[Openfontlibrary] Canadian Public Domain

[Liam R E Quin]

On Mon, 2008-11-03 at 10:01 -0500, Brendan Ferguson wrote:
> >
> > Here in Canada there's no such thing as public domain.
> 
> http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5809

Hmm, dated 2006 and no comments.

> Is my recollection that copyright actually expires before US copyright  
> in canada.

It depends...

In the US, works released in the US before 1923 are out of
copyright, as are _some_ works produced more recently,
and of course all works released into the public domain.

In Canada, in general, it's the lessor of 50 years after
publication or 70 years after death,
but that's an oversimplification.

Strictly speaking my understanding is that in Canada we have
no such thing as "public domain" in the US legal sense.
A work is either in copyright, or out of copyright because the
rights expired.  The copyright holder can of course give people
permission, but could also withdraw that permisison.

The term "public domain" is soemtimes used in Canada to refer
to the body of works whose copyright has expired, I think.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
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