza has found another site repeating the claim. Care to explain (verifiably sourced!) why it should be true? Lupo 06:34, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Category

Just to give some perspective to this discussion, there are just over 1200 images which use this tag in Category:Pre-1973 Soviet Union images. Physchim62 (talk) 10:51, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Request

People, please, let's figure this out. Many people, including myself, have lots of images to upload, and we are waiting for this issue to be resolved. Moreover, there are items posted to Wikisource subject to the same copyright question. I am appalled to see that the issue is being discussed non-professionally with interpersonal attacks. I think that the issue of this magnitude deserves better treatment. The only person quoted here who has legal background was Soufron. I personally spoke with him during Wikimania and he said: "It's a complex issue, I don't know". I believe that we either have to involve more people with legal background in this discussion, or go with existent common practice which is "PD prior to 1973". Evgeny 11:31, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. This is a complex issue and even Wikimedia lawyers find it so. Meanwhile, we have people apparently think they can do legal research without any legal background... Sigh... -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 01:18, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I see you got rid of the personal attack in your statement... good. You're missing the important fact that I didn't invent the reasoning showing that this "pre-1973" claim is wrong. Interesting how other non-lawyers keep asserting that this "pre-1973" claim were true, without giving reasons... Lupo 06:34, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Don't hoot too much, if I rid get of the wannabe PA it is not because of you, but because of the risk of someone else who could think it was addressed to him. Try and disrupt Wikipedia to make a point as you're trying to is an order of magnitude worse than some PAs...

As for your "evidence", of course you did invent it. I have yet to see evidence of your claims coming from a professionnal lawyer. International copyright is a quite complex matter and even a lawyer can get it wrong if he/she is not specialized in that matter.

And by the way, the retroactivity of copyright provided by Berne is not automatic. Retroactive protection can be achieved if and only if "the copyright had not expired in either the country where protection is claimed or the country of origin, in either case at the time either became a Berne member".[13]

The copyright did not expired in the USSR/Russia, all right, but there was no protection in the US. Hence, works published before 1973 may not qualify for retroactive copyright, leaving them just as PD as they were. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 08:48, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

But Berne has nothing to do with US copyright law! You are applying the principle of reciprocal treatment, which is not necessary for US protection, nor by the Berne convention for that matter. §104A exists for the very reason of granting copyright protection to works which were ineligible because of a lack of national eligibility [para (h)(6)(C)(iii)] or because UCC formalities had not been complied with [para (h)(6)(c)(i)]. You complain about people pretending to do legal research with a legal backgroun, but you seem to be giving a legal opinion without having read the relevant law! As for having "lots of images to upload"—don't upload them then, otherwise you will just give someone else lots of images to delete. Physchim62 (talk) 09:25, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

"May not" in my sentence means that contrary to what is below, I don't claim it is perfectly true. Lupo, on the other hands, presents all his statements as perfectly true. As for "don't upload them then", this is WP:POINT threat I won't even comment. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 09:38, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah, but their copyright had not expired in the U.S.; they were not copyrighted due to lack of treaties and/or registration. That's a different beast. As I understand Geller, what he writes means (to consider Soviet works again, although Geller's article is about the EU directive 93/98/EEC) that if a Soviet work was once copyrighted in the U.S. and that copyright had expired, then that work did not become copyrighted anew when Russia joined the Berne Convention. But pre-1973 works were not copyrighted in the U.S. due to a lack of treaties (and because of lacking registration), and that is indeed a criterion in 17 USC 104A for copyright restoration. So, in 1996 these works became subject to copyright in the U.S. Lupo 09:30, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

If copyright expired through lack of renewal, then it was restored by §104A. Physchim62 (talk) 09:55, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

That's what I define as original research. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 09:38, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

That's what I define as the pot calling the kettle black! Physchim62 (talk) 09:54, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

See my answer for your own statement above. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 09:58, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) You are free to define "OR" any way you like. But maybe you should read 17 USC 104A. And read it closely, and pay attention to the conditions given. Also a good explanation is Circular 38b. (A more polite way to request sources is to ask "can you source that?" instead of shouting "OR!") Lupo 10:01, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

OR and soucing has nothing to do with each other. Unless you can find a court order (or better yet, its analysis) explicitely stating that Soviet pre-1973 are not PD in the US (which is something that still has to come up as far as I know), all your reseaches involve source analysis. And a wikipedian must not analyse sources because it is OR. It is that simple, and politeness has nothing to do with it. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 10:11, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Guys, it looks like we continue to discuss a legal matter as amateurs. I am afraid that this is not the way to resolve an issue. For example, I have my personal opinion on the matter, but I deliberately decided not to voice it, because it doesn’t carry sufficient weight – I am not a lawyer. Does anyone have any ideas what steps we might take to get a real legal opinion? Has something like this ever happened before?

Can we try to approach wikipedians who wrote articles on legal issues, maybe some of them are lawyers and maybe willing to help voluntarily?

Could we encourage the board to spend some money to get a professional advice? Any other ideas? Evgeny 12:42, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

The board currently employs a US-qualified lawyer as interim executive director: I have alerted him to the problem. Physchim62 (talk) 13:34, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Evgeny, I do actually have a different proposition. Pretend the template did not exist. Now assume someone (who was not a lawyer) wanted it to be created. Would you accept such a person's arguments for creating the template, if others said "no, wait, that can't be, see Pilch and Newcity"? Would you call for another professional opinion, too? That'd mean we couldn't have any image copyright templates (because they're all the work of non-lawyers; or at least the vast majority of them), which clearly doesn't quite make sense, does it? Thus I consider these "OR" claims strawman arguments; the RFC has already shown that many people can look through those and don't consider them valid. Still, if you can get Brad or Soufron to look into the matter, all the better. Lupo 13:56, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Soufron appears not to want to, which I can understand, but lets see if Brad can spare a few minutes on the subject. Physchim62 (talk) 14:12, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia's prohibition on original research applies only to the article namespace content. Original research is perfectly acceptable to determine whether something is acceptable from a copyright perspective. All listings on WP:CP are "original research" in a sense, so we'd never get copyright problems deleted if we disallowed original research on copyright problems. JYolkowski // talk 14:22, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

It's a good idea, Physchim62. Let's hope he is qualified enough to answer this.

Lupo, it is hard to answer such question in general. For example, if one is interested whether he (or she) is allowed to murder next door neighbor who is making noise, she (or he) probably doesn’t need a lawyer to answer this :). When it gets to, say, euthanasia in foreign countries, the issue of murder becomes so complex that one will probably need a lawyer to have a definite answer. So for some templates the case was obvious enough to go without a lawyer. My understanding that the template in question was initially created based on existent practice (at least in Russia as was argued). You brought con arguments, others brought pro arguments, and the issue seems to be not that clear – looks like we do need a lawyer to have an answer. Now, was it right to create a template in the beginning? I want to believe that it was created out of best intentions to make Wikipedia better source with better pictures; and I wouldn’t dare to judge this decision. On the other hand, I want to believe that you too are acting out of best intentions to make Wikipedia better by making sure that it doesn’t violate any copyright laws. You helped to figure out that the issue is not as clear as others believed. Let’s work to clarify it. We probably should hope that those pictures are not protected by copyright for Wikipedia’s sake; but if they are protected indeed, the sooner we know, the better – we don’t want people to waste efforts submitting illegal material. Let’s work together to clarify it.

BTW, I have heard that it might end with asking a question the hard way: by wikipidian deliberately suing Wikipedia and obtaining the court decision on that. I hope that it won’t come to that since some court decisions are already available. Then we just need a professional to interpret all that. Evgeny 16:54, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

My comment was not about whether the template had been created in good faith (which I assume) or not. I was trying to point out that if the counter-arguments had been known to Wikipedians and been presented back in 2004 when this template was created, it wouldn't ever have gotten off the ground, and IMO even without any appeals to higher authority. Lupo 06:33, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

• Well it is possible that if all these arguments were present the template would not be created, but since it was created we know that, for two years of its existence (that is almost infinity for wikipedia)
• Nobody ever asked us to remove any image with this template
• Nobody ever complained
• The template is extremely useful
• Removing it would have a devastating effect on a large class of articles

Thus, now we need a much stronger case to remove the template than in 2004 abakharev 06:56, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

How would it have a devastating effect on articles? If the image is so vital, it will be fair use. What is potentially devastating is pretending that images are PD when they're not. Physchim62 (talk) 13:19, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Disrupting Wikipedia on a disputed basis is a devastating effect. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 14:55, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Deleting copyvio images isn't disruptive. We do it all the time. JYolkowski // talk 21:59, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

You only think they're copyvio. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 22:03, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Which is why we need to resolve this issue, before we find out the hard way whether they are or not (-: JYolkowski // talk 22:12, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but the issue can only be resolved through either a court order given somewhere (jurisprudence) or through an official foundation statement. Not through ceaseless undermining of the existing template and image deletion/reclassing. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 22:16, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Official government publications ?

Is there any difference between an official government work - i.e. Space program photographs, military manuals (and any photographs / illustrations) and works published by individuals which may or may not be 70 P.M.A. ? Does Russian copyright law make a distinction ? Megapixie 01:38, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Russian copyright law makes a distinction between the copyrighted work belonging to individuals (physical entities) and belonging to organisations (non-physical entities). If the copyright belongs to an organisation (I guess in 1954 all the organizations were Government-owned anyway) it already expired it was published before the magical date of January 1 1954. If the copyright belongs to a person, then it expired if the the author died before 1954. The copyright for works done by employees during their official duties belongs to the employer (organization), I guess it covers Space program photographs and military manuals. Copyright for works published anonymously (most newspaper photographs, etc.) belongs to the publisher. Copyright on films shot before 1995, belongs to the studios (organization). abakharev 03:12, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. So Government works - i.e. works clearly produced and published by the government pre-1954 can be assumed to be public domain. What about government works between 1954 and 1991 ? - and to be clear I mean works produced and published by the government.

Does the government retain copyright on these works ? Megapixie 03:23, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the government retains the copyright for those works. Moreover it is quite possible that during the privatization mess the copyright was transferred to some strange private people. Only the official symbols, moneys, etc. a PD (see Template:PD-RU-exempt. 03:39, 6 September 2006 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alex Bakharev (talk • contribs) [14]

Yes, official documents and symbols (including postage stamps), folklore, and such are exempt from copyright under Russian copyright law. But I must add some caveats on some of the statements made above:

1. "If the copyright belongs to an organisation (I guess in 1954 all the organizations were Government-owned anyway) it already expired [if] it was published before the magical date of January 1 1954." Right. However, please note that coprorate copyright was perpetual until 1993, and was shortened then to 50 years since publication. See Liapin & Paliashvili, TACIS Retroactivity Report (Russia) (MS Word document). So many Russian/Soviet works where a legal person (i.e., a coporation etc.) was the copyright owner were still copyrighted in Russia in 1995, when Russia joined the Berne Convention, and also on January 1, 1996, which is the critical date for the U.S. (URAA date). Basically, this applies to all works of corporate copyright published 1945 (1946 for the URAA) or later. So, unfortunately for us, such works became subject to copyright in the other Berne countries, and also in the U.S. And due to the "national treatment", this has the strange effect that while the copyright in Russia on such works has indeed expired today (before January 1, 2004, in fact, and thus not subject to the term extension from 50 to 70 years in 2004), they may still be copyrighted elsewhere. (Probably not in the EU because the EU does apply the rule of the shorter term with respect to non-EU countries, unless there are bilateral treaties that would say otherwise. But the U.S. does not implement this rule of the shorter term, and hence these works are subject to the U.S. term there: 95 years since publication.)
2. "If the copyright belongs to a person, then it expired [in Russia, Lupo] if the the author died before 1954." Only for works published during the lifetime of the author. For posthumous publication, Russian law says that the copyright term runs from the date of publication. See e.g. Russian copyright law of 1993 with amendments up to 2004, article 27(5). (The original 1993 law said the same thing, but with a term of 50 years.) So if the author died before January 1, 1954, but his work was published later, it became subject to the copyright term extension in Russia from 50 to 70 years in 2004 and thus is still copyrighted today. Another unfortunate quirk of the laws...
3. "works clearly produced and published by the government pre-1954 can be assumed to be public domain". I wish it were that simple. If you place a strong emphasis on the work "clearly", I might agree. But note Alex's comment on privatization: one cannot just say that "in 1954 all the organizations were Government-owned anyway" and thus assume their publications were government works.

On all these issues (and including the question whether the URAA applies [it does]), see Films by Jove below. Lupo 07:25, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Tricky. I might try and make a decision tree for determining if a Russian (photograph/document) is public domain - and post it here. In the mean time - should we create a PD-Russia-1954 template and migrate pre-1954 state produced images, and images where the author died before 1954 ? Is there an earlier date where it is further distinguished - i.e. PD-Russia-1910(95 years) or PD-Russia-1935 (70 years) ? Megapixie 08:20, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Please don't (yet). 1954 applies only within Russia. If we only consider Russian law, we might arrive at the conclusion that the corresponding year for Russian works to be PD in the U.S. was 1946 (URAA date 1996 - 50). But according to Soufron, we must consider Soviet works to have been simultaneously published in all successor nations... See commons:Template talk:PD-Soviet-revised for what that'd give use: 70y p.m.a., which is even a reasonable approximation if only Russian law needed to be regarded. (Also note that Russian law has a copyright term extension for WWII veterans, which might mean that perhaps 1942 would be a better date with respect to the URAA.)

If a 1954 template was created, it should note in a footnote that in the U.S., a work might only be PD if it still passed these rules if 1954 was replaced by 1946 (or 1942), and the work was not registered in the U.S. But I'm reluctant to do so because of that dreaded "simultaneous publication" bit...

In any case, you're right, it's tricky. Figuring out what exactly would be a reasonable corrected version is even more complicated than trying to figure out whether the "pre-1973" claim was right or wrong. Lupo 08:39, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

You should go on with this 1954 template as base on commons. It is law in russia. Just leave out berne convention trouble for a while. Most images qualifies in wikipedia as fair use images. -- 80.145.6.238 07:03, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Maybe it indeed would offer us a possibility to move on. It even is relatively simple to include the Berne Convention effects in it. See commons:Template talk:PD-Russia. Only problem is that it ignores the unknowns around that "simultaneous publication" and the Georgian law. Lupo 09:32, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

A concrete court case in the U.S.

I recommend people go look up the case Films by Jove, Inc. v. Berov, 154 F. Supp. 2nd (2nd Cir. 2001) and 250 F. Supp. 2nd 432 (2nd Cir. 2003). This was a complicated case about a copyright infringement (committed in the U.S.) on Soviet cartoons. The case was about many different Soviet animated films published from 1936 to 1991. Some of these films were of Cheburashka, which is considered by many people in Russia a kind of national property; the childrens' books that served as the base for these films were written by Eduard Uspensky in 1966. In that case (154 F. Supp. 2nd at 448) the court clearly stated that these were "restored works", i.e. works that had their copyright in the U.S. restored under the URAA (17 USC 104A). See also the discussion of Tydniouk, A.: From Itar-TASS to Films by Jove: The Conflict of Laws Revolution in International Copyright, Brooklyn Journal of International Law 29(2), pp. 917ff. Here we have a concrete U.S. court case in which copyrights on pre-1973 Soviet works were upheld. Furthermore, one of the plaintiffs was Soyuzmultfilm Studios, a private successor of a former governmental enterprise that had the same name. So much for the effects of privatization... (The case was then complicated tremenduously, but the arguments revolved around who exactly owned that copyright: a third-party claimed that the plaintiffs (Films by Jove and Soyuzmultfilm Studios) were not the copyright owners and thus had no standing in the case. The court ultimately also confirmed that the plaintiffs were considered the copyright owners and thus had standing.) Lupo 07:25, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

• Films by Jove spent millions on restoration of the animations. Most of animations were after-1973. Neither side of the copyright dispute has an interest in claiming the works to be PD. Still yes, the cases reinforce Lupo's positions abakharev 10:05, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

May I point the interested readers also to the decision (in Russian) by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation from June 19, 2006. (Also available at the Supreme Court web site itself.) Point 34 clearly confirms that the 50-year copyright term defined in the Russian copyright law of 1993 (No. 5351-1) was retroactive and even restored the copyright on works on which the old 25-year copyright from the old Soviet code had elapsed! §3 of the Implementation Act (No. 5352-1) (in Russian) for the Russian Copyright law of 1993 had said so long ago, but not as clearly. And maybe this commentary (in Russian) here is helpful to clear up confusions about copyrights of foreign works within Russia and the copyright of Russian/Soviet works outside of Russia. Lupo 11:45, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

(Sorry for posting such a slew of Russian-language links here. I don't normally do this, but many good sources on that topic are in Russian only, and many participants in this discussion can read Russian. For those who can't, I guess we could work out some translations, but frankly said, I'd prefer not to do that alone but together with someone who disagrees with my point of view.) Lupo 11:45, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

BTW, the implementation act (No. 5352-1) is available in an English translation at the very bottom of the CIPR translation of the Russian copyright law (PDF, 372kB). Lupo 12:05, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

JFYI: For preliminary familiarization, one may use these automated translations tools: babelfish and Promt, good online dictionary is available at Lingvo --jno 11:03, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I support the position of User:Alex Bakharev in this case. But just switch back to 50 years conclusion and lets take a look at the berne convention later. -- 80.145.6.238 07:06, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Deleted at Commons

Commons is now deleting the remaining PD-Soviet images (some have been retagged): "PD-Soviet will be deleted as PD-Soviet is imcompatible with the copyright policy of Wikimedia Commons that requires freely licensed images only". See Commons:Template:PD-Soviet#Decission. --Kjetil_r 21:18, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

We need to deprecate it here, too. Obviously, we have more options for dealing with the effected images than Commons does. Jkelly 21:58, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Why should we? The commons decision is actually quite contested and was afaik motivated only by the fact that commons need to be a repository of absolutely free images. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 01:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Grafik. We need to have a professional advise on that matter. Before this we at least need to take back all the PD-USSR files from commons that are not covered by other free licenses abakharev 01:12, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Of course it should be deprecated here, too. It's as wrong here as it is at the commons. Do not import images from commons under PD-USSR here: only do so if (a) the commons image is sourced, and (b) cannot stay at the commons because it wouldn't fit any of the other PD tags (including PD-Russia), but could be used here under "fair use", and (c) if you can indeed make a good fair use rationale here. Lupo 06:43, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Lupo, just because the coup worked on commons with a bunch of German revisionnism does not mean you will be able to pull it off here... -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 11:37, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

WP:NPA. Physchim62 (talk) 13:43, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Where did you see a PA? "German revisionism" is not a person, you can't make a PA on it (but you can and should attack it). I'm not quoting people's handles, which would indeed be a PA. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 16:34, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Huh? I'm only pointing out that this template is wrong. Care to elaborate what you mean? What "coup", and what "revisionism"? Who wants to "pull off" what exactly? Lupo 11:51, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Sourced historical images should be eligible for fair use here: needs to be on a case-by-case approach though. Physchim62 (talk) 13:43, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Of course I will elaborate. The orgininal nomination was made by a bad-faith user ([15]), with personal attacks like "may this template roast in hell" and stuff like that.

Then, a bunch of users, among which a lot happened to be from German wiki, voted delete, with a lot of stupid comments like "around ten Wikipedians who have my full trust are for deletion. That's enough for me." - yeah, that's called a mob effect... Finally, the vote was closed in quite strange conditions.

What we have here is a rather blatant attempt from a handful of German users to delete picture they're not willing to assume easily because, well, it is quite painful for them. The template is just a convenient excuse for a history revisionnism. Deleting pictures of WWII means losing all the related information - which would rather arrange some of our revisionnist "friends"... -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 16:32, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

This is a profound failure to assume good faith and seems to be based entirely on a prejudice against a nationality. If you have some kind of evidence that the copyright issue hasn't been settled, bring it up. If all you have to contribute is venting bile against German speakers at Commons, please find something else to do. Jkelly 16:59, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I don't believe in coincidences. And m:Copyright_paranoia is still working, unless I am much mistaken. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 17:02, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "still working", but it isn't applicable when we know the facts and need to fix a mistake we've been making. Again, if you have anything at all that argues that we haven't been making a mistake, bring it up. If not, these accusations are both offensive and a waste of time. Jkelly 18:24, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that ru:Шаблон:SovietPU (that's the corresponding tag at the Russian Wikipedia!) has already been deprecated. [16] It's time to move here, too. I would suggest doing basically the same thing I already proposed earlier: deprecate this tag, declare any new uploads using it immediate speedy deletion candidates, and then start re-tagging the existing images using other existing PD templates, or, if an image doesn't fit any of these, make a fair use case. We might also import commons:Template:PD-Russia, which gives us a 1946/1942 cut-off year for the U.S. and might at least be ok for things first published in the RSFSR. Unsourced images should either be sourced or otherwise be tagged {{subst:nsd}}. Lupo 19:03, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I have produced a proposed deprecated version of this tag here. If that is to be used, move User:Lupo/PD-SovietUnion to Template:PD-SovietUnion and adapt the reference. Lupo 07:29, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

This is absolutely unacceptable. Lupo, your continued attempt to impose the conclusions of your original research is tiresome. Until someone with an expertise in the field (or the Foundation) says something, please do not waste any more of other people's time and stop this assault on the important images that illustrate the multitude of article. The tag's TfD at en-wiki failed. That is the only hard conclusion to this date. --Irpen 07:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Your continued claims of OR are tiresome. It's an old strategy: when you can't counter an argument in a discussion, play on the person. Try to undermine your opponent's credibility in any way, by making spurious OR claims or trying to launch a smear campaign, as others already have tried, or by misrepesenting the opponent. It won't work. As Jkelly said, if you have something to contribute to the copyright issue, do so, otherwise don't bother posting here. If you want to appeal to higher authority, then do so yourself. Find a foundation lawyer who says pre-1973 was right. Lupo 07:51, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

P.S.:Obviously you still haven't understood that my goal is not to have these images deleted. My goal is to get rid of an erroneous template. I want to correct a glaring error in this encyclopedia. Lupo 08:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

There is no glaring error, except in your perception of things. Not only your copyright research is more than questionable, but it fails to distinguish between moral and other rights. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 08:50, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Moral rights are somewhat besides the point. You do know that the moral rights do not expire at all in Russia? They're perpetual in Russia. (Russian copyright law, §27(1)) Besides, even PD images should have a source, and the authors of PD works should be properly attributed. Or are you trying to argue that we shouldn't be using Soviet images at all because of that? :-) Please don't try to side-step the issue; we've already had enough confusions about ex post facto and the copyright of foreign works in Russia and whatnot, and it all didn't water down the issue. Lupo 09:01, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm growing increasingly tired of this stuff... Your crusade is getting really ridiculous and, worst of all, smelling of history revisionnism. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 09:54, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Images don't need deleting

I've re-tagged all "my" the PD-Soviet images with {{fairuse}} --jno 08:46, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Good. That's why all the heat above is largely pointless. en:, unlike Commons, allows for use of unfree images. Many of the images in this category are going to PD for some other reason. Many of them are not free, but we can make a Wikipedia:Fair use claim on them. We just need to sort them properly, and not claim that they are free for the wrong reason. Jkelly 16:46, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Except that there is no wrong reason, or at least, no sufficient evidence pointing out to a wrong reason. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 16:47, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

It's fine if you believe that all of the people who have looked into this issue don't know what they're talking about. But it is not okay for a couple of editors to do some hand-waving about "German revisionism" and hold license and copyright cleanup issues hostage to some weird ideological grievance. For the xth time, if you have some copyright issue that you want to bring forward to discuss, do so. Otherwise we are going to start the cleanup job. Jkelly 17:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry, Jkelly, but this is exactly the other way around as several TfD attempts have shown. Only a handful of people who looked at the issue saw it in yours and Lupo way. Now please stop the disruption and let people work on developing the encyclopedia. Too much time is wasted already on defending the articles (and encyclopedia) from this assault. You are no more qualified to judge the issue than any other editor. The tag has to be deprecated either by concensus of amateurs, like you, Lupo, myself and others, or through an expert advice which would certainly override the consensus of people whose opinion is non-professional. Another alternative is the long missing opinion of the foundation. Until then, please keep in mind that your personal opinion is worth no more (an no less) than the personal opinion of myself, Grafikm, Lupo or anyone. --Irpen 17:47, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Consensus never trumps copyright issues. We cannot continue making a claim we know is wrong simply because people didn't "vote" delete in some TfD. Research and careful deliberation is entirely different than "opinion", and we've been accomodating the latter for entirely too long. Jkelly 18:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Who are those "we" who know it's wrong? You want the research and careful deliberations? Do so by all means! Do your research, come back to us to report the results and we will all see how this is all convincing. Best yet, bring an opinion of some known expert. Enough for now until then. --Irpen 18:04, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Do you see any deliberation, in a legal way, somewhere? I don't. All I can see is some commons admin decreting they thought this template was obsolete and deleting it. This is in no way a deliberation, rather a censorship. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 18:06, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd disagree; this was Commons admins deleting a template because they believe that the arguments presented that these works are PD are not convincing in the least. We do not hold 'legal deliberations' - we're not a legal body - but we attempt to be conservative as regards copyright law, because we intend to make a free encyclopedia. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 18:48, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Speaking as a Commons admin, I would have closed the Commons debate in a similar manner to how Arnomane did. There has been a continuation of the discussion on the Commons AN, but nothing much will change on Commons unless someone finds a genuinely new legal reason. On en not that many images will go its just this template. It may be an idea to produce an analogous {{FU-Soviet}}. The images which cannot use a Fair Use rationale are not going to be particularly useful; so their loss is not a big deal. It may be worth searching Commons for useful FU images, they are subject to speedy deletion on September 27.--Nilfanion (talk) 00:08, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Trouble is, it is not up to Lupo or me or you to find this reason, but to a lawyer knowledgable in international copyright. Until than, it's just amateurish research with no value. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 08:41, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

It's up to you, and those who wish to make the extraordinary claim that these images are PD. If we don't know if something is usable, we treat it as if it is copyrighted. We don't know, with these images - and there are some pretty compelling reasons why they might indeed be copyright-protected. Thus, we cannot use them as if they were PD. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 19:22, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Complement: As I said earlier, there is no evidence that Lupo's research is correct. Until than, a status quo is preferable to avoid harmful deletions from WP.

Moreover, we still don't know how moral and patrimonial rights are dealt with. I'll give you an example: when you're a photographer and you work for a company, you don't "own" your photos. You conserve moral rights on it and they're imprescriptible most of the time, but they only cover the right of being quoted as the author, the right to oppose alteration, plus a few minor things. But you don't get paid and can't claim royalties.

Now, imagine you're a Soviet photographer and you work for the TASS. You take a photo of some stuff. Your patrimonial rights belong to TASS, which is why Khaldei's photo is listed as "(c) Evgeni Khaldei/TASS" by the way. Then the URSS goes apart. But who is the successor of TASS? Is there even a successor? If there is none, it is quite probable your photo does not have any patrimonial rights attached to it - meaning anyone can publish it everywhere as long as he's quoting the author's name.

Now, if you happened to publish your work by yourself, you're the holder of both and can demand royalties. That's true - if you took a photo in the USSR, you still retain all rights on it. But it was almost impossible to publish it in Russia in such a way.

And in quite a lot of countries, working for someone automatically deprives you of all patrimonial rights. Anything you create while working belongs to your employer. Now, what happens if the employer no longer exists? If memory serves, works created by some Nazi Germany institutions fell into PD because there was no successor. Who is the successor of TASS? or of Soyuzpechat', or of some Soviet magazine? Or of the institute of Marxism-Leninism? The 100 private companies that took over? Probably not. In the case of the State itself it might be easier, but where is the border between the state and its agency?

Sure, the work might, if Lupo's research is correct, be protected by copyright retroactively. But what copyright? If that's the moral one, for all intents and purposes, it's quite similar because we can keep this pic on Wikipedia as long as we mention the author.

All this is of course as speculative as is Lupo's research, and just one example of a logic that could have worked, but the goal is to show you that we cannot cut the problem so easily as Lupo wishes he could. In the meantime, the status quo is just fine. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 08:46, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Your arguement fails for at least one reason: it is for uploaders to ensure that images and other material are free of copyright, not WP. Wikipedia can, should and will delete any material which it believes to be infringing. I have asked the office to follow this discussion: if they haven't intervened as yet, that is their business (they never like to appear to be bossy). Until they do, it is up to interested Wikipedians to try to find a solution. As for the TASS question you raise, this has already been decided by a US court in what is appropriately known as the ITAR-TASS case: it is the photographer who owns the copyright as far as the US (and therefore WP) is concerned. Physchim62 (talk) 13:15, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

The case may not be representative depending on the time, photographer, exact details and so on. One should look into the case more accurately. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 13:26, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I feel you are ignoring any comment that says what you don't want to hear. It's up to those who wish to claim something is PD to give a convincing argument why - something that has failed to be provided, so far. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 19:25, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 8 October 2016

Could someone please wrap the content of this redirect in {{subst:rfd|content=...}} as I am nominating it for rfd Pppery 20:20, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Not done: The page's protection level has changed since this request was placed. You should now be able to edit the page yourself. If you still seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:29, 8 October 2016 (UTC)