Help talk:Copyrights

Copyright vs. license

Do I understand that the model here intends only to model copyright status, not licensing? And that it does not consider the granting of CC-0 to have any effect on copyright status? - Jmabel (talk) 17:27, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Jmabel, I am not sure if I understand the question. I think the model here intends to model the licensing for copyrighted works by use of copyright license (P275) property, which can be set to Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (Q14947546) or Creative Commons CC0 License (Q6938433). I do not think we have a way of modeling the fact that author granted CC0 license by uploading "own" work to Commons, we will still need to propose this property, and a property for OTRS ticket number, but the rest seems to be there. The items linked through copyright license (P275) property should have a lot of properties related to the license, like link to the full text, requirements of the license, etc. I guess we should look at them, see what they have and what is missing. I hope this answer your question. --Jarekt (talk) 02:36, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Given that laws change...

... we probably need some way to indicate the date at which a statement was made and was believed to be accurate. Imagine the chaos we'd otherwise have had if we were already doing this when the U.S. extended copyrights from 70 to 90 years from publication. - Jmabel (talk) 17:30, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

•  Support --Jarekt (talk) 02:45, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Seems sensible. --Yann (talk) 13:58, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Derive term of copyright from other information?

Term of copyright is a consequence of other data.

If we know when and where someone is published then that determines copyright in most cases. If we further know the author and when the author died that covers almost every case, right?

It seems like the easiest way to apply values to copyright properties would be to query and tag, if that is even necessary.

I can understand a property for a copyright license, but to what extent is it useful to further include copyright in the data model of publications? Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:24, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: I believe the greatest need for clarity in copyright status is for the Structured Data in Commons project - Commons media files are supposed to be carefully vetted for copyright issues. ArthurPSmith (talk) 20:07, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Right yes of course. That makes sense. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:18, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

For books, we have to know the author, the editor or publisher, and the translator, as well as individual contributors for additional material. It is not always enough to simply know the author, because the copyright is not solely dependent upon the author of the main work.

For example, en edition of a Shakespeare play may have an editor who has selected from the several early editions, who has reprinted material in his edition with permission from another author, and may have notes from another contributor, illustrations done specially for that edition, and a forward written by someone else. In such cases, all individuals concerned with contributions to that edition of the book must be considered, and not just the date that the author William Shakespeare died. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:08, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree with ArthurPSmith, the main beneficiary of copyright statements will be Structured Data on Commons, however, many files on commons are scans or PD books or documents or photographs of PD artworks. In case of such files the copyright statements on commons should cover the specific digital representation of the work while the copyright for the underlying work is stored on Wikidata. I also agree with User:Bluerasberry that easiest way to apply values to copyright properties would be to query and tag, yes that is the easiest and most consistent way and I think it is necesary. I would like to be able to access such statements using Lua and Lua can not do complicated queries. I would like to make sure we get some of those modeling details right, so we do not have to do it multiple times. --Jarekt (talk) 14:58, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Berne convention as base law

It would probably be a good idea to create items of some articles of the Berne convention, especially the different points of Article 7 Term of Protection as they are implemented in national laws. With that, we can interconnect the national copyright legislation https://wipolex.wipo.int/en/text/283698 --Hannolans (talk) 20:14, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

I started the page Help:Copyright legislations and the listeria page Help:Copyright legislations/laws to query all copyright acts. Legislation in Wikidata is still at the beginning. --Hannolans (talk) 11:11, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Reconcile similar pages

• Wikidata:Copyright
• Wikidata:Licensing

This one is currently called Help:Copyrights

I am not sure if there are standard names for these things in other Wikimedia projects or how content is divided. Probably we need more order with not just this page but whatever topics are in this concept family. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:09, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

User:Bluerasberry those 3 pages have similar names but quite different content:

• Wikidata:Copyright - is the page with the official text of the of the copyrights found on the bottom of every page
• Wikidata:Licensing - is an essey about CC0 of wikidata and how to make sure you do not break any copyright laws when copying data to Wikidata
• Help:Copyrights - only discuses how to store information related to copyrights of described objects

I was thinking about Help:Dates when naming the page. Perchaps we can give it more precise name, like Help:Copyright statements etc. Whould that be better? --Jarekt (talk) 04:26, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

List of similar licenses

I expected that Open Knowledge Foundation (Q233015) was a peer organization strongly advocating for openness. They have been doing open data since before Wikidata existed.

This seems to be the page where they store copyright licenses for use in their network.

• https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/index.html

They currently offer three licenses.

• ODC Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL)
• ODC Attribution
• Open Data Commons Open Database License

The first of these might be compatible with Wikidata. The second two are not. It is regrettable that Wikidata and Open Knowledge do not have enough community overlap and conversation to have negotiated license compatibility. I wished that everything Open Knowledge did would match the Wikidata ideal of openness so that we could share messaging, outreach, and advocacy in common.

Besides Open Knowledge, I wonder what other major data licenses exist and what compatibility they have with Wikidata. Somewhere mixed in with our copyright modeling I expect Wikidata will make the comparison because I expect that Wikidata, more than any other project in the world, really cares about the license of data said to be open. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:19, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

I do not think you can get compatibility even between those 3 licenses, so we picked the least restrictive one, so they can copy anything from us, but we might not be able to. Other majow data license would be OpenStreetMap one. However keep in ming that this page is about how to model all sort of licenses and copytights of items we have metadata for not about copyrights related to volumteer contributions to Wikidata. Wikidata:Licensing might be a better place to discuss it. --Jarekt (talk) 04:45, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

120 years

120 years applies to creation date, so 120 years after creation of unpublished work by an author whose year of death is not known (Q29940870) is based on creation date, not publication date. I changed this. Please correct if wrong. We might need to include external references for those items. --Hannolans (talk) 10:45, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

You are right. Thanks for paying attention. --Jarekt (talk) 02:00, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Layout of this page

Because of the "Examples" section, the layout of this page is bad on my 1368-pixel-wide screen (hardly very narrow) and even worse on anything narrower. Might we consider placing the picture example and the license example in the same column together so it isn't so insanely wide? - Jmabel (talk) 01:56, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

I changed images to be all vertical with short labels and shrunk the image column. I also allowed middle column so it is not of fixed width but can change as needed. Is it better now? --Jarekt (talk) 13:26, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

"Country" needs to be understood broadly

"Country" as used here needs to be understood broadly, and possibly there is a better term. Consider:

• Taiwan
• Transnistria
• French Guiana

- Jmabel (talk) 02:00, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Jmabel, any item with label like countries with 100 years pma or shorter (Q60332278) could be replaced with "jurisdictions with 100 years pma or shorter". Would that be better? --Jarekt (talk) 13:29, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

I think so. - Jmabel (talk) 16:35, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Jmabel, I looked more into this and "jurisdiction" is a bit ambiguous. We have jurisdiction (Q5982983) for "teritorial jurisdiction" and jurisdiction (Q471855) for generic meaning of the word. I wonder if phrase "jurisdictions with 100 years pma or shorter" can be confusing if you are thinking about the second (broad) meaning of the word. Polish language has the same two meanings of the word. --Jarekt (talk) 19:58, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

I wouldn't update the label, but put it in the description and usage instructions.

I see that European Union (Q458) is included, that's not a country either! ;-). Multichill (talk) 12:00, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

I changed description to "Countries and regions where ..." in all those items. Which usage instructions did you had in mind? In the Help page or in the item. --Jarekt (talk) 15:50, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

In Commons we use the term 'territories': https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory Would territory be the correct word that summarises 'countries and regions' ? --Hannolans (talk) 11:13, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Subclassing "countries with n years"

@Jarekt: We have a bunch of classes for countries with a certain rule connected with the rule using has characteristic (P1552) and applies to jurisdiction (P1001)

• countries with 100 years pma or shorter (Q60332278) - 100 years or more after author(s) death (Q29940705)
• countries with longer than 70 years pma (Q60845045) - 70 years or more after author(s) death (Q29870196)
• countries with 50 years pma or shorter (Q59621182) - 50 years or more after author(s) death (Q29870405)
• (.... and more)

Can't we do something smart with subclassing? If a work is from a country with 100 years pma. If it satisfies that rule, it also satisfies the 70 years pma. It would also mean we only have to connect the countries with the item for the rule relevant for that jurisdiction. Multichill (talk) 12:00, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

The "or shorter" and "or longer" parts were suppose to do this so countries with 100 years pma or shorter (Q60332278) is covering countries with 100 years or more after author(s) death (Q29940705), 70 years or more after author(s) death (Q29870196), and 50 years or more after author(s) death (Q29870405) and countries with 70 years pma or shorter (Q59542795) is covering countries with 70 years or more after author(s) death (Q29870196), and 50 years or more after author(s) death (Q29870405), while countries with longer than 70 years pma (Q60845045) covers 100 years or more after author(s) death (Q29940705) and 70 years or more after author(s) death (Q29870196) countries. We might need to create more of those. I was hoping to have a definite list of countries withing each of those items ( I working on it). The "or shorter" items are good for PD works and "or longer" are good for still copyrighted works. Is it clear or we should find better way to explain it? --Jarekt (talk) 16:02, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

I am also in fsvor to have an item 'countries with 70 pma' and include the list of countries in that item, and to have an item 70 years or shorter, and 70 years or longer that includes the group 50 years and 80 years respectively. We can also show the date a country moved from the one group to the other category. --Hannolans (talk) 18:35, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

not sure if we need subclass, probably 'part of'? --Hannolans (talk) 18:37, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Starting point: Preliminary licensing framework

Starting point

Took me a bit of digging, but found some old slides. I think it can serve as a good starting point to improve on. Multichill (talk) 12:17, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

It should not be hard to find, as it is the first item on Help:Copyrights#See_Also. I thing we already have a lot of elements of your original proposal, although we use different names. One thing I think we are still missing is how to store information you call "justification" for storing information about "own work" first published on Commons or other projects, work downloded from flickr or other websites, works with OTRS permissions, etc. The easiest approach would be to use determination method or standard (P459) and create some items for those 3 (possibly more) scenarios. Another approach would be to create new property. Ine advantage of using determination method or standard (P459) is that that is required qualifier at the moment, so it would be easier to create constraints. --Jarekt (talk) 02:04, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Should we have judgment (Q3769186) as determination method or standard (P459)

Happy Birthday to You (Q167545) is in Public Domain, was the finding by a judge in a lawsuit [1]. How shall we model it? determination method or standard (P459) = judgment (Q3769186) perhaps? --Jarekt (talk) 04:47, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

but the judge should have given a rationale and a law that should be applied? Should the judge not be added with statement supported by (P3680)? --Hannolans (talk) 21:22, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Judge usually does give the reason. However what seems to often happen is that the news reports about it do not provide enough detail, or if they do the details are so specific to the case that they do not fall into any specific category, for which we have an item. I am thinking about setting copyright status (P6216) for Happy Birthday to You (Q167545), It is a messy and confusing case with unknown lyrics author, uncertain composers and numerous pre-1924 publications which were either PD or unauthorized. However one thing is certain, that in 2013 a judge found that Warner/Chappell, the company that have collected royalties for the song, did not prove that they owned the copyright, making it de-facto Public Domain. --Jarekt (talk) 20:28, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

I think we should add all the uncertainties and conflicting claims in wikidata like we did for the diary of Anne Frank. So, PD because..., and copyrighted because Warner/Chappell are the copyright owners with the court disapproving that claim. The judge didn't say it was PD, only that a certain company didn't have the copyright. We can't say it is PD as the judge didnt conclude that. --Hannolans (talk) 21:39, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

I have added most of the different copyright claims and situations so far in Happy Birthday to You (Q167545). We probably need an item for the court case. --Hannolans (talk) 07:16, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

We now have the court case Rupa Marya v. Warner/Chappell Music Inc. (Q61083939) as well to dispute the copyright claim. --Hannolans (talk) 08:10, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on that case. --Jarekt (talk) 14:30, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata:Hirtle chart

I am easy confused about US copyrights, so I copied parts of c:Com:Hirtle chart to Wikidata:Hirtle chart and began matching cases there with related items we are creating here. I noticed that Commons version drifted somewhat from the original and the original usually seems more clear to me. I am trying to reproduce as much of the original table as possible and reuse as much of the original language in the new items. --Jarekt (talk) 14:38, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Great! Note that we combine 'Condition' and 'Copyright Term' into one item while that chart have them separate. Do also note that the chart says 'works before 1923 are public domain' without mentioning the exact copyright rule behind it. --Hannolans (talk) 14:57, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

More items needed

Hi, We need more items:

• One for countries which followed the rule of shorter term: countries which use the rule of the shorter term (Q61753997) (why does it show issues for the list of countries?)
• Also in 50 years or less since publication (Q61070955), each applies to jurisdiction (P1001) should have a qualifier applies to part, aspect, or form (P518) which indicates the types of works concerned (in China, photographs and films). How do we make that compulsory?
• I created 25 years or less since publication (Q61752729) for Guerrillero Heroico (Q498216).
• There are many issues with 50 years or more after author(s) death (Q29870405).

Regards, Yann (talk) 13:25, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Yes we do.

• I started Property_talk:P150#how_to_use_this_property_for_list_of_countries discussion about property for list of countries.
• The only way to make any such detailed constraints would be to add it to Wikidata:Database reports/Complex constraint violations/P6216, which by the way seems to be broken at the moment.
• About 25 years or less since publication (Q61752729). That is great. I added it to Help:Copyrights and added a reference to Guerrillero Heroico (Q498216)
• About 50 years or more after author(s) death (Q29870405). See c:Commons_talk:Copyright_rules_by_territory#Wikidata_items

--Jarekt (talk) 15:47, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

With the current wording, we can't use published more than 95 years ago (Q47246828) works still under copyright. So there are 2 solutions:

1. We change the wording,
2. We create another value.

Opinions? -- Yann (talk) 12:18, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

We created some other values - and still need more. published more than 95 years ago (Q47246828) should be used on works in the public domain works only. --Hannolans (talk) 12:57, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Hannolans that published more than 95 years ago (Q47246828) should be used on works in the public domain works only, since works published less than 95 years ago my or may not be in PD. See Wikidata:Hirtle chart. --Jarekt (talk) 15:09, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

@Hannolans, Jarekt: OK, thanks for your message. So for US works still under a copyright what property do we use? And we need some automatic process for changing the value when a work becomes public domain. You don't want to edit manually 1000s of items every 1st of January. Regards, Yann (talk) 08:57, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Modern works published after 2002 can use, according to Wikidata:Hirtle_chart, copyright status (P6216)->copyrighted (Q50423863) with determination method or standard (P459) -> 70 years or more after author(s) death (Q29870196). Not sure about the jurisdiction we should use. US is not in the list of countries with 70 years pma or shorter (Q59542795), probably we should decide to have the US status always seperately? Or have a statement countries 70 year, when works are published after 2002 ? --Hannolans (talk) 09:46, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Afther some thoughts, I think as the US copyright is so complex and plays an important role for tech industry and Wikimedia Commons, it is probably better to have always the US copyright situation seperately. With that in mind, we should probably create seperate several '70 year p.m.a.' for the US situation, as a a subclass of 70 year p.m.a. (for example one item for 70 year pma with required notice) --Hannolans (talk) 10:28, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Creative Commons proposal for Google Summer of Code

Just a heads up for people who maintain and watch this page: Creative Commons is launching a proposal for tool development with Wikidata's copyright metadata for the 2019 edition of Google Summer of Code. See https://creativecommons.github.io/gsoc-2019/project-ideas/all/#copyright-status-tool. Cheers, SandraF (WMF) (talk) 08:56, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Cool! Looks like Wikidata could develop as a copyright hub if this proposal get approved --Hannolans (talk) 11:49, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

The more tools we have that work within the eco-system of copyright statements the better. Hopefully this effort will result with more items tagged with proper copyright tags, and/or tools for others to use. --Jarekt (talk) 13:07, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Modelling a work with a CC license

@Jarekt: and @Hannolans: In preparation for a workshop at the Creative Commons Summit, I'm familiarizing myself with the examples and basic modelling principles you are working on. I may come up with more questions in the upcoming days. A first question: how, ideally, would you model a work that has a Creative Commons license? I've been looking at, and editing, the CC licensed film Elephants Dream (Q825197) and am curious for your changes and feedback. I'm uncertain about what to enter as values of the determination method or standard (P459) and applies to jurisdiction (P1001) qualifiers. Also, copyright license (P275) was first written as a direct property of the item, but I deleted that statement and moved it to be a qualifier of copyright status (P6216). Shouldn't copyright license (P275) always be a qualifier (and wouldn't it be advisable to construct a property constraint to make that clear)? Thanks for your input and your trailblazing work here in general! Spinster 💬 12:09, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I would say that the license is another statement. Right holder and creator are also other statements. It is not a qualification of the copyright status. --Hannolans (talk) 12:18, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I see that in the text it is mentioned as a qualifier. I'm not in favor. For example, we have works with multiple licenses, we also have works with changed licenses were we need dates as qualifiers (not allowed, but this happens in Flickr and Youtube regularly). In general we might need a start date for the license. And we need a source for the license, that might be another source as the copyright status. --Hannolans (talk) 12:23, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Spinster, So far we mostly concentrated on modeling copyright statements for public domain works, and that part is much more mature than the copyright statements for copyrighted works. Current constraint to have both jurisdiction and determination method qualifiers also makes sense for PD works but I am not certain that both are needed for copyrighted works. So for example for Elephants Dream (Q825197) I either drop applies to jurisdiction (P1001) or made it "worldwide". I like copyright license (P275) to be a qualifier of copyright status (P6216) to get "bundling" effect that allows modeling of different copyrights at different jurisdictions, time periods, for different parts of work (like text vs. photographs) or even for different co-authors. That way work can be still copyrighted in the US but in PD in Europe, or text can be PD but photographs are still protected. Also all works copyrighted now will be in public domain at some point, maybe next year and than we will not delete copyright license (P275) statement but add end date to the parent copyright status (P6216) and add a second copyright status (P6216) with PD value. --Jarekt (talk) 02:31, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

I dont see the bundling effect why we should add license as a qualifier to the copyright status. It will lead to a relation between status and license that is not always clear. For example, the copyright status of a work might be unclear, but still a museum distributes that artwork under a CC-license. That CC-license needs to have qualifiers, for example 'disputed by' or other information, or 'retracted since' and one or multiple sources. Also, during time we will get more and more license. For example the National Archives in the Netherlands switched from CC-BY-SA to CC-BY to CC-0. In Commons so far we don't show those changes, but in Wikidata we can track those and to me we should keep all those three licenses as all three are still valid legalwise. And probably in the future they will release there photographs under yet another, not yet existing, license. --Hannolans (talk) 09:44, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Situation would be even more complex when we are dealing with movies and documents. The license deals with the part the right holder have rights to, that restriction is dealt in within the cc-license itself. This is the reason on Youtube some videos are released under CC-BY, although it is a recording of a music session. The copyright status would be more difficult as we will have to declare the copyright status for each right holder. With this, it would might sense to make copyright holder (P3931) a qualifier for copyright license (P275) --Hannolans (talk) 10:01, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Hannolans, . The bundling effect comes from picking some property as the main one and adding other related properties as qualifiers. Some qualifiers constrain the scope of the bundle (jurisdiction, start and end time, which part or author is considered, etc.) and some provide more in-depth information (copyright holder, license, determination metchod, etc.). Which property become the main one, was not as important; however copyright status (P6216) was picked since it makes sense to both PD and copyrighted works allowing us to have similar data structure for both. There were many discussions on how to best model copyrights, see Help:Copyrights#See_Also and I thought we settled on this approach. I agree that for copyrighted works it would make equal sense to organize properties as qualifiers of copyright license (P275), but I think it is preferable to organize it around copyright status (P6216) for sake of consistency with PD works. We could have made copyright holder (P3931) a qualifier for copyright license (P275), or made copyright license (P275) a qualifier of copyright holder (P3931), but I would argue for making both qualifiers of copyright status (P6216). I was thinking about writing Lua module for accessing this copyright data from Commons infoboxes and would argue for uniform way of modeling copyrights so the codes do not have to consider multiple data models. --Jarekt (talk) 15:06, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, both, for your extensive input and thoughts. I have not actively participated in, or followed, earlier discussions, but I have to say that I think the approach Jarekt describes makes a lot of sense. In terms of data modelling: a (Creative Commons) license *is* a modifier of the default copyright status of a work. That said, I think we're then, as Hannolans says, indeed limited by the functionalities of Wikidata: qualifiers can't have qualifiers of their own. Hmm. I think I can live with some duplication just for that purpose: also have copyright license (P275) as a direct property, in order to be able to place its necessary qualifiers there. Spinster 💬 10:26, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I am also not sure about the issue that the copyright status is always restricted to a jurisdiction, but Creative Commons licenses are worldwide valid (are they?). I really would like to add the date the permission was given and the copyright holder that gave the permission, the attribution name text and a source for the license as qualifier. I don't see how we could do this when we treat the license property as a qualifier. I think this needs more testing on items. Shall we do some testing with some sources? --Hannolans (talk) 15:35, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Hannolans, The way I see it we have three main types of works:

1. Public Domain works
2. Copyrighted and released under free license
3. Copyrighted and released under non-free license or "all right reserved" cases

So far I was concentrating on Public Domain works and refinement of infrastructure for both copyrighted types is still ahead of us. Current constraint about need for both jurisdiction and determination qualifiers, I think is essential for PD cases but makes less sense for Copyrighted works. I think I will create constraint to require jurisdiction only for PD works. As for the qualifiers you are suggesting, I would just add them to the copyright status (P6216). --Jarekt (talk) 12:37, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

I don't think we can mix license and copyright. This will certainly have consequences for complex modelling (films with music under CC etc). I will add some recent examples of copyrighted work with Creative Commons mark. Problem is we don't have that many in wikidata, most are in commons. --Hannolans (talk) 13:08, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

I have one license added to Miley Cyrus: Tongue Tied (Q17113814). This music video was uploaded by Nowness to which the director was one of the editors, but they had not the rights of the music video. So the license was altered and the video deleted from Commons. First steps to model this. I think we should also model a deletion request? --Hannolans (talk) 13:21, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Second test: modelling license and copyright on Dutch Wikipedia (Q10000). This is in a way complex. Wikipedia went for double licensing in 2009. But when exactly and where can I find that? And problably in that time it was not CC-BY-3.0 but an earlier version. But we don't have publication dates for Creative Commons licenses in Wikidata.... --Hannolans (talk) 13:42, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

See copyright status of Hirtle chart (Q61196189), Big Buck Bunny (Q282456) or Elephants Dream (Q825197). --Jarekt (talk) 04:11, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

How do we claim that a work is copyrighted? The minimum is 50 years according to Berne. Should we have a a statement 'in countries with 50 years p.m.a. or longer' like we have countries with longer than 70 years pma (Q60845045)?--Hannolans (talk) 06:09, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

I assume there are also countries without copyright? See http://judithip.com/berne-non-members/ --Hannolans (talk) 06:09, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

added copyright status and license for the license text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (Q18199165) --Hannolans (talk) 10:02, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata:Property proposal/copyright clarification

Users interested in this topic, please review and join the discussion on property proposal for copyright clarification. --Jarekt (talk) 03:14, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Add type of copyright specification – specify related rights – Public domain determination

Copyright does not include one right per jurisdiction, it can be subdivided into specific rights for specific groups.

In the European Union for example we are familiar with:

• Literary and artistic works (70 years after death of the author for published works within that period)
• Rights for performing artists (50 years after creation or 50 years after publication within that period)
• Phonograms (50 years after publication)
• First fixation of film (50 years after creation or 50 years after publication within that period)
• Broadcasts (50 years after broadcast)
• Unoriginal photographs (some jurisdictions, 25 years after creation(?))
• Database rights (15 years after each substantial investment)
• Rights for phonogram producers & rights for film producers (70 years after creationor 70 years after publication within that period)

Should we create an ontology that describes these types or rights and in which jurisdiction they apply?

e.g Broadcast:

• applicable jurisdiction: European Union
• term of protection: 50 years
  • start date: publication

Martsniez (talk) 08:27, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

License stated in an e-mail

I think we need a version of stated by copyright holder at source website (Q61045577) which deals with the case where it has been stated through communication (e.g. e-mail). The example should probably describe how to tie Wikimedia VRTS ticket number (P6305) to the object to confirm this. /2A00:801:704:BFB3:57D7:7701:4C16:577F 10:43, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Properties / issues @ Wikimania

1. Publication date. Use methods for determination when a work was effectively published. Qualifiers could sum up the criteria that the | Rights and Reproductions book lists as considerations for determining when a work was published.

1. Calculation property. Establish when the author itself entered into the public domain. "Published works of this author are in the public domain". Potentially adding everything directly/automatically to all the creative works by that author. Can we extend public domain dates to an author?

1. Use restrictions. For soft law & legal restrictions different from copyright but affect re-use of the work. For example, | traditional knowledge labels.

1. Copyright holder property. To know who is the copyright holder of a work or even who is the responsible for managing the rights of that person (i.e. which collecting society).

This is a draft of the stuff we discussed with Hanno at Wikimania. --Scann (talk) 14:17, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

copyright status as a creator (P7763)

We now have copyright status as a creator (P7763) to assign the copyright status of the oeuvre of a creator. Therefore I also created works protected by copyrights (Q73555012), copyrights on works have expired (Q71887839) and part of the copyrights on oeuvre has expired (Q75700125). This is very useful for cultural institutions and to determine more complex copyright statuses of works. The issue I'm facing right now is how to model the different determination method or standard (P459). For example, a determination method for someone who was born in 1850 but without a date of death, or someone who died in 1980. Would also be nice if we can use retrieved (P813) or something else to clarify because for example the date of dead can be added or changed. --Hannolans (talk) 11:28, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

@Hannolans:, Sorry I was not checking this page. I missed the proposal stage of copyright status as a creator (P7763). I think P7763 is great and would greatly help, however I am confused about a lot of details. So before I can form opinion about P459 and other properties I need to understand some terms and assumptions:

• works protected by copyrights (Q73555012) - I do not know about other language labels but English term "oeuvre copyrighted" will not be understood by most. I had to look it up. A better English term would by Body of work, so would it be OK to rename it to Body of work copyrighted or Copyrighted body of work?
• Than you have a description "works made by this author are copyrighted" and copyrights on works have expired (Q71887839). I think we need more nuanced description, because for most works that is changing from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. I think most jurisdictions are 70 pma and all are 100 pma so we can safely add copyrights on works have expired (Q71887839) to works where author died more than 100 years ago that would cover most jurisdictions except for the US. In the US works published more than 95 years ago are PD so such works, published during creators lifetime are PD in the US too. Oh now I see that the description of Q71887839 does it right "copyrights of works published during the lifetime of the author have expired" maybe we can replace the label with it or at least change the label to copyrights on most works have expired?

--Jarekt (talk) 13:54, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

determination method or standard (P459)

For determination method or standard (P459) it might make more sense to use that property as a reference instead as a qualifier. With that we can use several determination method or standard (P459) as a reference, each with a unique retrieved (P813) and also a used value at that time, for example the date of death (P570). Jurisdiction and start date should be a qualifier, but moving determination method or standard (P459) means we can combine different ones (based on publication or creation date for example, or based on date of death or date of birth) with the same outcome. --Hannolans (talk) 11:34, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Qualifying a copyright claim with the relevant date

WikiProject Books has more than 50 participants and couldn't be pinged. Please post on the WikiProject's talk page instead. Context: Using Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street (Q108486291) as an example: this was published in 1923 and Woolf died in 1941, so it's PD in the US and in pma-70 countries:

• copyright status (P6216):
  • public domain (Q19652)
    • applies to jurisdiction (P1001) → United States of America (Q30)
    • determination method or standard (P459) → published more than 95 years ago (Q47246828)
    • public domain date (P3893) → 2019-01-01
  • public domain (Q19652)
    • applies to jurisdiction (P1001) → countries with 70 years pma or shorter (Q59542795)
    • determination method or standard (P459) → 70 years or more after author(s) death (Q29870196)
    • public domain date (P3893) → 2012-01-01

I would like to consider using the data at Wikidata to drive licensing at Wikisource. However, I'd like to also be able to "see" the reasons for the determination, because the template at Wikisource would say something like "this work is PD in countries with PMA < YY, because the author died in YYYY". In the above two claims, the dates in question are 1923 (publication) and 1941 (author death).

Often, this data can, with a lot of work, be implicitly assumed based on the item itself:

• For published more than 95 years ago (Q47246828), traverse one or all of the published in (P1433)/part of the series (P179)/part of (P361) chains and look for one of inception (P571) or publication date (P577)
• For countries with 70 years pma or shorter (Q59542795), traverse all the author, editor, illustrator, translator, and any other contributor claims, collect the death dates and choose the latest one

However, not only is this extremely difficult to do robustly, due to inconsistent schemas, values distributed across many other items and incomplete data in general, this still does not cover some cases:

• if there are multiple authors and the author that died last released their copyright somehow: they should be excluded from the calculation
• if the author signed the copyright over due to "corporate authorship", their death dates may not matter
• if the country in question has variable pma rules depending the date of death (e.g. Peru)

So, it would be hugely easier if there could be a property to qualify public domain (Q19652) with to say what the fundamental date used for the calculation actually is.

And then it should be possible to verify the reasoning because the "fundamental date" + determination method or standard (P459) → public domain date (P3893) should be consistent.

Could one use significant event (P793) as a qualifier (or even on the item, qualified with something like object of statement has role (P3831) → "author death date")?

Inductiveload (talk) 09:26, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

See related property proposal: Wikidata:Property_proposal/relevant_date_for_copyright Inductiveload (talk) 21:35, 10 September 2021 (UTC)