User:Kumkum/Turkey public domain case
The purpose of this page is to determine a more accurate legal background of the public domain as defined in the Turkish law. It may shape the use of the template {{PD-Turkey}}, which current (November 2017) content seems to be highly problematical, as it is not cite the Turkish law with a sufficient accuracy.
If the 70 years laws seems to apply well, some explanations about the expropriation as defined by the Turkish law shall be done.
If you are not highly interested by the following explanations, you can go to the Too long; didn't read section, which boils down to the same thing.
The template
[edit]History of the template in Wikimedia Commons
[edit]- 7 February 2006: the user とある白い猫 creates the following template:
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Photos of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk have been declared National Heritage by the Turkish Governmet and are thus believed to be public domain. See Copyright. |  |
- 8 February 2006: the field is extended to any kind of content:
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This image has been declared to be National Heritage by the Government of Turkey, and is therefore believed to be public domain. See Copyright. | |
- 11 June 2007: Commons:Deletion requests/Template:PD-TR-Gov. The creator of the template launches a DR invoking "no legal basis". The user OttomanReference is arguing that Images of the first president of Turkey are in public domain, if they are published by the Turkish government. Most of his pictures are government property. It has to be noted that it is very rare to find Ataturk's image from a private collection on Internet. All his images dates before 1937 and fits into 70 year limit.. Another user writes Atatürk died 69 years ago. Which means that most photos of him were published at least 70 years ago so copyright has expired I guess... These are the two only points of the DR.
- 24 November 2007: The template is kept.
- 20 February 2008: The content of the DR is partly reported to the template. A link to the law n°5846 is included.
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This image has been declared to be National Heritage by the Government of Turkey, and is therefore believed to be public domain. See Copyright and [1].
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- 5 August 2008: More explanations are added.
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This work is in the public domain in Turkey because it has been expropriated as national heritage or its copyright has expired. Article 27 of the Turkish copyright law states:
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With some legal explanations:
| Inferences on the Ownership of a Work
The person using his name or his known pseudonym in the published copies of a work or in the original of a work of fine arts as the owner of such a work is considered as the owner of the said work until otherwise is proven. (Amended: 7.6.1995—4410/5) The person regularly presented as the owner of the work in public places or in the conferences and performances broadcast by radio-television is considered as the owner of the said work; unless another person is considered as the owner of the work by way of the inference set forth in the first paragraph.)
Unless the owner of a published work is not known according to article 11, the publisher, and in case it is also not known, the duplicator may exercise the rights and authorities of the owner of the work in his own name. Such authorities belong to the deliverer of the conference or the executor of the performance in cases where the owner of the work is not known by inference in the second paragraph of article 11. The provisions of ordinary proxy are applied in the relations between the persons authorized under this article and the original owners of the right.
The authority to make use of the financial rights on a work that is deemed to carry importance for the country culture may be expropriated by way of paying a suitable value before the expiry of the protection period through a decree. In order to decide on this matter, the work should have been promulgated in Turkey or by Turkish citizens out of Turkey and at the same time the copies of the work should have been sold out for two years and the promulgation of new copies by the owner of the rights within a suitable period should have been considered impossible. |
Afterward the template barely changes.
- Current: Template:PD-Turkey
Use of the template
[edit]The greatest part of the file are copies from websites owned by state institutions (military, parliament, universities...).
The template is also frequently added to files which are in the public domain on a legal basis which does not require the Turkish legislation:
- works published before 1923 (anyway, they belongs to the Ottoman law)
- simple shapes, as flags
- ...
The law n°5846 on Intellectual and Artistic Works
[edit]The template mentions the articles 11 and 12 of the law n°5846. Here there are:
The Law n°4982 on Right Of Information Acquirement
[edit]State property? Non commercial.
Accuracy
[edit]| The template | The law |
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| Unknown author Unless the owner of a published work is not known according to article 11, the publisher, and in case it is also not known, the duplicator may exercise the rights and authorities of the owner of the work in his own name. Such authorities belong to the deliverer of the conference or the executor of the performance in cases where the owner of the work is not known by inference in the second paragraph of article 11. The provisions of ordinary proxy are applied in the relations between the persons authorized under this article and the original owners of the right. |
Unknown author Law 5846, Art. 12. So long as the author of a published work can not be established under article 11, the rights and authorities belonging to the author may be exercised by the publisher, and, if the publisher can not be determined, by the person making the reproduction, in his own name. |
| Expropriation The authority to make use of the financial rights on a work that is deemed to carry importance for the country culture may be expropriated by way of paying a suitable value before the expiry of the protection period through a decree. In order to decide on this matter, the work should have been promulgated in Turkey or by Turkish citizens out of Turkey and at the same time the copies of the work should have been sold out for two years and the promulgation of new copies by the owner of the rights within a suitable period should have been considered impossible. ??? |
Expropriation Law 5846, Art. 47 (Amendment: 10.09.2014 - 6552/87) (The first sentence of this provision was revoked according to decision of the Constitutional Court date: 14.05.2015– file no: 2014/177, decision no: 2015/49) The decree of Council of Ministers shall stipulate: 1. The name of the work and of the author; 2. The authority or establishment which shall exercise rights; 3. How shall the amount of the remuneration to be paid upon rightholders’ request be designated and which establishment shall pay the aforementioned remuneration; 4. In case that any profit is obtained from the work, for which purposes the profit shall be used. The work which is specified in the decree of Council of Ministers has to be published in the manner that the work can be accessed by public. |
| Licensing of state owned works No data |
Licensing of state owned works Law n°4982, Art. 2, 3 and 29 Any content owned or published by any state institution in Turkey is released under a non-commercial license. |
| 70 years limit Article 27 of the Turkish copyright law states:
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70 years limit Law n°5846, Art. 27 Art. 27. (Amendment: 7.6.1995 - 4110/10) The term of protection shall last for the lifetime of the author and for 70 years after his death. (Addition: 21.2.2001 - 4630/16) If there is more than one author, this period shall end upon the expiry of 70 years after the death of the last remaining author. The term of protection for works that have been first made public after the death of the author shall be 70 years after the date of death. The term of protection in the cases determined in the first paragraph of Article 12 shall be 70 years from the date on which the work was made public, unless the author reveals his name before expiry of such term. If the first author is a legal person, the term of protection shall be 70 years from the date on which the work was made public. |
Too long; didn't read
[edit]- If the earliest publication occurs 70 years ago, it's in the public domain.
If not:
- If the author is unknown, the rights of the work belong to the publisher;
- If the publisher is a state owned agency, the work is under the law n°4982;
- Works affected by the law n°4982 are, until shown proof to the contrary (i.e. some universities use other licenses), non-commercial;
- Even after an expropriation, until shown proof to the contrary (the decree must be found), a right-holder may still exist (and if it is state owned, it falls under the law n°4982: non-commercial).
Any content first published after 1923 and by a state owned entity is, therefore, non-free content, and should be deleted.
Ottoman stuff
[edit]If the first publication occurs before 1923 (not the {{PD-1923}}, but from the proclamation of the Republic by the National Assembly of Ankara, 29 October 1923, which is considered as the ultimate time limit of the Ottoman Empire) and in the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire, then {{PD-Ottoman}} still can be used.
The question of the legal continuity between the States of the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey in terms of intellectual property led to:
- a DR : Commons:Deletion requests/Template:PD-Ottoman Empire (March 2012, kept in August 2012);
- a interesting discussion at the VP (August 2012).
For any work published in the boundaries of the current Republic and before 1923, three templates can bu used: {{PD-1923}}, {{PD-Ottoman}} and {{PD-Turkey}}.
Some links
[edit]- Transclusions of the template (about 2K files)
- WIPO (Turkey)
- Template:PD-TR-currency should be checked as well
- Commons:Deletion requests/Template:PD-Turkey-COA Coats of arms