Public Domain Calculators Meeting, 10-11th November 2009

There is often a tendency to talk of ‘the public domain’ and of works falling out of copyright and ‘into the public domain’ – as though there is a single set of works which are out of copyright all over the world. In fact, of course, there are different national laws about the nature and duration of copyright in different types of works – and hence what is in the public domain is different in different countries.

We’re currently coordinating work to build a series of public domain calculators – which will help to determine whether or not a given work is in copyright in a given jurisdiction. At the time of writing we have been in touch with groups and individuals interested in helping to build the calculators in 17 jurisdictions.

In November, the Open Knowledge Foundation in association with the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at the University of Cambridge are hosting a meeting of European experts on copyright and the digital public domain as part of the Communia project. The purpose of the workshop is to produce materials such as legal flow charts and public domain “algorithms” which will help with the representation of different national copyright laws and the determination of public domain status.

Details of the meeting are as follows:

• When: 10-11th November 2009
• Where: Emmanuel College, University Cambridge
• Wiki: http://wiki.okfn.org/PublicDomainCalculators/Meeting
• Participate: Free but space is limited. If you are interested in coming, email the organizers at: info@okfn.org

Related posts:

1. Public Domain Calculators: updates and a new list! 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...
2. 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...
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....