sarayourfriend
commented
1 year ago I originally wrote this issue to only cover PDM works, but it's actually true that all licenses may have qualifications dependent on the country of origin. For example, moral rights cannot be waived in Australia, so even CC0 cannot remove the legal requirement of attribution and non-derogatory use (in Australia, for works by Australian creators or licenced in Australia).
We probably need to have general language that states something like this towards the end of improving education about the licenses and tools under which we distribute works.
Problem
"Public domain" varies across jurisdictions and locality matters. Works in the public domain in Australia may not be so in the UK (for example, Peter Pan, which has special legislation in the UK preventing it from entering public domain in the UK but not restricting it elsewhere).
Description
When we can provide the country (like when we know the location of a GLAM institution that has marked something with PDM), then it could be useful to record that information in our metadata and surface it in the API.
Alternatives
Add clearer but more generic information/call-outs to PDM works on the Openverse website stating that PDM is defined by locality and cannot be assumed to apply across national boundaries.
CC's PDM page mentions this about how PDM may not be true in all jurisdictions: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/
It's worth surfacing this information more clearly on the Openverse website one way or another in order to help educate about what PDM means and to what extent it can be relied upon.
Additional context
See for example the NoC-US rights statement: https://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en
Locality information for public domain works is critical, and while Openverse users should confirm licenses with the provider, if we can surface this information on the Openverse website or API, it could make it easier to screen items that are unlikely to be usable for a particular use case (i.e., if I can only use works that are PDM in a specific locality or cannot rely on PDM in another).