Documentation from the Public Domain Calculators Meeting

Last week we had a meeting about building a set of Public Domain Calculators for countries across Europe (which we blogged about earlier this month). The public domain calculators will help to determine whether or not a given work is in copyright in a given jurisdiction.

We started out by reviewing existing work on the calculators. We then put together first drafts of diagrams representing copyright law in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. We also started work on a tutorial to help others getting started in building public domain flow diagrams for other countries. Finally we shot some footage for a micro-short film introducing the project – so watch this space!

Documentation for the event is now available, including:

• Draft flow diagram for the United Kingdom (in PDF)
• Draft flow diagram for the Netherlands (in PDF)
• Source files for flow diagrams at the Internet Archive
• Main meeting page on wiki
• Draft questions for legal experts to help build calculators
• Photos:
  • From Paul Keller
  • From Mathias Klang

If you are interested in contributing to a calculator for your country – please contact us directly or join our pd-discuss list and introduce yourself!

The Public Domain Calculators meeting was organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at the University of Cambridge as part of Communia, the European policy network on the digital public domain.

Related posts:

1. 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...
2. 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...
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....