Back in June we solicited for assistance in a project to build a series of calculators to ‘map’ the public domain in different jurisdictions, by showing which works are out of copyright.

There are now individuals and groups keen to contribute to the calculators in at least 10 countries:

• Argentina: Bienes Comunes
• Canada: Access Copyright + Creative Commons Canada, Creative Commons + Wikimedia Foundation
• Chile: Derechos Digitales
• Italy: Università di Trento
• Norway: University of Oslo + Creative Commons Norway
• Philippines: Philippine Commons + Arellano University School of Law
• Sweden: University of Lund
• Switzerland: Creative Commons Switzerland
• United Kingdom: Open Knowledge Foundation
• United States: Creative Commons + Open Library

For more information, see the PublicDomainCalculators wiki page!

Ultimately we’d like to see the formation of loose-knit groups to create, maintain and review charts representing relevant legislation in different countries. These charts would be converted into code, and combined with metadata about works to give a sense of what works are in the public domain in each jurisdiction.

We’ve set up a mailing list for interested parties to discuss developments and to share experience in creating flow charts to represent the law:

• http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pd-calculators

I’ll be talking about the Public Domain Calculators at the 3rd COMMUNIA Workshop in Amsterdam on Monday. As I suggested back in January it would be wonderful if we could build on the collective expertise and experience of the COMMUNIA network to trace the contours of the public domain in Europe!

Related posts:

1. Mapping the Public Domain – Call for Assistance! For a while we’ve been planning to help to produce a set of Public Domain Calculators – which each aim to indicate whether or not a given work is in the public domain in a given jurisdiction. The idea arose...
2. First COMMUNIA Workshop – “Technology and the Public Domain” Last week I went to the first COMMUNIA workshop on Technology and the Public Domain in Turin. COMMUNIA coordinator Juan Carlos De Martin and Rishab Ghosh of MERIT, University of Maastricht gave opening talks. I was on a panel with...
3. Public Domain Calculators As followers of the mailing list will know we are now planning to join forces with Creative Commons on the Internet Archive’s Open Library project. Our first step is to develop ‘public domain calculators’ for the different jurisdictions across Europe....