Public Domain Calculators

Table of Contents

Background

As part of the Public Domain Works project, we wanted to create an algorithm to determine whether or not a certain work was in the public domain, given certain details such as date of publication, date of death of author, and so on.

Public Domain Works later joined onto the Open Library project, and there were several discussions about creating a set of algorithms for determining public domain status in different jurisdictions.

At the first COMMUNIA workshop the Open Knowledge Foundation suggested members of the network collaborate to create a set of public domain calculators for different jurisdictions in Europe. The project was also discussed at the first meeting of the EU funded COST A32 project.

At the third COMMUNIA workshop, the OKF presented on the calculators project and a Working Group was created, which will include work on public domain calculators across Europe.

Overview

The Public Domain Calculators will be developed in two stages.

1. The first stage will be to develop copyright flow charts such as this one from Creative Commons Canada, or this one for the US from Bromberg & Sunstein LLP. This work will be undertaken and reviewed by groups of legal experts.

2. The second stage will be to convert these charts into code. Examples of the algorithms in code form, can be found at Public Domain Works and at the Open Library. This work will be undertaken by the OKF and volunteers.

Material from EU Public Domain Project

This material was created as part of the EU-funded Project on Economic and Social Impact of the Public Domain. This material will eventually be published as part of that project's report and is being made here in the hope that it it will be a useful basis for building explicit algorithms/flow charts and will help avoid any duplication of work elsewhere (NB: this material is not being made available under the license at the bottom of this page but simply for research and examination purposes).

• Overall summary by Paul Torremans

• PD Report for Bulgaria

• PD Report for Greece

• PD Report for Hungary

• PD Report for Italy

• PD Report for Portugal

• PD Report for Romania

• PD Report for Slovenia

• PD Report for Spain

• PD Report for Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia

Calculators

Below are brief summaries of work on public domain calculators in different jurisdictions. If you would like to get involved, please join our pd-calculators list and introduce yourself!

Generic

• EU Generic Flowchart - by Christina Angelopoulos at IViR.

Argentina

• Work will be co-ordinated by Ariel Vercelli at Bienes Comunes

Australia

• Work is being undertaken by Tom Koltai starting at Copyright AU

Belgium

• Work will be co-ordinated by Severine Dusollier, University of Namur. 1st September 2009.

Brazil

• Carlos Affonso, CTS/FGV 27th June 2009. caf@fgv.br

Canada

• Work is being undertaken by Access Copyright (The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), Creative Commons Canada, Creative Commons Corp. and the Wikimedia Foundation. See this announcement for more details. Also, this fits under the CC PDwiki project. UPDATE: Most recent version of the flowchart is v.6, current as of December 16, 2008.

Chile

• Work will be undertaken by Derechos Digitales

France

• Primavera De Filippi (European University Institute, Italy) will contribute to the French calculator.

Germany

• John Weitzmann. 1st May 2009. http://www.eear.eu/

Guatemala

• Work undertaken by Creative Commons Guatemala and LvM Library for Guatemala and other Central American countries, co-ordinated by Renata Avila and Dr. Grete Pasch with the collaboration of Michelle Carrera

India

• Work will be undertaken by Cen­tre for In­ter­net and So­ci­ety.

Italy

• Thomas Margoni at the Università di Trento has expressed an interest in developing a calculator for Italy.

• Primavera De Filippi (European University Institute, Italy) will contribute to the Italian calculator.

Kenya

• Samuel Kongere. jambita1@yahoo.com. July 27th 2009.

Netherlands

• Work is undertaken by IViR.

• Find diagram here available as:

  • PDF

  • ZIP of SVG

  • EPS

Norway

• Work will be coordinated by Gisle Hannemyr at the University of Oslo and Creative Commons Norway.

• Existing work:

  • Copyright term note and flowchart for Norway

Philippines

• Work will be undertaken by Philippine Commons and the Arellano University School of Law. Law Professor Berne Guerrero and Law Professor Jimmy Soriano will lead the work.

Poland

• Work will be undertaken by Dr. Alek Tarkowski, Creative Commons Polska / Poland

Romania

• Work will be undertaken by Bogdan Manolea, Director Executiv, Asociatia pentru Tehnologie si Internet (APTI)

Spain

• Work will be undertaken by Ignasi Labastida i Juan, Oficina de Difusió del Coneixement de la Universitat de Barcelona

  • pd_flowchart_spain.jpg

  • PD_CC_simple_eng.png (March 2010)

  • PD_CC_work_eng.png (March 2010)

Sweden

• Work is being led by Mathias Klang at the University of Lund.

Switzerland

• Work is being undertaken by Simon Schlauri of CC Switzerland.

United Kingdom

• The Open Knowledge Foundation is producing a calculator for the UK.

• See diagram here available in:

  • PDF,

  • ZIP

United States

• Elizabeth Townsend-Gard and Team at Tulane University.

• Work is being undertaken by Creative Commons and the Open Library under the PDwiki project.

• Existing work:

  • Peter Hirtle's comprehensive chart at Cornell

  • Public Domain Sherpa

  • Paper Copyright Slider from the American Library Association.

• Interested in contributing:
  • Hung V. Tran, Department of Computer Science - The University of Iowa

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