File talk:Greta Garbo 1924 1.jpg

I removed {{Not-PD-US-URAA|Sweden|January 1, 1996}} because copyright had certainly expired in Sweden 50 years after the death of Goodman, and was not revived in the 1994 law; compare {{PD-Sweden-photo}} /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 23:23, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

As you know, this is disputed. EU directive 93/98/EEC, which Sweden did implement, made Goodwin's works copyrighted until 70 years after his death, like anywhere else in the EU. Lupo 08:31, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

The URAA seems unclear in general, but in this case there is no problem. I find it hard to imagine that US courts would care about EU directives. The criterium is whether a work was free in the source country at the URAA date or not, and for that one would look at Swedish law. Let us assume that this is a photo with artistic value, and not just a simple portrait or advertising photography. According to the 1960 law, such works with artistic value were free fifty years after the photographer's death. Goodwin died 1931, so this has been free since 1982.

After that, new copyright laws were passed that harmonized legislation with the EU. Although the committee´s original proposal was to revive some old copyrights, judicial advice went against that, and parliament explicitly stated that the new law did not revive expired copyrights. In 1995 Sweden joined the EU, but that does not really matter here. At the 1996 URAA date Goodwin's works were free in the source country. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 12:28, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, yes, it does matter, because when Sweden joined the EU, it had to have that directive implemented, and thus the image was copyrighted in Sweden on 1996-01-01. And thus the URAA kicks in.

The EU directive was implemented in legal amendments 1995:448, 1995:1273, and 1995:1274.[1] Of interest for us is in particular 1995:1273, which extended the copyright term to 70 years. The transitional provisions at the bottom make it absolutely clear that 1995:1273 re-copyrights works. The EU directive entered in force on 1995-07-01... unfortunately for us, the Swedish law 1995:1273 entered in force on 1996-01-01 (exactly on the URAA date).Lupo 12:54, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I found it in Swedish at https://lagen.nu/1960:729#L1995-1273 and I will have a look at it. One may need to rewrite some stuff. This law does not seem to have registered in Swedish books about copyright of photos, but I will see if I can find some secondary literature about this 1995 amendment. (Looks like trouble for the artistic photos by Swedish photographers that died between 1939 and 1944, and then there is the URAA complication; anyway, it should not affect ordinary photographs.) /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 13:27, 25 March 2009 (UTC)