Wikipedia:Copyrights/New Zealand

(In progress)

This is an informal, irresponsible guide for those Kiwi Wikipedians who, for some reasons, want to adhere to both United-States’ and New Zealand’s copyright laws, which are state-imposed restrictions on the use and the treatment of certain informational entities: artworks, books, pictures, sound recordings and some other things (…including buildings!)

Some generalities for beginners:

• These restrictions are imposed with a pretension to “benefit the society”. They loosely follow commonsense ethical considerations, but there are many diversions:
  • Very often they hold beyond benefit to the copyright owner. For instance, for long after the commercial actuality of the work, or even after the author’s death.
  • They apply to derivatives of uncopyrighted works.
  • In certain cases, they apply to mere copies of an uncopyrighted work. Such may be called “typographical arrangements”, for example.
• It can be very difficult to determine whether some restrictions apply to a certain work, since a country’s copyright laws are usually scattered across local and international acts, bills, are full of cross-references and amendments.
• In many jurisdictions, including the British colonies, there are vague exemptions to the copy-restrictions when the text/image/artwork is used for certain purposes. Relevant to this guide are such concerning:
  • The use of copyrighted works for the purposes of study, review or critique, and
  • The use of copyrighted works for educational purposes by those recognised as “educational institutions”.
    • Wikipedia is not yet recognised as such. We are working on it. Ramir
• Much unlike in the United States, artworks issued by state institutions are laughably said to belong to “The Crown”. Moreover, the restrictions on the copying of such works hold for a whopping 100 years.