Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of public domain characters

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 06:23, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

List of public domain characters

Delete. Subject has no international definition (the laws determining what is under copyright and for how long vary considerably by country), and is effectively infinite (potentially including every character of fiction, folklore, legend, and myth, from the 19th century back to Lascaux. It does not meets the standards of Wikipedia:LISTV for "clear, neutral, and unambiguous criteria" and cannot pass WP:V without becoming a permanent stub. -JasonAQuest (talk) 19:23, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, weakly. What this list actually contains, apparently, is a list of recent fictional characters with identifiable creators, for which copyrights or trademarks have expired or lapsed. With that qualification, the list is no longer quite so infinite; we don't need to worry about semi-historical or mythological figures like Robin Hood or King Arthur. Presumably the laws of the places of publication are the ones you would need to look to, specifically. I'd suggest a move to something more neatly descriptive of what the page purports to actually compile, though; perhaps List of fictional characters with lapsed copyrights? - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 19:57, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright laws are local, internationally. For example, in the US the copyright for Hercule Poirot (published in the UK) is governed by the laws of the US (not the UK). His copyright has expired in the US (due to publication in 1920), but is valid in the UK until 2047 (due to his creator living until 1976). If this article is to be kept, this fundamental problem needs to be addressed. - JasonAQuest (talk) 20:28, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per Smerdis Mandsford (talk) 00:27, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Needs a source describing the status in every country for which it is asserted that copyright has lapsed. My thinking is that we can limit this further to something like List of 20th century fictional characters with lapsed copyright(s) as the default assumption for 19th century and earlier is public domain (but perhaps we should list the handful of exceptions still controlled by an estate such as Sherlock Holmes). Or we could set an earlier date. No, this does not have to be open to everything back to get beginning of time. --Dhartung | Talk 04:08, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How would this information (citing which of dozens of countries where a character is/is-not/might-be PD) be formatted? - JasonAQuest (talk) 05:05, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Something like

Character Name:

Ruled public domain in United States as of 1983[1]
Ruled public domain in Frace as of 1987[2]

I wasn't suggesting a chart of status in every country. --Dhartung | Talk 21:00, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Coming up with rulings (or any citations) about copyright status would be difficult at best. No government publishes a log or record of expiring copyrights which we could reference. Court cases are uncommon, and usually hinge on the allegation of copying, not the status of the copyright itself. For example, there was a suit in the US over Peter Pan recently, but it was settled out of court, so there was no ruling. Personally I'm sure that the character is PD in the US, but there's no verifiable way I can prove that as a matter of legal fact. And for some other character, one that has yet to be the subject of a dispute, there wouldnt' even be published opinions that we could point to as references. Pretty much all we have to build this list with is original research. - JasonAQuest (talk) 22:57, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The debate about the scope of the article indicates that it would be better to start again with a clear scope and good sources. These are deep legal waters and the article currently has no sources to support its quasi-legal opinions. For example, the article states that Peter Pan is public domain. The article to which it links does not mention or support this. The actual status of Peter Pan is quite complex and one could write an article on that alone. And note that one expiry for this happened in 2007 - this information is very time-sensitive. The article seems dangerously misleading in this case and it is better to delete than give readers such incorrect information. Colonel Warden (talk) 11:30, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Sounds like an argument for correcting to sources and attributing. --Dhartung | Talk 21:00, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The copyright status of Peter Pan is covered in the article for the book Peter and Wendy... which raises the issue that it's not just one character but the whole cast of the book that is or isn't under copyright. To say nothing of every other character created by J. M. Barrie in his rather prolific career. Limiting this to modern-era characters only reduces the scope from astonishingly unwieldy to merely unwiedly. - JasonAQuest (talk) 22:57, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, could be a fairly useful article--Him and a dog 13:53, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete both interesting and (potentially) useful, but determining what is and isn't public domain is a job for copyright lawyers, not an encyclopedia. We could get in some major hot water if even one item on this list is inaccurate, and such things are often disputed and seldom as cut-and-dry as they may appear. If this must be kept, I suggest it be permanently protected, with potential additions discussed on the talk page and added to the front if, and only if, a relevant court case can be cited. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 15:20, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep with the proper explanation. We are not concerned with the truth ofwhether they are PD or nopt-- as andrew correctly says, that's a job for the lawyers; we're dealing with whether they are reported to be so in reliable sources--Verifiability--that's the role of WP. DGG (talk) 01:37, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

But they are not reported in reliable sources. This list is nearly all Original Research and will necessarily remain OR (or be turned into a stub) if kept, because sources that would provide this sort of information generally do not exist. The creators of this list are therefore trying to fill that void, by doing the math themselves, and interpreting copyright law to come up with answers, and that's a noble project, but it's incompatible with the requirements of Wikipedia. - JasonAQuest (talk) 02:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. An absolutely unmaintainable list. Despite comments above, this does not seem to be a list of characters that were once under copyright but where the copyright has expired; rather it appears an indiscriminate and potentially infinite list. Why, for example, are Aladdin, Ali Baba, Big Bad Wolf, Cinderella etc. there but not, for example Hamlet or Don Quixote or Beowulf of anything like that, you name it? Why are Captain Hook and Peter Pan there, but none of the other characters from the Peter Pan books? Why is Alice, Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts present but not the March Hare, the Mock Turtle etc. etc.? Why is Oliver Twist there but no other Dickens characters? Should we put all Dickens characters here? Or only the most famous ones? And who is going to decide what is famous and what is not? A hopelessly indiscriminate, unmaintainable, arbitrary list. Henrik Ebeltoft (talk) 04:17, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep copyright rules, as anyone on WP should have realised by now, are pretty important. Not worried about finiteness. Plenty of other lists aren't, such as lists of anything where anyone wins awards each year. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:50, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A list of Oscar winners to date is finite: there is a clear starting point, only a limited number are added each year, and there is a authoritative source for verification. This is fundamentally different: a list of an unlimited, unknowable, unverifiable number of items. - JasonAQuest (talk) 20:48, 13 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Relcutant delete. While the topic is useful and valuable, the article as it stands is unsalvageable. Per Col. Warden, a useful article on this topic would need to be written from scratch; in the meantime, per Starblind, this article is potentially dangerous in its current state. Powers ^T 13:40, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.