Talk:Authors' rights

Merge into proposal for moral rights
See discussion on Talk:Moral rights. Please keep discussion on that talk page.LH (talk) 05:33, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Difference in expiration corporate copyright/licensed author's rights?
Isn't the following true: Author's rights licensed to a corporation in civil law countries expire a certain time after the original author's death (often 70 years), while corporate-owned copyright in common law countries expires a certain time after publication (again, often 70 years)?

This would make for a difference in expiration time. For example, currently there is a case in Germany (Zeitungszeugen), where the state government of Bavaria is trying to stop the republication of newspapers from 1933. The point of the project was to give a less filtered view of the Nazi takeover to modern audiences by reprinting both pro- and anti-Nazi newspapers from the period of the takeover. Bavaria claims to own the copyright of all materials published by Hitler, the Nazi Party, and its subdivisions. The argument is that, although 1933 is more than 70 years ago, some of the authors of those newspapers haven't been dead for 70 years yet. -- 92.229.64.102 (talk) 22:23, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I have no idea about civil law countries. In the U.S. publication was once the critical moment for purposes of copyright longevity, and today remains relevant. United States law cares about both the date of creation and publication, with a bias towards inducing publication.


 * You are referring to straight copyright law. I'd recommend you take a look at the German copyright law article for duration questions. LH (talk) 20:28, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

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Regarding the history of authors' rights
I deleted a paragraph and some other minor phrases regarding the history of authors' rights. The paragraph in question was uncited, poorly phrased such that is was confusing, and seemed out of place and dubious in the context of the article. The author also used the phrase "work of the spirit" which is a phrase which I couldn't find any reference to in the context of copyright or authors' rights. In all, the deleted text seemed like it would be confusing for readers, and didn't include any important factual claims.

This is actually my first edit on Wikipedia, but hopefully I acted within the spirit of the community. I would be interested in improving this article, particularly as it relates to the history of authors' rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law might be useful as far as that goes.

Zucker42 (talk) 11:46, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The paragraph you removed was largely correct, but its phrasing was quite bad to the point that it possibly violated the POV policy. It was a good change. If the article were to be expanded, there might be some talk about proto-copyright (and early copyright) as very distinct from the 18th/19th Century ideas that became author's rights, but this paragraph was not it, chief. lethargilistic (talk) 12:45, 12 June 2019 (UTC)