On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 7:16 AM, Peter Gervai<grin...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 15:01, Jimmy Xu<xu.jimmy....@gmail.com> wrote: >> So that is, due to P.R. of China Copyright Law, text that published in >> newspapers, periodicals, radio and TV stations and other media >> reported the news of the simple fact are not copyrighted. But I cannot >> find these exception in US Copyright Law. Maybe it's only because my > > If it is legal to use them by PRC laws (and the material was authored > in PRC) then it is legal to use anywhere in the world. At least I'd > believe so, because this is the same case as US governmental > materials, soviet era stuff and like, but IANAL.
This is false. The laws of the US in particular are a little weird here. Under current law (and ignoring the complex historical cases), a work published by a foreign national in a foreign country which is a Berne convention partner is eligible for copyright protection in the US in all cases where the same work published in the US by a US national would be eligible for copyright protection. There is no consideration in US law for whether the work happens to be public domain in the country of origin. The only considerations that matter (for works being published under present law) is whether the same work published in the US would be eligible for protection. Many countries other than the US don't do things this way. In particular, most countries do not grant protection to works unless that protection already exists in the country of origin, but this is not the way US law works. So a US work that is public domain in the US tends to be considered public domain in most other countries, but the converse does not necessarily apply. -Robert Rohde _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
