Template talk:PD-Morocco

The PD-Arab template says that the copyright lasts for 50 years stratring from the end of the publication year. Which is true? --Botev 20:12, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, I've just read your comment in the history. But are you sure that the term of 50 years after the author's death also applies to photographs? --Botev 20:16, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

It is complicated and the translations I have are not the best. It appears that the general rules for Arab countries is that most works are covered for the greater of 50 years from publication or 25 years from author's death with two principle exceptions. 1) Translations are permissible after 3 years (sometimes only into Arabic but not the other way around). 2) Photos and movies "limited to the mere mechanical transmission of scenery" (this is my best translation) expire after five year. So the way I read this, photos of art and artistic photos fall under the normal rules but photos of things expire quickly. In Morocco however, the only expiration I find is the fifty "years solar" from the date of the author's death. I cannot find any photo exception. --Selket 22:35, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I just found the photo exception. Photographic and Cinemagrphic works expire 50 years from the date of production. --Selket 23:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Law changes

Just to note, the 50 years from creation stopped being the term in 2000; the new law non-retroactively extended photographs to 50pma (audiovisual works, which include cinematographic works but not photographs, became 50 years from publication). In 2006, terms got extended again to 70pma (and 70 years for audiovisual works). The old terms may still apply though if copyright had expired by 2000 (which for URAA purposes really means 1996). The 1970 law referenced from the template was also non-retroactive from the looks of it but I have no idea what the previous terms were. Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:51, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Term of protection : 70 years instead of 50 since 2006

For information, I removed a dead link to the Moroccan Law, and replaced it by a good one (French version). Note that the Act was amended in 2006 to extend the term of protection to 70 years following the author's death, etc., instead of 50! (Art. 25 - and not 5 as wrongly indicated in my edit comment - and seq.) And it's already seemed to me that many downloads were not in accordance with the reviewed Act. --Frenchinmorocco (talk) 12:35, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

I've updated the template with the terms from the 2006 amendment. —RP88 (talk) 14:35, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Non-retroactive

This template is misleading since it doesn't mention that works that entered the public domain under the previous laws stayed in the public domain. This is in particular important for photographs, which under the law of 1970 (Dahir 1-69-135) had a copyright term of 50 years since publication. See Dahir 1-69-135, article 51. The previous law of 1916 had the same 50-year term (since publication for photographs): [1], article 22.

The old version of this template https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:PD-Morocco&oldid=46868493 was wrong since it claimed "since production", not "since publication".

All versions of the Moroccan copyright law are available in PDF form at BMDA.

The upshot is: Moroccan photographs published before 1956 would be PD in Morocco, and photographs published before 1946 would also not have been subject to the U.S. URAA copyright restorations. Lupo 10:55, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Actually, the law from 2000 neglects to mention the duration of copyright protection of photographs, so maybe the years should be 1950/1940 instead of 1956/1946. [2]. In all cases (1970 law, 2000 law, and 2006 law) works already public domain remained so. Lupo 11:03, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

To be concrete, I suggest to add an additional item before the last bullet reading

• This is a photograph published before 1950, or 70 years have passed since the year of the author's death.

For audio-visual works there will be no difference starting next year, but for photos it can make a big difference. Lupo 21:44, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

@Lupo: I added This is a photograph published before 1950 to Template:PD-Morocco/en and Template:PD-Morocco/fr. If someone speaks Hungarian, I haven't modified Template:PD-Morocco/hu.--Le Petit Chat (talk) 12:38, 9 January 2020 (UTC)