Commons talk:Copyright rules by territory/Finland

Ansiotarkoitus

The FOP exception for works other than buildings says, in the original, "kuvaa ei saa käyttää ansiotarkoituksessa". Terms like "profit-making purposes", "non-profit" etc. often have their own distinct life compared to "commercial" and "non-commercial" in fiscal or copyright doctrines. If the same term is not used in the definition of the economic rights, it might be interpreted as 1) a sort of non-copyright restriction, if it doesn't restrict any of the economic rights from art. 2–4 of the copyright directive (probably a bit far fetched), or 2) a mere restatement of the three-step rule of the Bern convention and art. 5(5) of the directive, in which case it would not be very different from any other country where FOP is stated more generally.

So it would be useful to find and cite some court ruling which puts together all the pieces including the copyright directive concepts which have not been directly transposed into Finnish law.

In the next two years we'll also need such information for the work in the next two years on the directive's national implementation. Nemo 21:24, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

• Google Translate says "ansiotarkoituksessa" means "for commercial purposes". I think we have to accept that means "not suitable for Wikimedia". We will see, but I doubt that the EU DSM Directive will make any difference. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:37, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Google Translate is wrong. wikt:ansiotarkoitus. Nemo 18:18, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
    • @Nemo: "for purpose of profit" is just the same as "for commercial purpose." As long as that restriction in the Finnish law exists, Commons cannot host images of public art from Finland (if the images are not de minimis or showing the work as the main subject), as Commons cannot accept content where commercial use or for-profit use is not allowed. Commons strictly follows the Definition of Free Cultural Works, in which commercial exploitation is a necessary part of. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 06:17, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
      • I agree. Not using the work commercially (or whatever) is a prerequisite for using this exception from what copyright law restricts, not an additional restriction, I think regarding it as a non-copyright restriction is far-fetched. However, it is good to keep in mind that the paragraph is not about de minimis but allows also commercial use if the work of art isn't the main subject of the image. This gives the right to publish photos of a park also when a statue is clearly visible and an essential part of the photo, as long as the photo is of the park as a whole, not focused on the statue. This is different for the provision in article 25, which allows including published art in a photo if it is "av underordnad betydelse" (of lesser importance?) in the photo, which is closer to de minimis. –LPfi (talk) 17:58, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

        @LPfi I think this Finnish version of DM ("not the main subject") may run in conflict with U.S. DM which is part of the U.S. jurisprudence that Wikimedia tries to comply (as being a website hosted in the U.S.). Maybe we already have some issues regarding application of URAA to all eligible global works (including several public domain sculptures in Slovenia, the Vatican City etc.), but is it possible that U.S. DM may be given more weight than Finnish DM (not the main subject) in case a complaint is filed in the U.S. against a reuser of one of the allowed image files here (just because the image happened to show the sculpture as not the main subject, but an essential part of the image)? Unsure if the Commons community thought of this possibility as long as Finland does not provide commercial FoP and that the artists may have the right to sue our reusers in U.S. courts using U.S. DM standard than Finnish DM standard. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 13:57, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

        This page is about Finnish law. It should concentrate on cases where a Finnish court will decide, and for Finnish photos of Finnish works, the Finnish interpretation of "main subject" will certainly be what counts.

        The definitions may be in conflict in cases where US courts take the Finnish law into consideration. I am not a lawyer, and we'll need an expert to say anything about such cases. However, those issues should be handled on general pages or a page on US law. Finland is hardly special in any way for US courts.

        –LPfi (talk) 11:25, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Copyright status of stamps

I see that the article says stamps are PD because they are parts of decisions by an authority of Finland, which seems like an extremely over broad reading of what qualifies as a "decision." It hasn't held up as one for countries with similar copyright laws either. So does anyone know if stamps are specifically mentioned in the law or where the idea that they are considered decisions comes from? I see it was added by Aymatth2 when the article was created. Maybe they can shed some light on it? If not, I'm probably going to either axe that part from the article or at least revise the section to reflect that it's not valid. Adamant1 (talk) 16:26, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

If memory serves, the copyright council of Finland decided that this was the case for markka coinage and for municipal coats of arms. I don't see why stamps would be any different. I haven't done any research on it, though. –LPfi (talk) 19:54, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

@Aymatth2: –LPfi (talk) 19:55, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I copied the content from Commons:Stamps/Public domain while drafting the initial version of COM:Finland. Reading it now, I cannot agree that a stamp is a "decision or statement by an authority of Finland". Normal copyright rules for artwork would apply to stamps. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:28, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

A stamp is not a decision, but the question is whether it was part of a decision by a relevant body. If an "authority" decided that a certain design would be used as a stamp, then the design was an essential part of the decision and thus PD ("independent works" are excepted, but the design wouldn't be one). This is the reasoning for the CoAs. –LPfi (talk) 09:12, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

That is stretching it too far. If you look at COM:NOP Finland it says there is no copyright in the government's laws, decrees, statutes, treaties, conventions, decisions and statements, which is typical of most countries. A document recording a government decision is in the public domain, but a work of art, architecture or literature that results from that decision is not. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:37, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

A work of art resulting from the decision is not in the public domain, if it is made independently. However, a work of art included in the decision is. The question then is whether the stamp design was included in the decision, which I assume is the case, and whether the resulting stamp is close enough to the decided design that it has no independent copyright. If the stamp design as included in the decision is uploaded, then there should be no doubt about its PD status. For markka coinage and coats of arms, the copyright council never seemed to consider the possibility that these could have a copyright separate from the design decided on. Thus I think anybody who says stamps do have such independent copyright has the burden of proof. –LPfi (talk) 16:38, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

The above would mean that anything made by or for the Finnish government is free of copyright. If they approve an architectural plan, bridge design etc. it is placed in the public domain. If that were the case, the copyright law would state it explicitly. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:38, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

The above would mean that anything made by or for the Finnish government is free of copyright. Bingo. That interpretation of the law just creates a fait accompli situation where everything even slightly related to the government is de-facto free of copyright "because government." Which clearly isn't how the law works. Obviously the whole reason the law differentiates between "laws, decrees, statutes, treaties, conventions, decisions and statements" and works that aren't those things is because not everything the government does is automatically free of copyright just because they decided to do it.

I don't find the whole idea that art resulting from the decision is not in the public domain compelling either, because there's no instance where the government body isn't somehow involved in the creation process. How is anyone going to separate the decision from the work anyway? Like the design of a bridge is copyrighted up and until some random low level government employee prints a picture of it for a report or emails it to someone, Then it's somehow magically PD or visa versa? Sure. That's not how it works. Either something is copyright free at the point of creation because it's a "laws, decrees, statutes, treaties, conventions, decisions and statements" or it isn't. In this case, stamps clearly aren't any of those things. So they are copyrighted. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:24, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

That's why an independent work attached to the decision retains its copyright. It seems obvious that you won't believe what I am saying anyway, so go to the sources. Please read the PM for the law and the relevant copyright council decisions (here the links provided in the citations section): Statement 2001:3 (the flag of Finland), Statement 1989:13 (coinage), Statement 1997:11 (CoAs; here archive.org link instead of the page's dead one). There was quite some discussion on the issue somewhere, I think in the PM of the government when proposing amending the law (or when the original, 404/1961, was proposed), but I didn't find it easily and won't dig it up now. Hm, it seems referenced in 1997:11 as komiteanmietintö 1953:5, page 52. A web search for that might help, even if the title is very generic, as not much from 1953 is on the web. –LPfi (talk) 18:26, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

I read the sources a while ago, a few before I decided to start this discussion. They don't fundamentally change the nature of the thing though. Let's say I buy your opinion that stamps are decisions, which I don't, but just for the sake of argument say I do. The documents disprove stamps would be copyright free anyway. Like with 1997:11 the court said "the regulation is to protect the public interest in the documents and statements mentioned in it." The reason they aired on the side of the plaintiff was specifically because it served the public interest for the coat of arms to be copyright free. Which is understandable considering the purpose of coat of arms and the way they are used. "The Copyright Council considers that the aforementioned approval decisions for coats of arms are documents whose publicity interest is intended to be protected by the provisions of Section 9 of the Copyright Act." So what that decision makes clear is that for something created by the government to copyright free, it has to be shown to serve the public interest to release the document that way. There is no public interest being served by having stamps be copyright free though. At least not in any legally meaningful way that matters. So there's still zero reason they would be copyright free even if I buy your argument that they are decisions. Which again I don't. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:17, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Somewhat off topic... see Commons:Coats of arms. Typically a blazon, or verbal description of a coat of arms, is free of copyright. However an emblazon, or visual representation, may be protected as an original work of art. The emblazons are not decisions, any more than a postage stamp is a decision. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:55, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Yet the visual representations of many CoAs (as used by municipalities etc.) are in the public domain in Finland, because they were included in decisions [sic! not decisions in themselves]. (The rest of municipal CoAs are either old or based on old ones, with modifications that don't reach the threshold of originality.)

For the quoted passages, is there a qualitatively lesser public interest in stamps than in coins? More importantly, I think your reading of the statement is a bit off, perhaps because of the translation (is the latter quote from the last paragraph of the statement?). My impression is that they talk about the nature of the decision and how it relates to the law section in place to protect the public interest, not about the public interest in the coats of arms – which isn't mentioned a single time what I can see.

–LPfi (talk) 20:46, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Is there a qualitatively lesser public interest in stamps than in coins? I'd say so. Most European countries treat currency as qualitatively above stamps when it comes to the public interest they serve. Which makes sense because currency is a necessary object to daily survival. Stamps, not so much. People need to spend money. They don't need to mail their grandma a birthday card. Obviously there's more to how they determine what is or isn't in the "Public interest" then just being like "Well, people are interested in it. So whatever, it serves the public interest. Shrug emoji" though. Maybe have a read over this Wikipedia that goes into public interest law. The crux of it? "Public interest law refers to legal practices undertaken to help poor, marginalized, or under-represented people." No marginalized group is having their civil rights infringed by an image of a Douglas DC3 airplane on a stamp being copyrighted. So it doesn't serve the public for stamps to be copyright free. As to if my reading of the statement is a bit "off" or not, maybe Google Translate flubbed a few words. If so though it doesn't change the fact that the court ruled in favor of the defendant because it served the public interest for the coat of arms to be copyright free. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:33, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Historically the Post has been a very important institution (not for writing to grandma in a time of e-mail and messaging software, which is a straw man), and the stamps important through this and as important internationally spread symbols of the nation, much like the national side of the Euro coins now. I might agree that coins are more important (even though you cannot eat gold), but both were national institutions necessary for the workings of a modern state in the 1960s (when the current copyright law was written).

The public interest relevant here isn't about helping marginalised people, but about fundamentals of a working democracy: that copyright cannot be used to hamper discussion on public matters and that you don't need to consider copyright rules when discussing decisions made by authorities. The Copyright Council (not a court) ruled that the decision was one covered by the exception, and (implicitly) that the visual representations of the coats of arms were indeed to be seen as included in the decision. There are a lot of laws about minutiae with little public interest, but they are still laws and thus PD. The PMs do discuss what kinds of decisions are to be covered, but they don't discuss the subject matter of such decisions. The actual public interest in stamps is irrelevant – what matters is whether they are included in a decision covered by section 9 of the law on copyright.

–LPfi (talk) 07:16, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

not for writing to grandma in a time of e-mail and messaging software, which is a straw man Not anymore then you making this about coats of arms is. Anyway, I think it's worth noting how many times you've moved the bar here. First you were arguing that stamps are decisions. Then when that fell through it turned into that they serve the public interest. Now your saying the public interest thing is irrelevant when your the one who brought it up originally. If the public interest thing is irrelevant, cool. Your the one who cited a court case that was decided based on public interest grounds and then asked me if they served as much of a public interest as coins. I'm just discussing the things you brought up. Next you'll probably be saying stamps are copyright free because they are nice to look at or some nonsense. Sure dude. Why not just admit you were wrong and move on? --Adamant1 (talk) 08:01, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I have been trying to answer your arguments (I cannot see my having brought up "public interest" before you). My rationale is still that the stamps (I assume – if not, then this discussion is moot) were included in decisions covered by section 9 of the Finnish law on copyright. I cited statements of the relevant body (again: not a court), and they happen to dwell on the reasoning behind the relevant section (which is public interest), in addition to whether it is relevant in this case – nota bene: never discussing the public interest of the subject matter, in this case the CoAs. (I hope you could cease saying that I say stamps are decisions – they are not – and calling the Copyright Council a court, which it is not.) –LPfi (talk) 16:04, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I cannot see my having brought up "public interest" before you You didn't explicitly bring it up, but the document having to do with 1997:11 which you told me to read, revolved around the "court" deciding that the coats of arms were copyright free because it served a public interest for them to be. So, it was kind of your thing. Otherwise, you shouldn't have asked me to read the document. The fact that you didn't say anything about it yourself doesn't really matter if it's what the documents your linking to, and want an opinion on, are about. Otherwise you shouldn't have asked me to read them. Obviously I can only comment on what the documents say though, and at least 1997:11 said the "court" decided that the coats of arms were copyright free because it served a public interest for them to be.

That aside, I think your convoluting decisions being free of copyright with why that's the case. Decisions aren't free of copyright "because decisions." They are copyright free specifically because it serves the public interest for them to be. In otherwards, you can't separate the two and say the public interest is irrelevant because it's the reason decisions are copyright free in the first place. Which, outside of the fact that the documents you provided me discussed it, is why I say public interest matters to the copyright status of stamps. The only reason stamps would be copyright free under section 9 or whatever is if it would serve the public interest for them to be and it clearly doesn't. In the meantime, the whole "are stamps copyright free because they are included in decisions" is completely moot because as you've said yourself something can be included in a decision and still be copyrighted. The question is, what makes this an exception to that other then you wanting it to be one? Obviously if something can still be copyrighted if it's included in a decision then it's a totally useless metric for deciding if stamps are copyright free or not. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:39, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Copyright status of stamps (cont.)

I have posted a notice of this discussion at Commons:Village pump/Copyright#Finnish postage stamps and invited comments. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:34, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. –LPfi (talk) 16:04, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

A summary: Decisions of authorities of Finland are in the public domain, including illustrations etc. that are included in the decision, according to section 9 in the law on copyright.

• What kind of decisions are covered is discussed in some PMs related to the law, but I assume the decisions on stamps were such decisions, and it seems nobody disagrees.
• Whether a document attached to a decision or referenced by a decision is to be regarded as part of the decision is also discussed in these PMs. Independent works do not become PD by just being referenced in the decision, but if they are quoted in or attached to the decision, they are regarded as part of the decision and thus become PD (that is: the quoted or attached part; there may be exceptions). What qualifies as being attached can be discussed, but doesn't seem to be the issue at hand.
• My reasoning is that the stamps cannot be regarded as independent works. The point of them is to be accepted as stamps by the relevant decision. As a parallel I cite the decisions by the Copyright Council regarding the Finnish flag, Finish markka coinage and Finnish municipal coats of arms, which all are deemed not to be covered by copyright.
• A stamp getting into the public domain by being included in a decisions is regarded "extremely over broad reading" or "stretching it too far" by Adamant1 and Aymatth2, and the cited statements (to my understanding) regarded as irrelevant, as they see little public interest in stamps.

Please summarise your points if you think they were misrepresented or you want to develop them. I admit I haven't fully understood them.

–LPfi (talk) 16:28, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

• The law makes it clear that "Decisions and statements issued by public authorities or other public bodies" are copyright free. Nowhere does it say that the results of said decisions are also copyright free. In this case, a stamp is the "result" of a decision to publish stamps. It is not the decision itself. In the meantime there is zero evidence that individual stamp designs are included in any decisions, or that they involve a decision in the first place. Otherwise, be my guest and provide some evidence that they are. It should be easy to find a decision with a stamp design if they copyright free. Even if there is such a document though, we would have to find separate documents for every individual stamps going forward. You obviously can't just say "well, there was a decision by the postal authority of Finland 70 years ago to print stamps. So every Finish stamp is copyright free." That's not how the law works.

• I think your miss-representing the reasons why the Copyright Council regarded the Finnish flag, Finish markka coinage and Finnish municipal coats of arms as as being copyright free. In the case of the coat of arms the Copyright Council decided they were copyright free because served a public interest for them to be, not because they were part of a decision. it had nothing to do with the fact that they were included in decisions. To quote the document that you linked to again, "coats of arms are documents whose publicity interest is intended to be protected by the provisions of Section 9 of the Copyright Act." Nowhere does it say they are copyright free because they were part of a decision. They are copyright free because "coats of arms are documents."

• Same goes for Finish flags. According to Statement 2001:3 "A law has been passed on the Finnish flag 26/5/1978 (380/1978). The law defines, for example, the color, size and shape of the Finnish flag form. So again, it has nothing to do with flags being part of decisions. They are free of copyright because a law was passed that defines the color, size and shape of the flag. And before you try and claim a law is a decision, Copyright Act 404/1961 clearly separates them. In the meantime, there are no laws defining the color, size and shape of specific stamps. So both your examples are completely irrelevant since neither coats of arms or flags are copyright free because of anything having to do with decisions. Really, this whole thing on your part has been one big misrepresentation of Finland's copyright laws. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:24, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

• OK. So the issue is "there is zero evidence that individual stamp designs are included in any decisions". I haven't dug up any of those decisions (which aren't necessarily on the web, as this is about old stamps), but I assumed nobody questioned this. I don't have the time to do an extensive search, but one of these days I'll try some easy routes and hope for the best. The law on the Post may tell that the stamp designs have to be decided on in a certain manner, and then we don't have to dig up the decisions themselves (but we need an old version of the law). We could also find some such decisions and assume the other decisions of the time were made in a similar manner – which of course doesn't cover stamps from a significantly other time, but if a decision from 1971 and one from 1985 are essentially the same, we shouldn't have to check for each stamp of the intervening period.
• We disagree on how to read the statement. Please provide the original untranslated wording so that I can find the context of your quotes in the original document (here I assume that you are quoting the last sentence of the statement), and please don't cut out parts of the quotes without marking that. Let me change the bolding (not there in the original) of your earlier quote and include a part you left out: "The Copyright Council regards that the above cited decisions on coats of arms are documents whose publicity interest [according to a certain PM] is intended to be protected by the provisions of Section 9 of the Copyright Act.
• For the flag: the sentence before the one you quote reads more or less: "According to section 9, there is no copyright in laws, [list of other decisions]". Then comes the sentences you quote: "A law has been passed on the Finnish flag [...]. And then (sloppy translation): "As the appearance of the Finnish flag is based on the law [and the derived work isn't original enough] there is no copyright reason not to [use the images in question, even commercially]."

–LPfi (talk) 15:26, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

There has been couple discussions in Finnish wikipedia related to this topic.

• Wikipedia:Kahvihuone (tekijänoikeudet) - Itellan ennen vuotta 1990 julkaisemat postimerkit (2009)
• Wikipedia:Kahvihuone_(tekijänoikeudet) - Postimerkit Commonsissa (2012)

In first discussion the result was somehow same as in the page commons:Copyright rules by territory/Finland#Stamps. In the second one result was that it is not clearly incorrect as it is likely that the artwork is done specifically for the stamps by order of Posti ja Telelaitos. One opinion which is not said in those discussions is that stamp itself could be considered as statement by government agency of Finland as it is formal document. FYI @MPorciusCato and Apalsola: -- Zache (talk) 16:14, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't think stamps are what the law means by documents. Otherwise, what exactly is a stamp a document or statement of? If your answer has anything to do with stamps being a form of payment or documenting a payment, no one believes that's the case. There's been multiple discussions to the effect that stamps aren't forms of payment to and there's barely, if any, legal precedent for it. Which BTW, is why most countries where money is copyright free don't also make allowances for stamps. I don't know what other rational there would be to say are documents or statements though. So what supposedly makes them either one? --Adamant1 (talk) 16:32, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I think that the relevant law here is Finlands copyright law and parctices and decisions related in its context. Not other countries. -- Zache (talk) 16:36, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Archive of the Stamp Center of Finland 1974-1993 (in National Archive of Finland). Afaik physical archive and access requires physical visit to the National archive (in Helsinki?). However, if somebody is actually interested on the decisions made related to the stamps then here is stamp commission archives etc.--Zache (talk) 16:40, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

We need evidence before assuming that Finnish stamps are free of copyright. It seems unlikely that a postage stamp could be considered a decision or statement issued by a public body. If that were the case, the Finnish Post Office would say so. A stamp could be included in a decision or statement, and perhaps could "inherit" the public domain status. However, under the precautionary principle we would need evidence that it was included rather than just referenced as in "the Christmas lights stamp design by Klaus Welp submitted on 2 November 2021 is hereby approved." Aymatth2 (talk) 17:07, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

[edit conflict] I cannot easily find the old law on the Post in Finlex. They don't have all old laws. However, I found a decree that is relevant: Förordning om ändring av förordningen om post- och televerket (1086/1987) (decree on changing the decree on the relevant authority). The new wording of the 3rd point of the 1st paragraph of the 3rd section (here including the unchanged lead of the paragraph reads: "Post- och telestyrelsen har till uppgift att [...] 3) bestämma om utgivande, utformning och emitterande av frimärken." i.e. said authority shall decide on publication, appearance and emission of stamps (I don't know what "emitterande" means in this context).

So: a public body is given the task of deciding on the appearance of stamps. Then I think it follows that there are decisions by that public body on their appearance, and leaving out the appearance of such decisions would seem very odd.

The decree went into force on 1 January 1988 and there was no more changes to that section. A new law and decree went into force on 1 January 1990, the decree as 928/1989 and there the section is absent. We say that the stamps published since are copyrighted, which may well be true. I assume the change in 1987 just transferred the task of deciding on appearance of stamps from one body to another (the point was changed, not added), but at the moment I don't have access to the original decree (it should be available in the library, but I am not going through the hassle now).

This means there is evidence that the appearance of stamps was decided on by a public body 1988–1989, and I don't think we have reason to doubt that was the case also earlier. Is there still doubt about there being relevant decisions in those years?

–LPfi (talk) 17:12, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't believe stamps are decisions, but they were decided on in decisions, and as their appearances were to be decided on, it is highly unlikely that their appearances weren't included in those decisions. And then the stamp design doesn't need to "inherit" anything from the decision; if it is part of it, it is PD according to the law (unless it is an independent work etc.). –LPfi (talk) 17:19, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

The precautionary principle means we need hard evidence that the stamp is in the public domain decision or statement. An assumption is not enough. "Public domain" means that anyone can freely reproduce and sell the image without being accused of forgery, and without Wikimedia being liable for abetting a forgery. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:31, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

The PRP is about "the copyright owner doesn't care", "it can be found all over the internet and nobody has complained" and the like, not about cases like this. "The precautionary principle is that where there is significant doubt about the freedom of a particular file, it should be deleted." (my bolding) –LPfi (talk) 17:55, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

The Finnish Post Office doesn't exist any more. What we have is Posti Group Oyj, and their stamps are not free of copyright. That's why there is the cut-off year of 1990. –LPfi (talk) 17:22, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I think your confused as to what a "decision" in the copyright law is referring to. What it doesn't mean is some random government employee deciding to do something a certain way. Otherwise everything created by the government would be copyright free just because they decided to do it, and that's clearly not the case. To quote Cornell Law School "In the legal context, a decision is a judicial determination of parties’ rights and obligations reached by a court based on facts and law. A decision can mean either the act of delivering a court’s order or the text of the court’s opinion on the case and the accompanying court order." It should go without saying that a government employee deciding to go with brown as the background color of a stamp instead of orange or whatever isn't "a judicial determination of parties’ rights and obligations reached by a court based on facts and law."

So while technically true that someone designing a stamp involves deciding how to design it, that doesn't mean their decision (or the resulting stamp) is in any way, shape, or form copyright free just because legal decisions made by court bodies in regards to a parties rights are. There's clearly a difference between a legal decision made by a court in regards to a parties rights and a government employee deciding what to do and how to do it though. The law has nothing to do with later. Or again, there'd be no reason to make the distinction in the first place since everything the government does would be de-facto copyright free by default. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:31, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

If a public body is explicitly assigned by decree the task of making certain decisions, not just handling the related responsibilities in general, it isn't about "some random government employee deciding to do something a certain way". Please refrain from that kind of comments and try to identify the real issues. I also don't see the relevance of the quote on court decisions; if the word "decision" in a legal context is confined to courts (which I don't believe), then please choose another word. The concept of a decision by a public body (other than a court) should be clear enough for this discussion. We can discuss its precise meaning in the context of the relevant laws and decrees, but a quote on courts is little use. –LPfi (talk) 18:07, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

The government body that decides the design of the stamps are random government employees though. They aren't judges and it's not a court that is making legal decisions. The reason I quoted the thing about decisions is because it's a legal definition of what makes something one. Which 100% has to do with courts making a judicial determination of parties’ rights and obligations reached by a court based on facts and law. Saying the definition of a decision is of little use to the discussion just because it involves the word "courts" is just deflecting. If something isn't courts making a judicial determination of parties’ rights based on facts and law the it's not a legal decision. Period. You can't just say that's not a valid definition of a what makes something a decision "because courts" or whatever though. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:24, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

They are not random government employees. They are the body that has been designed the task of making decisions, in the same way that the Parliament is assigned the task of lawmaking. There are of course a lot of informal decisions made by random employees, also regarding stamps, but the decision specified in the decree is an official decision, not one of those random decisions. I hope you can understand what concept I am referring to when using that word. If it isn't suitable, then please assign another word to use instead, so that we can keep the discussion constructive. –LPfi (talk) 18:47, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

That's fine. I don't really care what the specific words we use are. Except in regards to how those things are referred to in the law, and there's a specific meaning to the word "decision" when used in a legal context. Same goes for "employees." But we are talking about the design of specific individual stamps and there's zero evidence that the government body we are talking about makes specific design decisions about individual stamps. Probably it's a low level employee with a background in design and then his boss, who is an underlining of the government body, makes the final call. Then he passes it on to the specific board or whatever at the top of the government body. All they probably do is sign off on stamps being created in general on an annual basis or whatever though. Just like say a city council would sign off on a general plan for the fascial year, that the specific details of would then be hashed out, designed, and implemented by employees of whatever agency it is. City councils don't usually involve themselves in the day to day minutia of designing or implementing a project though.

In this case maybe the government agency made the general decision to design some stamps for the post office or whatever, but that doesn't mean it wasn't government employees who did the rest though. It's like a 100 piece project and no head of a government body is standing there drafting the design and printing out the final stamps themselves. The problem is that your whole thing is predicated on that being the case, or at least that the government body integrated the designs individual stamps into their original decision and there's zero evidence either one is the case. Otherwise like I've said before you should be able to provide a document of the decision that includes the designs of the individual stamps. I don't see you doing that though. If you did this conversation would probably have been over about 15 messages back. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:12, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Let's then use "decide" for "bestämma" as used in the quoted decree and "decision" for "beslut" as used in section 9 of the law on copyright. As these are the Swedish words, the definitions should be judged considering the Swedish words (or Finnish, if you prefer to use those) in the legal tradition of Finland. I think deciding in this sense results in such a decision, and we can ignore the preceding choices of "random employees" as irrelevant for the legal issues.

The task of deciding on designs of individual stamps is explicitly assigned to that public body, so I think there is substantial evidence that the body decides the design of specific individual stamps, to use your words. Of course there are a lot of choices made by "random employees", including graphic designers, but the design doesn't become a stamp before the body officially decides so. Yes, I assume the board or whatever just "signs off on stamps being created", but by doing so, I claim they create a decision (I assume they also discuss what themes should be highlighted in the stamp production etc., but that's irrelevant for this discussion). And, as the body is tasked with deciding the design of the stamps, what they sign off are the actual final designs. –LPfi (talk) 19:42, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

@Aymatth2, copyright law change 28/2004 in 2005 in Finland clarified the position of independent works included decisions. A practical example was artwork in the coins and architecture drawings in building permit decisions[1]. Before that, if work was done as part of the decision and included in it, it was copyright free as it was under copyright law 9 §. There were exceptions, like well-known artwork used in bank notes, but the boundary was not clearly defined before 2005. In any case, the answer if the stamps are free comes from which kind of formal decision-making was made in Tele and Post office of Finland before 1990. -- Zache (talk) 17:51, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes. I believe the amendment of 2005 is irrelevant for stamps published before 1990, and should be ignored in this discussion, which is confused enough already. I didn't see any notion of it having retroactive effect, which would be extraordinary. –LPfi (talk) 18:12, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Some examples on circular letters from main office to local post offices on new postal stamps.

• Kiertokirje No 7 / 1975 - EUROPA - CEPT vuoden 1975 erikoispostimerkeistä
• Kiertokirje No 15 / 1975 - Valtiontalouden tarkastusviraston 1825—1975 juhlapostimerkistä
• Kiertokirje No 60 / 1975 - Suomen Tuberkuloosin Vastustamisyhdistyksen vuoden 1975 postimerkeistä
• Kiertokirje nro 11 / 1988 - Ahvenanmaan maakuntaa varten julkaistava erikoispostimerkki 100 vuotta maanviljelyskoulutusta Ahvenanmaalla
• Kiertokirje nro 13 / 1987 - Ahvenanmaan maakuntaa varten julkaistavasta erikoispostimerkistä palokuntatoimintaa Ahvenanmaalla 100 vuotta

-- Zache (talk) 19:01, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

copyright law change 28/2004 in 2005 in Finland clarified the position of independent works included decisions. A practical example was artwork in the coins and architecture drawings in building permit decision. Before that, if work was done as part of the decision and included in it, it was copyright free as it was under copyright law 9 §. The linked opinion of Borenius & Kemppinen states that before the 2005 clarification, it was unclear whether or not those other works were copyright free - which does not meet the threshold for making these stamps pd. mr.choppers (talk)^-en- 19:46, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

The change of 2005 doesn't change the status of pre-1990 stamps that I can see. The article talks about the status of included independent works, such as blueprints attached to an application, which arguably would have become PD when approved in a decision made before 2005. I don't think the stamps can be regarded as independent works (cf the statement on CoAs). Even if they were, pre-2005 they would still have become PD if included in the decision. –LPfi (talk) 19:58, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

The opinion says that the status of independent works was unclear until then. It does not support the notion that those pre-2005 blueprints would have been PD; "unclear" is not enough for Wikipedia as far as I can tell. As for stamps not being independent works, the Coat of Arms references explicitly mentions CoAs as being PD because doing so would benefit the public - if those particular reasons applied to stamps as well, they would have stated as much. Too much extrapolation. mr.choppers (talk)^-en- 20:31, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Just to note, i have followed little bit further on copyright law changes. The relevant change was creation of Tekijänoikeuslaki 25 § d (added 1995 and update on 2005) which defines that the work of art included on document which is public based on Tekijänoikeuslaki 9 § can be used in same context. (via Tekijänoikeusneuvoston lausunto 2020:4). However, i still trying to figure out what the legislation were before 1995 and how it worked. --Zache (talk) 20:43, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

@Mr.choppers The reasons for the 2005 legal amendment were written as follows:

• Decisions and statements falling within the scope of the main rule of the section and thus outside copyright, but also laws and regulations, may also include such works or parts of works that were not specifically prepared as part of these decisions or statements. According to § 9, the work included in the text of the decision or statement is not protected. The work or part of it can also be attached to a decision or similar. In some cases, such an attached work is such an integral part of the decision or the like that the attachment must also be considered part of the document and thus be deprived of copyright protection. However, a work that is part of or attached to a decision or something similar is often such that it was not produced specifically as a part of the decision or as an attachment to it. In such a case, it is not reasonable that the attached work should also automatically lose copyright protection. Therefore, a provision clarifying the scope of application of the provision of subsection 1 is proposed as a new subsection 2 of the section, according to which the provision of subsection 1 would not apply to independent works included in the documents referred to in subsection 1. The provision would apply to independent works included in both the text of the document and its appendices. However, in accordance with the sentence of the second part of the section, such works could be reproduced in connection with the document in question and used separately from the document for the administrative or other purpose to which the document is related. An example of a work that can be included in the document referred to in subsection 1 and that is used in the intended use of the document is a work of fine art included in money
• Original text: HE 28/2004 vp page 50,51 (Pykälän pääsäännön piiriin kuuluviin ja siten tekijänoikeuden ulkopuolelle jääviin päätöksiin ja lausumiin, mutta myös lakeihin ja asetuksiin, voi sisältyä myös sellaisia teoksia tai teosten osia, joita ei ole nimenomaan valmistettu näiden päätösten tai lausumien osaksi. Päätöksen tai lausuman tekstiin sisältyvä teos jää 9 §:n mukaan suojaa vaille. Teos tai sen osa voi olla myös päätöksen tai vastaavan liitteenä. Joissain tapauksissa tällainen liitteenä oleva teos on sillä tavalla olennainen osa päätöstä tai vastaavaa, että myös liitteen on katsottava olevan osa asiakirjaa ja siten jäävän vaille tekijänoikeussuojaa. Päätöksen tai vastaavan osana tai liitteenä oleva teos on kuitenkin usein sellainen, että sitä ei ole valmistettu nimenomaan päätöksen osaksi tai sen liitteeksi. Tällaisessa tapauksessa ei ole kohtuullista, että myös liitteenä oleva teos automaattisesti menettäisi tekijänoikeussuojan. Sen vuoksi pykälän uudeksi 2 momentiksi ehdotetaan 1 momentin säännöksen soveltamisalaa selkeyttävää säännöstä, jonka mukaan 1 momentissa tarkoitettuihin asiakirjoihin sisältyviin itsenäisiin teoksiin ei sovellettaisi 1 momentin säännöstä. Säännös koskisi sekä asiakirjan tekstiin että sen liitteisiin sisältyviä itsenäisiä teoksia. Momentin jälkiosan virkkeen mukaisesti tällaisia teoksia saisi kuitenkin toisintaa kyseisen asiakirjan yhteydessä sekä käyttää asiakirjasta erillään siihen hallinnolliseen tai muuhun tarkoitukseen, johon asiakirja liittyy. Esimerkki teoksesta, joka voi sisältyä 1 momentissa tarkoitettuun asiakirjaan ja jota käytetään asiakirjan tarkoittamassa käytössä, on rahaan sisältyvä kuvataiteen teos.)

If I understand correctly the situation before 2005 change were that the clear cases were at works which were done for decision or statement. In this case most of the stamps were like this as they were artwork ordered by postal office specifically to be used as a stamp. Unclear cases were cases where work was not produced to be as a part of the decision or statement. Notable exceptions like this were artwork from prominent artists used in bank notes. If we compare this to the stamp then in 1975 stamps stamps postal office used en:Tyko Salinnen's Pyykkärit (stamp in commons) where the artwork was notable and in copyright when it was used in the stamp. However, in this case artwork was owned by public authority - The Finnish National Gallery which bought it at 7.3.1916. --Zache (talk) 09:27, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Little bit gathering links to how copyright law has been changed

Copyright law (1927 - 1961(?) ): Laki tekijänoikeudesta henkisiin tuotteisiin (174/1927).

• 3 §. - Ulkopuolella tämän lain suojan ovat: 1. lait, asetukset, julistukset, julkisten viranomaisten, eduskunnan, valmistelukuntain ja komiteain, niin myös tuomioistuinten sekä kirkollisten, kunnallisten ja muiden julkisten edustajistojen asiakirjat, pöytäkirjat, päätökset ja kirjelmät, samoin myös muut julkiset asiakirjat; 2. eduskunnassa ja muissa julkisissa edustajistoissa tapahtuneet keskustelut, niin myös tuomioistuimissa tai muiden julkisten viranomaisten edessä tahi yleisistä asioista keskustelemaan kokoontuneissa yleisissä kokouksissa esitetyt lausumat; sekä 3. päivänuutiset ja muut sanomalehtitiedoitukset sanomalehdissä tai aikakauskirjoissa.

Google translate:

• Section 3 - Outside the protection of this law are: 1. laws, decrees, declarations, documents, minutes, decisions and pleadings of public authorities, parliament, conventions and committees, as well as courts and ecclesiastical, municipal and other public representative bodies, as well as other public documents; 2. discussions held in parliament and other public representative bodies, as well as statements made in courts or in front of other public authorities or in general meetings gathered to discuss general matters; and 3. daily news and other newspaper notices in newspapers or magazines.

Copyright law (1961 - 1995): Laki tekijänoikeudesta kirjallisiin ja taiteellisiin teoksiin / Tekijänoikeuslaki (404/1961 404/1961)

• 9 § - Lakeihin ja asetuksiin sekä viranomaisen tai muun julkisen elimen päätöksiin ja lausumiin ei ole tekijänoikeutta.

Google translate:

• Section 9 - There is no copyright in laws and decrees, as well as in the decisions and statements of an authority or other public body.

Copyright law (1995 - 2005): Tekijänoikeuslaki (24.3.1995/446, HE 287/1994)

• 9 § Lakeihin ja asetuksiin sekä viranomaisen tai muun julkisen elimen päätöksiin ja lausumiin ei ole tekijänoikeutta.
• 25 d § - Tekijänoikeus ei rajoita laissa säädettyä oikeutta saada tieto yleisestä asiakirjasta. Teosta saadaan käyttää oikeudenhoidon tai yleisen turvallisuuden vaatiessa. Edellä 1 tai 2 momentin nojalla käytetystä teoksesta saadaan ottaa lainauksia 22 §:n mukaisesti.

Google translate:

• Section 9 - There is no copyright in laws and decrees, as well as in the decisions and statements of an authority or other public body.
• Section 25 d - Copyright does not limit the statutory right to receive information about a public document. The work may be used if required by the administration of justice or public safety. Quotations may be taken from the work used pursuant to subsections 1 or 2 above in accordance with § 22.

Copyright law (2005 - ): Tekijänoikeuslaki (821/2005, HE 28/2004)

• 9 § - Tekijänoikeutta ei ole: 1) lakeihin ja asetuksiin; 2) muihin Suomen säädöskokoelmasta annetun lain (188/2000) ja ministeriöiden ja valtion muiden viranomaisten määräyskokoelmista annetun lain (189/2000) mukaan julkaistaviin päätöksiin, määräyksiin ja muihin asiakirjoihin; 3) valtiosopimuksiin ja muihin vastaaviin kansainvälisiä velvoitteita sisältäviin asiakirjoihin; 4) viranomaisen tai muun julkisen toimielimen päätöksiin ja lausumiin; 5) viranomaisen tai muun julkisen toimielimen 1―4 kohdassa tarkoitetuista asiakirjoista tekemiin tai teettämiin käännöksiin. Mitä 1 momentissa säädetään, ei koske itsenäisiä teoksia, jotka sisältyvät momentissa tarkoitettuihin asiakirjoihin.
• 25 d § - Lain 9 §:n 2 momentissa tarkoitettuja teoksia saa toisintaa pykälän 1 momentissa tarkoitetun asiakirjan yhteydessä sekä käyttää asiakirjasta erillään siihen hallinnolliseen tai muuhun tarkoitukseen, johon asiakirja liittyy. Se, joka radiossa tai televisiossa lähettämällä tai muuten välittää teoksen yleisölle, saa valmistaa tai valmistuttaa taikka säilyttää lähetetyn tai välitetyn teoksen kappaleen lakiin perustuvan tallentamis- tai säilyttämisvelvollisuutensa täyttämiseksi.

Google translate

• Section 9 - Copyright does not apply to: 1) laws and regulations; 2) to other decisions, regulations and other documents to be published according to the Act on the Collection of Finnish Statutes (188/2000) and the Act on the Collections of Regulations of Ministries and Other State Authorities (189/2000); 3) to state treaties and other similar documents containing international obligations; 4) decisions and statements of an authority or other public institution; 5) to translations made or commissioned of the documents referred to in paragraphs 1-4 by an authority or other public institution. What is stipulated in subsection 1 does not apply to independent works that are included in the documents referred to in the subsection.
• Section 25 d - The works referred to in Section 9, subsection 2 of the Act may be reproduced in connection with the document referred to in Section 1, subsection and used separately from the document for the administrative or other purpose to which the document is related. Anyone who broadcasts or otherwise transmits a work to the public on radio or television may produce or prepare or preserve a copy of the transmitted or transmitted work in order to fulfill their legal obligation to record or preserve.

--Zache (talk) 09:35, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

And here you were giving me crap for making a lot of text to read lol. Anyway, as Mr. Choppers has said, your using way to much extrapolation to make your argument and the whole thing is rather contrived on your side. It's not our job to here to act as jurists or otherwise be soothsayer of the law. If you have to cite that much text in order to extrapolate out if stamps are free of copyright or not then you clearly have justification to say they are. At least not one that holds any weight on Commons. The guidelines make it clear that if the copyright status of something isn't clear that we air on the side of caution and assume whatever we are talking about isn't copyright free, period, and that's clearly the case here.

The only possible argument it seems like you could have is that stamps aren't independent works. I'm not sure what grounds you'd argue that on though and in the meantime other countries with similar laws have considered them to be. Even if you put that aside though, like I've said about 15 times now there's zero evidence individual stamp designs are included in decisions. Let alone that it would automatically make them copyright free if they were since there's clearly things that are included in decisions that don't automatically become copyright free due to being included in them. Obviously saying stamps are copyright free "because decisions" repeatedly over and over while citing walls of obtuse legal text isn't an argument. I think we can at least agree on two things here though. 1. The copyright law doesn't explicitly mention stamps or otherwise make a special exception for them 2. Their copyright status is unclear. Assuming we do agree on those things then I say we just edit the article to reflect it and call this by defaulting to the precautionary principle. Otherwise your just squeezing juice from a legal turnip against the consensus and guidelines to force your personal opinion of what the result of this discussion should be. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:02, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

No, independent works are covered by 9 § too. It is said in HE 28/2004 vp rationale, page 50,51 and also Tekijänoikeusneuvoston lausunto 2020:4. Only question with these is in to which extend in different time periods. --Zache (talk) 14:14, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Which specific sentences in the documents you linked to say that? Because from what I was reading it sounded like they thought applying the rule to otherwise copyrighted works just because they are included in decisions would be unfair to the original creator. Also, although I don't have the exact quote right now LPfi said somewhere in this discussion that it depends on exactly how the material is included in the decision. Either way though, that doesn't negate the fact that your still twisting yourself into an extreme amount of knots to get from whatever the documents say to stamps being free of copyright. So again, can we at least agree that the copyright law doesn't mention stamps, otherwise have a special exception for them, and that their copyright status is therefore unclear? --Adamant1 (talk) 14:24, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

For example in the

• HE 28/2004 vp: Päätöksen tai lausuman tekstiin sisältyvä teos jää 9 §:n mukaan suojaa vaille. Teos tai sen osa voi olla myös päätöksen tai vastaavan liitteenä. Joissain tapauksissa tällainen liitteenä oleva teos on sillä tavalla olennainen osa päätöstä tai vastaavaa, että myös liitteen on katsottava olevan osa asiakirjaa ja siten jäävän vaille tekijänoikeussuojaa. Päätöksen tai vastaavan osana tai liitteenä oleva teos on kuitenkin usein sellainen, että sitä ei ole valmistettu nimenomaan päätöksen osaksi tai sen liitteeksi. Tällaisessa tapauksessa ei ole kohtuullista, että myös liitteenä oleva teos automaattisesti menettäisi tekijänoikeussuojan. Sen vuoksi pykälän uudeksi 2 momentiksi ehdotetaan 1 momentin säännöksen soveltamisalaa selkeyttävää säännöstä, jonka mukaan 1 momentissa tarkoitettuihin asiakirjoihin sisältyviin itsenäisiin teoksiin ei sovellettaisi 1 momentin säännöstä. Säännös koskisi sekä asiakirjan tekstiin että sen liitteisiin sisältyviä itsenäisiä teoksia.
• Tekijänoikeusneuvoston 2020:4 summary: Tekijänoikeuslain 9 §:n 1 momentin mukaisesti tekijänoikeutta ei ole viranomaisen tai muun julkisen toimielimen päätöksiin ja lausumiin. Ylioppilastutkintolautakuntaa oli pidettävä pykälässä tarkoitettuna viranomaisena ja koekysymyksiä sen kirjallisina lausumina. Tekijänoikeuslain 25 d §:n 4 momentin nojalla on mahdollista toisintaa ylioppilastutkintokokeita ja niihin liitettyjä teoksia myös koetilaisuuden ulkopuolella.

--Zache (talk) 14:32, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

To me it is clear from all of these statements that we do not know whether stamp designs are independent works or not. There are a lot of "may"s and "possibly"s in the translation of HE 28/2004 provided by Zache earlier; way too many to base this on. Stamps fundamentally differ from money or insignia in that new designs are constantly being issued; because of that I don't think there is a case for stamps being PD based on the "public interest" clause. But in the case of Tyko Salinnen's Pyykkärit, for instance, the painting is clearly an independent work and cannot be considered PD - as for who owns the copyright to the original painting, in most countries that remains with the artist unless specifically signed over. It would be fun if someone could find Salinnen's (or Gallen-Kallela, or Eliel Saarinen) contract with the Finnish Post.

However, I did find something which supports the PD notion. I looked at some other pre-1990 stamps and found this interesting example. A 1988 joint issue between Sweden, US, and Finland (it is hard to imagine that issuing this in Finland would force the Swedish and US issues to become Public Domain as well) - but unlike other Finnish stamps I have seen, this stamp actually states the designers' names (Österlund and Sjööblom) and copyright (c. 1988). Not proof positive, but an interesting decision to spell out the copyright on this particular stamp.

Don't get my motivations wrong: I want as much as possible to be copyleft but I don't want to trample any copyright holders' rights either. mr.choppers (talk)^-en- 14:54, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

The first paragraph you cited says "In some cases, such an attached work is such an integral part of the decision or the like that the attachment must also be considered part of the document and thus be deprived of copyright protection. However, a work that is part of or attached to a decision or something similar is often such that it was not produced specifically as a part of the decision or as an attachment to it. In such a case, it is not reasonable that the attached work should also automatically lose copyright protection." That's literally what I said, that the copyright status of something included in a decision depends on what type of work it is and how it's attached to the decision. Either way, the document doesn't support the argument that stamps are copyright free because they are included in decisions or whatever. It clearly says the exact opposite. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:05, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that was the change which was done to Finlands copyright law 9 § and 25 d § in 2005. However, before the change the situation was that " According to § 9, the work included in the text of the decision or statement is not protected. " -- Zache (talk) 15:11, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

That wasn't the situation though. Before 2005 it was unclear whether or not the works were copyright free or not. "Unclear" obviously isn't the same as "copyright free" either. I'd appreciate it if you didn't act like they are the same thing. Just because the copyright status of something wasn't clear prior to 2005 doesn't mean it is or was free of copyright. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:23, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

It was unclear what independent works became PD, such as whether blueprints sent to a public body for approval became PD by the approval. The stamps aren't independent works, at least not in the common cases, so their status wasn't changed. Most independent works attached to decisions indeed became PD before the amendment. –LPfi (talk) 16:30, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

What's your evidence that stamps aren't independent works? I think Aymatth2 makes a good argument for why they are, mainly that the artist or designer creates the stamp design and submits it to the public body, which then decides which of the submitted designs to accept. That's a pretty text book description of an independent work. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:05, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Independet works mean in 9 § context works or parts of works not specifically prepared as part of these decisions or statements etc... -- Zache (talk) 17:25, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Not to be rude, but I didn't ask you. I asked LPfi. He can answer the question for himself. That said, I think your comment proves why stamps are independent, because they aren't prepared as part of the decisions. They are prepared because of it. There's clearly a difference between something being created as a part of a decision and it being created as a result of one. While I'd agree that the former is probably not independent and therefore copyright free, the later is clearly independent and therefore copyrightable. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:31, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

For example kiertokirje is a example for statement covered by 9 § and where is image of the stamp and image of the stamp is integral part of the statement. (though i don't think it cant be used for rationale for scanning the separate stamp and uploading it to commons, but kiertokirje could be uploaded to commons) -- Zache (talk) 17:39, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you think that proves when it's a press release, not a decision, and no one is debating that stamps are included in decisions sometimes anyway. But sure dude. Sometimes images of stamps are included in press releases. Got me. Anyway, if you want an actual example take this stamp of Donald Duck. Assuming it was included in a decision somewhere since that's what your arguing, are you seriously going to tell me images of Donald Duck are copyright free now just because his likeness was included in a decision to print the stamp? --Adamant1 (talk) 17:54, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

I assume a stamp depicting DD could be one of the rare exceptions where an independent work would keep its copyright. Even if it weren't, it is just the stamp that is copyright free; any elements not present in the stamp would not be affected. But I don't think arguments based on hypothetic absurd consequenses of a law do much good. Instead try to base your argument on the law itself, legal commentary on it, and try to figure out what the intension of the law can be in cases actually at hand. The law cannot be disregarded just because it seems absurd in some marginal cases. It means something, so what does it mean in your reading, in the case where a stamp is indeed included in a decision or statement? What legal reasoning can you produce to defend that position? –LPfi (talk) 18:16, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

What legal reasoning can you produce to defend that position? How about the fact that the stamp was created and is supposedly part of a decision? I'm not the one that has to defend my position though, you are since your the one making the claim that stamps are dependent works. What legal reasoning can you produce to defend your position that they are? Because you haven't produced any. All you've done when I've asked you to produce some is deflect and go off about your personal opinion. If you care that much about citing legal reasons to defend our positions though, cool. Be my guest and cite some legal reasoning to defend yourself then.

In the meantime, the only reason your calling the Donald Duck stamp an absurd hypothetical is because it directly contracts your argument. I've been pretty clear that I think the copyright status of stamps is unclear. Your the one acting like it is well-described and unambiguous that stamps are dependent works. The Donald Duck stamp proves that's not the case. Sure it's only one example, but there are many stamps that are based on pre-exiting IPs that are clearly copyrighted despite being used as designers for stamps. So we have two things here, 1. Stamps that your claiming without evidence aren't independent 2. Stamps that clearly are independent regardless of being included in decisions. If you can't back up what your saying with evidence and there's clear examples that contradict your argument then as far as I'm concerned there isn't really anything else to discuss here. Again though, be my guest and provide some legal reasoning to defend your position. It should be easy enough to do if there is any. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:52, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Suomen posti and Telelaitos was incorporated in early 1990. It changed from an authority to a company and it's decisions and statements were not covered by § 9 anymore. Because of this, the Donald Duck stamps published in 2001 do not serve as an example of whether or not stamps published in Finland before 1990 should or should not be free. --Zache (talk) 05:51, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Cool. I'm aware. Are you seriously going to argue that they never printed a postage stamp based on a pre-exiting work before that though? Come on dude. You and LPfi are being extremely bad faithed and disingenuous about this. Why not just address how you think instances like that are handled instead of acting like stamps are never created based on copyrighted works. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:58, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

For stamps based on independent works the question is convoluted, and I'd like to sort out the simple cases first. Most stamps are original works. If you agree on them, then cool, then most of the Finnish stamps are free and we can have a warning about the rest. If we come to the conclusion that even they are non-free, then there is no use discussing the special case, as they would certainly be non-free (other than possibly stamps based on PD works, but also that discussion is premature). –LPfi (talk) 07:19, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

I gave an example of an artwork that has been used on a stamp March 2, 9:27 (diff). w:Tyko Sallinen's Pyykkärit was a famous work of art when it was used on a postage stamp in 1975. The work itself is still under copyright because Sallinen died in 1955. This is otherwise very comparable to cases where famous works of art were used on banknotes, except that artwork belonged to the Finnish National Gallery (ie. Finland as state) at the time of making the stamp. -- Zache (talk) 07:34, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that's the usual process (see comment below), and I don't think a submitted design would be an independent work. Even in the 2005 amendment, the issue was about works made for other purposes. Somebody submitting a stamp design that gets approved would get paid for their contribution and would not expect to monetise on the design in other ways. I have not seen any evidence that stamps would be different in this aspect than coats of arms decided on by municipalities, and for those we have a Copyright Council statement, linked above, early in the discussion. If this is the main argument we should look at the PMs cited in the CoA statement. –LPfi (talk) 17:48, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Definition of public body in Finland

Just for copying how public body was defined in TN 1995:5

Original: Tekijänoikeuslain 9 §:ssä tai sen esitöissä ei määritellä, mitä tarkoitetaan viranomaisella tai siihen rinnastetulla julkisella elimellä. Vaikka yleensä on selvää, mitä viranomaisella ja muulla julkisella elimellä tarkoitetaan, voi kyseisten käsitteiden tulkinta olla rajatapauksissa ongelmallista. Oikeuskirjallisuudessa on katsottu, että tekijänoikeuslain 9 §:n viranomaisen ja julkisen elimen käsitteitä on tulkittava hallinto-oikeudellisten periaatteiden mukaan (Kivimäki, T.M. Uudet tekijänoikeus- ja valokuvauslait s. 69). Koska tekijänoikeuslain 9 §:n tarkoituksena on suojata siinä mainittuihin asiakirjoihin kohdistuvaa julkisuusintressiä, on tulkintaapua viranomaisen ja muun julkisenelimen käsitteisiin haettava yleisten asiakirjain julkisuudesta annetusta laista, jolla hallinnon julkisuus on Suomessa pääasiallisesti toteutettu. Yleisten asiakirjain julkisuudesta annetun lain 2 §:n 3 momentin mukaan viranomaisella tarkoitetaan valtion, kunnan ja kirkollisen ynnä muun itsehallintoyhdyskunnan viranomaisia, niihin luettuina myös julkisoikeudelliset kokoukset, edustajistot, valiokunnat, lautakunnat, toimikunnat ja komiteat viran- ja toimenhaltijoineen. Oikeuskirjallisuudessa säännöstä on tulkittu laajentavasti siten, että se tarkoittaa kaikkia sellaisia elimiä, joiden henkilöstö toimii rikosoikeudellisen virkavastuun alaisena.

Google translate: Section 9 of the Copyright Act or its preambles do not define what is meant by an authority or a public body equated to it. Although it is usually clear what is meant by authority and other public body, the interpretation of the concepts in question can be problematic in borderline cases. In the legal literature, it has been considered that the concepts of authority and public body in Section 9 of the Copyright Act must be interpreted according to administrative law principles (Kivimäki, T.M. Uudet teiternoikeus- ja fotografikalait p. 69). Since the purpose of Section 9 of the Copyright Act is to protect the public interest in the documents mentioned therein, interpretation help for the concepts of authority and other public body must be sought from the Act on the Publicity of General Documents, by which administrative publicity is mainly implemented in Finland. According to section 2, subsection 3 of the Act on the Publicity of Public Documents, authority means the authorities of the state, municipality and ecclesiastical and other self-governing communities, including public law meetings, representative councils, committees, boards, commissions and committees with their officials and officials. In the legal literature, the provision has been interpreted broadly so that it means all such bodies whose personnel work under criminal official responsibility

Note, Google Translate is little bit lost in translation here. Anyway. virkavastuu = liability for acts in office; liability while in office. --Zache (talk) 03:15, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

---

Expansion of the scope of the Publicity Act report 2019

31,

Public body explanation in Expansion of the scope of the Publicity Act report 2019:31, page 44. (Julkisuuslain soveltamisalan laajentaminen 2019:31, isbn: 978-952-259-769-4)

• Original Lakia sovelletaan viranomaisten lisäksi lain tai asetuksen taikka lain tai asetuksen nojalla annetun säännöksen tai määräyksen perusteella julkista tehtävää hoitaviin yhteisöihin, laitoksiin, säätiöihin ja yksityisiin henkilöihin niiden käyttäessä julkista valtaa (4 § 2 mom.). Siten osakeyhtiömuoto ei välttämättä merkitse, että julkisuuslakia ei lainkaan sovellettaisi yhtiössä syntyviin asiakirjoihin. Julkisuuslain 4 §:n 2 momentti merkitsee käytännössä julkisuuslain osittaista soveltamista: laki koskee vain julkisen vallan käytön yhteydessä syntyviä asiakirjoja. (page 44) -- Muut julkisten hallintotehtävien hoidossa syntyvät asiakirjat jäävät siis julkisuuslain soveltamisalan ulkopuolelle, jollei niitä ole laadittu viran- omaisen antaman toimeksiannon johdosta. (page 61)

.ChatGPT translation: In addition to authorities, law applies to communities, institutions, foundations, and private individuals who exercise public authority based on a provision or order issued under a law or regulation when they are using public power (section 4, subsection 2). Therefore, the form of a limited liability company does not necessarily mean that the Public Access to Information Act does not apply to documents produced within the company. Section 4, subsection 2 of the Act means that the Act applies only partially: it applies only to documents produced in connection with the exercise of public power (page 44) -- Therefore, other documents arising from the performance of public administrative tasks remain outside the scope of the Publicity Act, unless they have been prepared on the basis of a commission given by an authority (page 61)

• Laki viranomaisten toiminnan julkisuudesta 621/1999 (Publicity Act in Finlex)

--Zache (talk) 04:12, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Julkisuuslain soveltamisalan laajentaminen 2019:31, isbn: 978-952-259-769-4), page 123,124

VI summary of current state Original:

VI tiivistelmä nykytilanteesta

...

• 5.) Julkisuuslain organisatoriseen soveltamisalaan eivät kuulu valtion tai kuntien määräämisvallassa olevat yhtiöt. Julkisuuslakia kuitenkin sovelletaan kuntien ja valtion yhtiöiden asiakirjoihin eri tilanteissa.
• 6.) Julkisuuslaki koskee kaikkia viranomaisen hallussa tai määräämisvallassa olevia asiakirjoja. Siten yhtiöiden viranomaisille eri yhteyksissä toimittamat asiakirjat kuuluvat julkisuuslain soveltamisalan piiriin (esim. yhtiöiden omistajaohjausta varten toimitetut tai sitä varten laaditut yhtiötä koskevat asiakirjat). Keskeisimmät yhtiön toiminnan omistajanohjaukseen kuuluvat asiakirjat ovat siten julkisuuslain soveltamisalan piirissä. Se, kuinka laajasti toiminnan avoimuus tätä kautta toteutuu, on riippuvainen yhtiöjärjestykseen otetuista määräyksistä ja omistajaohjuksen käytännön toteuttamisesta muutoinkin.
• 7.) Julkisuuslakia sovelletaan myös asiakirjoihin, jotka on annettu tai laadittu viranomaisen yksityiselle antaman tehtävän johdosta. Siten ostopalvelujen käyttö ei kavenna julkisuuslain soveltamisalaa, vaan em. asiakirjat ovat viranomaisen määräämisvallassa.
• 8.) Julkisuuslakia sovelletaan myös sellaisiin yksityisiin toimijoihin, jotka hoitavat tehtäviä lain nojalla ja käyttävät julkista valtaa. Muutaman valtion määräämisvallassa olevan yhtiön asiakirjat ovat ainakin osittain tällä perusteella julkisuuslain soveltamisalan piirissä.

...

ChatGPT translate:

VI Summary of the current situation

...

• 5.) Companies under the control of the state or municipalities are not included in the organizational scope of the Public Access to Information Act. However, the Act applies to documents of state and municipal companies in various situations.
• 6.) The Act applies to all documents held or controlled by an authority. Therefore, documents submitted by companies to authorities in different contexts fall within the scope of the Act (e.g., documents concerning company ownership or created for that purpose). Therefore, the key documents related to the company's ownership management are within the scope of the Act. The extent to which the company's operations are transparent through this is dependent on the provisions included in the articles of association and the practical implementation of ownership management.
• 7.) The Act also applies to documents provided or prepared by a private individual at the request of an authority. Therefore, the use of outsourcing services does not limit the scope of the Act, and the aforementioned documents are under the control of the authority.
• 8.) The Act also applies to private actors who perform tasks under the law and exercise public power. Documents of some state-controlled companies are at least partially within the scope of the Act on this basis.

...

--Zache (talk) 04:56, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Julkisuuslain soveltamisalan laajentaminen 2019:31, isbn: 978-952-259-769-4), page 99,100. from the list of state owned companies in Finland.

Posti group

... Posti Groupin tytäryhtiöllä, Posti Oy:llä, on Suomessa yleispalveluvelvoite, mitä koskevat säännökset sisältyvät postilain (415/2011) 3 lukuun. Yleispalvelua tarjoavia palvelupisteitä tulee olla vähintään yksi joka kunnassa, kohtuullisen matkan päässä asiakkaan vakituisesta asunnosta. Lain ulkopuolella ovat sanoma- ja aikakauslehtien sekä osoitteettomien lähetysten jakelu, kuriiritoiminta ja muut pakettipalvelut.

Kielellisten oikeuksien turvaamisesta on erityissäännökset lain 30 §:ssä. Yleispalvelun tarjoajan on postilain 31 §:n mukaan huolehdittava laissa säädetyn tiedoksiantomenettelyn käytettävissä olosta koko maassa. Yleispalvelun tarjoajan tai sellaisen yrityksen, joka yleispalvelun tarjoajan kanssa tekemänsä sopimuksen nojalla tarjoaa yleispalvelun tarjoajan palveluja asiakkaille, palveluksessa olevaan henkilöön sovelletaan rikosoikeudellista virkavastuuta koskevia säännöksiä hänen suorittaessaan tiedoksiantomenettelyyn liittyviä tehtäviä. ...

Posti group ... Posti Group's subsidiary, Posti Oy, has a "universal service obligation" in Finland, the provisions of which are included in Chapter 3 of the Postal Act (415/2011). There must be at least one service point providing universal service in each municipality, within a reasonable distance from the customer's permanent residence. Distribution of newspapers, magazines, and unaddressed mail, courier services, and other parcel services are excluded from the law.

There are special provisions in section 30 of the law for the protection of language rights. According to section 31 of the Postal Act, the universal service provider must ensure that the statutory notification procedure is available throughout the country. Criminal responsibility provisions regarding official duties apply to a person employed by the universal service provider or a company that provides the universal service provider's services to customers under a contract with them, while performing tasks related to the notification procedure. ...

--Zache (talk) 05:12, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Copyright status of stamps (cont.2)

The relevant legal discussion is therefore:

According to § 9, the work included in the text of the decision or statement is not protected. The work or part of it can also be attached to a decision or similar. In some cases, such an attached work is such an integral part of the decision or the like that the attachment must also be considered part of the document and thus be deprived of copyright protection. However, a work that is part of or attached to a decision or something similar is often such that it was not produced specifically as a part of the decision or as an attachment to it. In such a case, it is not reasonable that the attached work should also automatically lose copyright protection. Therefore, a provision clarifying the scope of application of the provision of subsection 1 is proposed as a new subsection 2 of the section, according to which the provision of subsection 1 would not apply to independent works included in the documents referred to in subsection 1. The provision would apply to independent works included in both the text of the document and its appendices. However, in accordance with the sentence of the second part of the section, such works could be reproduced in connection with the document in question and used separately from the document for the administrative or other purpose to which the document is related.

The question is whether the postage stamp was

• Produced specifically as part of the public body's decision, in which case it would be public domain
• Produced before the decision was made, by someone who is not involved in the decision, in which case it would be protected

The second it clearly the case. The artist or designer creates the stamp design and submits it to the public body, which then decides which of the submitted designs to accept. Their decision does not remove copyright protection from the chosen design, which would not be reasonable. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:22, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Between 1929-1961 everything which was in other public documents were not covered copyright, 1961-2005 bit stricter but idea was same than. However there were notable exceptions, after 2005 produced before the decision was made, by someone who is not involved in the decision, in which case it would be protected. -- Also, anther relevant thing was that stamp designers before 1970s were state employees who were as a part of the public body who designed the stamps. (for example w:Signe Hammarsten-Jansson) -- Zache (talk) 15:58, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Aymatth2, when quoting "the relevant legal discussion", please tell what document you are quoting, and include a unique fragment of the original (untranslated) text, so that one can find the original and see the context of the quote.

• User:Zache quoted the reasons for the 2005 legal amendment above, giving the original and a translation. I reproduced the core portion. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:27, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

  OK. Thank you. Many different documents have been cited above. As several of them contain similar language it is very difficult to guess which one you are referring to. Attributing the quote helps immensely. –LPfi (talk) 19:54, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

I mostly agree with your first bullet, but I suspect there is a slight mistake in the wording: "produced specifically as a part of the decision or as an attachment to it" sounds odd to me, and I would like to check the original wording.

• Part of the wording is "However, a work that is part of or attached to a decision or something similar is often such that it was not produced specifically as a part of the decision or as an attachment to it." Aymatth2 (talk) 15:27, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, that text is included in your quote. For most documents I use the official versions in Finnish or Swedish and I don't know from where you have got your translations, so an untranslated quote is what would help. Here Zache provided both original text and translation, so finding the corresponding original text is easy, once I know where to search for it. –LPfi (talk) 20:00, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Your second bullet misses the mark. Obviously anything included in these decision was produced before the decision was made (except last-minute changes, which would be very rare in the cases we are discussing). "Who is not involved in the decision" should not be interpreted literally; those "producing" the content of a decision of this kind are mostly people who are not involved in actually making the decision (read: signing it off). "Not involved" would mostly mean somebody who doesn't work for the agency (in our case artists not normally working for the agency would be involved if appointed to create the design).

If the key argument is whether those who designed a stamp were "involved in the decision", then we need to read the legal discussion on this. This (and the relation between doing the design and deciding on it) was the point I originally thought was the relevant one, and the reason I linked the Copyright Council statements. I think stamps are very similar to coinage and coats of arms in this respect.

Your description of the process is very odd, like private entrepreneurs would submit stamps for approval! These people are given the task of designing a certain stamp. Even in the cases where there is a competition, the designs are specifically made for this use.

–LPfi (talk) 17:33, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

I think stamps are very similar to coinage and coats of arms As far as I'm aware coinage is usually treated differently then stamps because the whole planning and creation process is usually done in house at the mint or at least most of it is. Since people don't usually have a metal forge or the other things it would take to create a coin in their backyard. That doesn't go for stamps though. Any minor artist can basically create a stamp on their own. So stamps aren't legally classified the same as coins. When determining if something is an independent work or not it usually comes down to how much involvement the government body has in the works creation though. With coins, it's a lot. With stamps, not so much. Probably they are barely involved in the creation process, if they are at all. Which is why stamps would be independent works and coins wouldn't be. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:06, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

We say (in COM:Finland, citing a statement by the Copyright Council): "the use of an image on a markka coin is not subject to copyright, as the designs of coins were part of decrees". So, the copyright issue of coinage is handled in the same section 9 that we are discussing. The statement is probably the one linked above, near the top of this discussion. Aren't stamps mostly planned in-house ("probably barely involved" – in that case I assume there are very different traditions; from where are you)? Aren't external artists sometimes appointed for planning coinage? Aren't stamps made in custom machines not widely seen in people's backyards? Anyway, as the copyright for both is handled in the copyright law, section 9, and the basis for PS status is the design being included in a decision, the other differences don't play any major role. –LPfi (talk) 18:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Aren't stamps mostly planned in-house Not that I'm aware of. Most of the time they have an extremely general idea of how they want the stamp to be designed, like a side profile of a particular politician. Then they take bids from multiple artists to design the stamp, where whomever creates the better looking draft gets the contract and designs it. The artist is mostly autonomous beyond that though, just like most contracted labor. Of course there are rare exception like when the artist already works for the postal authority, but most of the time they are non-government employees who are contracted to create the stamp and do it on their own time. Like they don't get a private office postal service or anything. I don't even think it's salaried.

Aren't external artists sometimes appointed for planning coinage?...Aren't stamps made in custom machines not widely seen in people's backyards? To your first question, sure sometimes, but it's a completely process because everything is done in house at the mint and it's like a five step process that involves multiple iterations to get the coin just right. When stamps the actual printing is done in custom printing machines, but that's the only thing that is or has to be done in house. The rest can be done by the artist on their own time. This site details how it's usually done where I live in the United States. From my understanding it's not much different from how they do it in European countries. Compare that to how the United States Mint creates coins here. It's a totally different processes. For coins, "once the Secretary of the Treasury approves a design, Mint medallic artists transform a line drawing into a three-dimensional sculpt." Whereas for stamps, "in the United States, the decision to produce a stamp is made by a Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee. Suggestions for stamps come from throughout the country. There is a large pool of recommendations with which to work. In some cases, suggestions are accompanied by drawings and pictures which might form the basis for the stamp being considered. Once the committee decides that a particular stamp will be produced, it commissions an artist to design it or modify a submitted design. It then decides, primarily on the basis of workload, whether the stamp should be produced by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing or by outside contractors" and so on and so forth. The key point there is that coins are created by "Mint medallic artists." Whereas, suggestions for stamps come from across the country and artists are commissioned to submit their own designs based on the recommendations. Again, I don't think either process is that different in European countries. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:21, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

The 2015 copyright law section 9(1) on decisions and statements by public bodies applies to much more than stamps. For example, a municipality may request tenders to design and build a new civic center. Several companies submit architectural drawings and quotations. As required by law, the municipality publishes a report explaining their decision and attaching all the bid documents. "It is not reasonable that the attached work should also automatically lose copyright protection." The copyright holders who submit their work retain their rights. If stamps were free of copyright, the law would surely state that explicitly. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:41, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

They retain their rights after the amendment of 2005. Before that the situation was unclear, which was the rationale of the amendment. For stamps, it is not clear that the artist losing their copyright would be unreasonable, as the design isn't something the artist is supposed to sell to other parties. Even the civic center isn't as clear a case as those cited in the document. Why would stamps be mentioned in the law? There are hundred of other kinds of works that may be included and thus lose (or not lose) their copyright. Even money isn't mentioned (they lose their copyright by being published in the statute book as part of a decree). –LPfi (talk) 20:30, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

You think the actual process was somehow fundamentally different before the amendment of 2005? How Aymatth2 and I have described it is essentially how these things have been done by every common law country since ww2. All the amendment of 2005 did was clarify things. It didn't fundamentally alter how the government went about things though. To your question of if stamps would be mentioned in the law or not, they are mentioned in the copyright law of most "Western" countries. The instances where they aren't mentioned is because the country chose not to include them because they aren't covered by the particular statue. In this case the statue is about what is copyright free, not what is copyrighted. So there's zero reason it would list stamps if they are copyrighted. Just like a jaywalking law doesn't list everything (or really anything) that isn't jaywalking.

The only way around that in both this case and with jaywalking would be to go to court and have the law clarified like was done with the shields. You have to assume everything that's not specifically mentioned in the law is copyrighted up until then though. Otherwise, your just asking for the Wikimedia Foundation to get sued for copyright infringement. We shouldn't have to force it to go to court just so we can host a couple of images of stamps either. That was already tried and failed with German stamps and the [:File:Loriot decision.pdf Loriot decision], which was fairly similar to this whole thing BTW. In that case the law didn't specifically state if stamps were "official works" or not. So we assumed they were "because, well, the law doesn't specify. So whatever." And you can see how well that turned out. What's so special about stamps though? Hell if I know. Common law countries seem to treat them differently for whatever reason and it's not on us to second guess that. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:33, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

I answered below. It would help to find consensus if you would try to find external references to support your opinnions. Currently discussion is much that you think that something cannot be anything else than what you say and clearly it doesn't match with the how legislation has been done in Finland. --Zache (talk) 12:11, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure what exactly your refereeing to, but generally speaking people don't need to provide external references to support things that are common knowledge. In this case it's pretty common knowledge (at least in this discussion) that it was assumed shields (to be more precise "coats of arms", but it's essentially the same thing) where considered to be copyrighted until the "court" clarified things in 1997:11. That's the whole reason it went to "court" in the first place. Obviously there would have been no need for them to clarify that "coats of arms" if everyone thought and agreed that they were free of copyright.

Either way, there's been multiple comments about it in this discussion and the relevant document has been linked to multiple times on this talk page. It's not an "opinion" that someone had to be taken to "court" over their usage of coats of arms so the law could be clarified though, that's literally what happened and we all agree that's how it happened. At least I assume we do. Unless your referring to something else, which in that case you should be more specific about what exactly you think I said that doesn't match how legislation is done in Finland. But with "coats of arms" specifically, that's exactly how it was done. The law wasn't clear that they were copyright free and someone had to have their copyright status adjudicated in "court" for their status to be clarified. Personally, I rather not have to force the Wikimedia Foundation to go through the same process to find out if stamps are copyright free or not. Especially considering they already lost a case revolving around stamps under extremely similar circumstances. Maybe you and LPfi are cool with that, but I'm not. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:13, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't know who you think assumed that coats of arms were protected before the statement of the Copyright Council. The council is not a law-making body (nor a court) and Finland isn't a common law country; the council just gives expert opinion on matters, to avoid unnecessary court cases. Thus they should represent the informed opinion, nothing else. Those who assumed something that differs from the statement of the council were by definition mistaken, unless the council itself was. Nothing changed by the statement, other than that forming an informed opinion was made easier. They make statements also on clear cases, as the general public doesn't have an informed opinion on copyright; them making a statement isn't evidence that something was unclear (to the informed public) before that. LPfi (talk) 08:58, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Just to clarify little bit more about of the status of the copyright council. It is defined in the copyright law 55 §: The State Council appoints the Copyright Council, whose task is to assist the Ministry of Education in dealing with issues related to copyright and to issue statements on the application of this law. More detailed regulations on the Copyright Council are issued by a government decree (= tekijänoikeusasetus). --Zache (talk) 10:03, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Sure, but as Zache says above this comment, more detailed regulations are issued by government decree based on their recommendations. So it's a distinction without a purpose. They don't just dole out toothless, meaningless statements that no one follows though. Otherwise there'd be zero point in them exiting or giving out recommendations in the first place.

With the coat of arms specifically and if it was a clear case or not, to quote from Statement 1997:11, "The Finnish Association of Local Authorities requested an opinion from the Copyright Council of Finland regarding the copyright of Finnish municipal coat of arms." The reason they were requesting the opinion was that "The applicant is inquiring whether the coat of arms are subject to Section 9 of the Copyright Act, i.e. whether anyone has copyright to them." What part of The Finnish Association of Local Authorities requesting an opinion from the Copyright Council because the applicant wanted to know whether anyone has copyright to the coat of arms leads you to think it was clear what their copyright status was? It's not like the The Finnish Association or anyone else takes every copyright inquiry someone makes to the Copyright Council or that they do so "just because." The reason they did with coats of arms is clearly because they and the plaintiff weren't sure what their copyright status was. It's totally ludicrous to claim that's not the case. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:35, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

What part of The Finnish Association of Local Authorities requesting an opinion from the Copyright Council ... leads you to think it was clear what their copyright status was?

• TN 1997:11Municipal coats of arms remain without copyright protection as part of the decision of the authority referred to in Section 9 of the Copyright Act. Provincial coats of arms from the 16th or 17th century are also not copyrighted.

--Zache (talk) 04:53, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Somebody might want to make sure something is free from copyright, such as in the enquiry on the flag of Finland, regardless of what they assume themselves. Not all cases are clear from the beginning, and I think the CoA case was very useful, especially in establishing that CoAs of newer entities were similar enough to the old ones that there was no new copyright – and for Commons to be able to point to for Commons admins not versed in Finnish law finding RfDs on the theme. –LPfi (talk) 17:39, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

The Copyright law 9 § can cover work which will lose copyright protection as part of document covered by 9 §. For example patent decisions in Finland. Patent applications textual content are considered as work and they are protected by copyright law. However, if the application is approved then it is covered by 9 §. (example: TN 2014:1

• original: Patenttihakemusasiakirjan selitysosassa ilmaistu teksti oli kokonaisuutena tekijänoikeuslain 1 §:ssä tarkoitettu kirjallinen teos. Asiakirjojen tietoihin kohdistuvan julkisuusintressin suojaamisen vuoksi patenttihakemuksen selitysosan sisältö jää kuitenkin tekijänoikeuslain 9 §:ssä tarkoitetun viranomaisen päätöksen osana vaille tekijänoikeussuojaa.
• Google translate: The text expressed in the explanatory part of the patent application document was, as a whole, a written work referred to in Section 1 of the Copyright Act. Due to the protection of the public interest in the documents' information, the content of the explanatory part of the patent application remains, however, as part of the decision of the authority referred to in Section 9 of the Copyright Act, without copyright protection.

Note in TN 2014:1 the drawings were not covered by copyright law because there seems to be high requirement for personality in technical drawings. Other decisions are TN 2001:3 (logo), TN 1999:2 (list or database), TN 1997:11 (coat of arms of public bodies), TN 1997:6 (Summary of product characteristics of the medicine), TN 1989:13 (currency) There some kind of description in TN 1995:5 (page 3) what 9 § covers in the chapter which explains the historical context of 9 §:

• Original: Tekijänoikeuslain 9 §:ssä määritellään ne teokset, joihin ei ole tekijänoikeutta. Päätöksillä ja lausumilla tarkoitetaan lain esitöiden mukaan sellaisia tahdonilmaisuja ja lausumia, jotka viranomainen ja muu julkinen elin on antanut kirjallisessa muodossa. Suulliset lausumat ovat periaatteessa tekijänoikeussuojan alaisia. Tekijänoikeuslain 9 § koskee julkisten elimien kertomuksia, ehdotuksia, mietintöjä ja tuomioistuimen jäsenen eriävää mielipidettä. Lausumista komiteanmietinnössä todetaan seuraavaa: "Lausumalla tarkoitetaan jotain, mikä on ilmaistu kielellisin keinoin. Näin ollen kartat, piirrokset ja vastaavat eivät sinänsä voi kuulua säännöksen piiriin. Kuitenkin jos päätökseen tai lausumaan liitetään esimerkiksi kartta tai piirros tai jos niitä siteerataan, ne tulevat päätöksen tai asiakirjan osaksi liitetyiltä tai siteeratuilta osin ja kuuluvat säännöksen alaisuuteen. Säännös koskee vain viranomaisen tai julkisen elimen itsensä tekemiä asiakirjoja, ei sen sijaan esimerkiksi asian yhteydessä annettuja asiantuntijalausuntoja. Mutta jos viranomainen liittää päätökseensä tai lausumaansa yksityisen lausunnon tai siteeraa sitä, tulee se liitetyiltä tai siteeratuilta osin osaksi päätöstä tai lausumaa ja jää vaille tekijänoikeussuojaa. Jos tekijänoikeuslain 9 §:n mukaisessa asiakirjassa vain viitataan siitä erilliseen teokseen, teos jää säännöksen soveltamisalan ulkopuolelle." (komiteanmietintö 1992:4 s. 114, isbn: 951-47-4903-0)
• Google translate: Section 9 of the Copyright Act defines the works that are not copyrighted. Decisions and statements mean, according to the provisions of the law, such expressions of will and statements that the authority and other public bodies have given in written form. Oral statements are in principle subject to copyright protection. Section 9 of the Copyright Act applies to reports, proposals, reports of public bodies and the dissenting opinion of a member of the court. The following is stated about statements in the committee report: "A statement means something that is expressed through linguistic means. Consequently, maps, drawings and the like in themselves cannot fall within the scope of the provision. However, if a decision or statement is accompanied by, for example, a map or a drawing or if they are cited, they become part of the decision or document attached or quoted parts and fall under the scope of the provision. The provision only applies to documents made by the authority or public body itself, not instead, for example, expert opinions given in connection with the case. But if the authority attaches a private statement to its decision or pronouncement or quotes it, the attached or quoted parts become part decision or statement and is deprived of copyright protection. If a document in accordance with Section 9 of the Copyright Act only refers to a work separate from it, the work falls outside the scope of the provision (komiteanmietintö VII 1992:4 s. 114, isbn: 951-47-4903-0)

In TN 1995:5there is longer text than quoted so it is worth for reading. Source text referred from TN 1995:5 are Komiteanmietintö 1953:5 or 1957:5 and Tekijänoikeuskomitean VII 1992:4 which are background documents for law changes in 1961 and 1995 but I was not able to find them online. --Zache (talk) 11:12, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't know. Going by this quote, "Decisions and statements mean, according to the provisions of the law, such expressions of will and statements that the authority and other public bodies have given in written form", it sounds like for something to be covered by Section 9 it unambiguously has to have been created by "the authority and other public bodies." Nowhere in the text does it say anything that contradicts that either. Like it says "if a map or a drawing is cited in the decision then it is covered by the prevision", but that doesn't say if it covers maps or drawings created by people who aren't the "the authority and other public bodies." Although I'm aware that the document also says "if the authority attaches a private statement to its decision or pronouncement or quotes it, the attached or quoted parts become part decision or statement and is deprived of copyright protection."

The problem there is that stamps are neither "statements" or "pronouncements." The fact that they have two different clauses and sections for artistic works versus none artist works clearly shows they treat them differently and "statements or pronouncements" are deprived of copyright protection if they are attached to the decision but artist works clearly aren't. Otherwise they would have just said so. Or at least specified in the part about maps or drawings that it applied to works created by people that aren't "the authority and other public bodies." Either way I'm not really sure what grounds there is to think stamps are covered by the clause. Otherwise, it would probably help move this forward if said exactly why you think they are and how you think that's the case. It's not really super helpful to just cite a 25 line legal brief without saying exactly how or why you think it's relevant to the discussion though. That's the problem with you and LPfi's whole "mauhhh you didn't cite the law!!" nonsense. Anyone can steamroll a discussion by copying and pasting a 50 line legal document. It doesn't really move this whole thing forward though, and personally I'd like it to move forward. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:42, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I think that next steps should be to find:

• Komiteanmietintö 1953:5 or 1957:5 and Tekijänoikeuskomitean VII 1992 (to read what they wrote about the scope of 9 §)
• Find documentation on formal process on how Posti ja telelaitos decided the stamps (likely: Postisääntö soveltamismääräyksineen, Postiasetus, Laki posti ja telelaitoksesta or something. Requireses physical access to archive or library)
• some actual Decisions and statements related to stamps. (Posti and Telelaitos archives are in National archive of Finland)

--Zache (talk) 05:48, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Also, Afaik I have already explained with references that your intepretation on that 9 § would not cover artistic work if they are included in decisions and statements. Works defined in copyright law 1 § can be included and it is clearly said in copyright council answers per examples I gave before. The main point here is that we do not actually know about which kind of decisions or statements have been done related to stamps without actually going to archive and because that we do not know if they are covered by 9 § or not. If the decisions documents are relative similar to Finnish coins or coat of arms and there is sample images included to decisions and there is detailed written descriptions then most likely 9 § could be covered. If not then result is something else. -- Zache (talk) 06:03, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I think that next steps should be to...I mean, you can do that if you want to. Personally, I rather you and LPfi just admit that law for pre-1990 stamps is unclear and that's no consensus 404/1961 applies to them so we can get on with this. Otherwise it just seems like your trying to force the discussion to go on endlessly instead of having an outcome because you don't it. As to the rest of what you said, we both don't know which kind of decisions or statements have been done related to stamps or if they would be even be covered by 9 § or not regardless. There's nothing in anything you've cited that indicates they would be, there's also nothing that indicate they wouldn't be either. But mere fact that we don't know one or another and probably never will unless it goes to "court" is enough to say we should abide the precautionary principle and assume stamps are copyrighted. At least baring anything major changing about this any time soon, which I really don't see happening.

It's not like we can't just do un-deletion requests if or when that happens though. But to take a quote from Commons:Project scope/Precautionary principle that is an invalid argument, "Nobody knows who the copyright owner is, so it really doesn’t matter." That is essentially what you and LPfi are arguing. Except change the wording a little to "nobody knows what the copyright status is", but it's still the same fallacious argument and it's not going magically stop being by continuing to ignore the facts, miss-construe them, or by trying to speculatively draw non-existing parallels to Finnish coins or coat of arms. Either way, at least with how things currently stand the precautionary principle clearly wins out here. It was on you and LPfi to show stamps are copyright free though since your the ones who originally objected to the article being changed and you clearly haven't done that. So there's really isn't anything else to discuss about it at this point. Again, baring anything major coming along to change the equation, but there's zero reason to hold this whole thing up in the meantime just so you and LPfi can indefinitely stall things by talking in circles or whatever. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:28, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

There is disagreement on whether it is clear that the stamps are free. Of course you would be satisfied with our agreeing to your view. The point is that we want to establish they indeed are free, so that we avoid loosing a lot of valuable images. I might agree that this discussion isn't going to convince you, but there have been several valuable references provided. The way to get a definitive answer seems to be to visit an archive.

Please be careful with what you say; the law 404/1961 law is the law on copyright, if it doesn't cover stamps, then they are free.

We know that at least for a few years, there was a degree that told who was to decide on the design of stamps, and I assume there was a similar wording in the earlier versions of the decree. Thus there must be an official decision on the design on each of these stamps. We should get to see those decisions (or the instructions on how the decisions were to be made), to make sure the design indeed was included in them and not only referred to.

Our standard is not to require court decisions. I assume there are no court cases on the copyright status of Finnish laws, for example, and I hope you dont require there to be. And Commons:PRP is not to be interpreted by changing what it says, like you try to do. It is not the policy to use when the problem is absence of jurisprudence.

I do not like your hinting I am ignoring and misrepresenting facts. Accusing those that disagree on facts to misrepresent them is an unacceptable ad hominem. I have been doing my best, and I believe I am better versed in interpreting these documents than you are.

Also, your interpretation that anybody who wants to keep status quo is required to convince those who want to change it is simply ridiculous.

Please show evidence that the stamp designs weren't included in the decisions.

Somebody above said that the need for a long discussion in itself was evidence that there was uncertainty. Let me get this clear with less language:

1. There is no copyright in decisions of public bodies. This includes images & al. Until 2005 this included attachments in most cases.
2. A public body is tasked with deciding on the design of stamps (at least for a few years preceding 1990). Thus, for a work of art to become a stamp, the design must be approved in a decision by that public body.
3. Ergo: the design of any (pre-1990) stamp must have been included or at least referenced in such a decision.
4. Then we have three cases:
   • If the design was created for this use and included or attached to the decision, it became public domain.
   • If the design was based on an independent work, there are additional factors. I haven't done enough research to tell in what cases there might be a copyright, so it is probably best to include a warning.
   • If the designs were merely referenced in the decisions, then there may be a copyright. Likewise, we should include a warning.

If we agree on this, then we can give some real advice. By visiting the archive we should be able to find some decisions and get to know whether the first case (as I believe) or the third (as you believe) is the typical one. In the second and third case we need to do some additional research.

–LPfi (talk) 18:40, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Of course you would be satisfied with our agreeing to your view. Honestly, my view is that stamps aren't covered by the decisions or statements clause. That said, I'm willing to say that it just isn't clear if they are or not as a reasonable middle ground so we can find some sort of consensus on this. As that's better then endlessly talking in circles about if they are covered or not while Commons continues to host possibly copyrighted material. You obviously don't want to there to be a middle ground and aren't concerned with Commons hosting potentially copyrighted material while we discuss this ad nauseum. That's fine, but consensus and the guidelines clearly lean toward us airing on the side of caution when the copyright status of something is unclear. That's not to say we can't continue discussing it or whatever, but we shouldn't continue saying stamps are copyright free if there's any question about it. Let alone recommend people continue uploading images of stamps just because there's a discussion. I think my position is pretty reasonable, based on the facts, and addresses the points made by everyone here. So I don't really have anything to say about it. Nothing is going to dramatically change about this or anyone's opinions by repeatedly looping over the same talking points that we already disagree on for the 15th time.

I will say though that is 100% on the people who want to keep the status quo to prove why it should be kept that way since Aymatth2 said at the beginning of this that they just copied what's currently in the article from another one. It should really go without saying that the content of articles related to copyright should be based on something more grounded in legal precedent then just random sentences from other articles. Obviously we can't just insert random, nonsensical sentences into an article about copyright laws and then cry foul about the status quo when someone wants to edit the article to clarify things. That's how this works. In the meantime there's three people who think the article should be updated and two who don't. The two people don't magically get to maintain status quo just because they presented a bunch of fallacious arguments and talked in circles for multiple weeks. Either way, it's always on the minority to convince the majority of why their viewpoint should be the standard. Be my guest and research it more if you want though. I'm more then willing to change my opinion about it if or when you ever find something that drastically changes things. I don't think that means we should just maintain the status in perpetuity until then though. That would just be completely unreasonable. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:33, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Edit to article and subsequent revert

I edited the article to say "Unfortunately there is no exception for stamps Under 404/1961–2015. While the Finnish copyright law of 2005 specifies that no copyright exists in decisions or statements by an authority of Finland, the consensus is that stamps are neither one. Therefore their copyright status is unclear since the copyright law does not specifically mention stamps", which seems to be the facts based on the discussion about it. The edit was subsequently reverted by LPfi though. I'd like to know what exactly he disagrees with about what I wrote and we can revise the article from there. We don't just default to something being PD if there isn't a consensus about it's copyright status though. But I'm fine updating what I wrote if it doesn't reflect the current state of things. Or we can revise after the discussions gets resolved, which would be my preferred outcome. Instead of falsely giving people the impression that stamps are decisions when no one thinks that's the case by keeping the article as it was originally. Adamant1 (talk) 18:34, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

The discussion is ongoing and there is no consensus that I can see. Under such circumstances it is unusual to change the page. The current version doesn't say that stamps are decisions (which you claimed in the edit summary), it says they are parts of decisions. I did some other edits after reverting yours, but I see those as uncontroversial: changing the reference to "the 2005 law" (it was the 1961 one that got amended), adding a clearer note on Åland, removing the discussion on Itella (which few remember) etc. As you seem to think it is important to warn readers, I added a note on this discussion. That note should of course be removed when the discussion comes to a conclusion, and the text amended according to whatever consensus has been formed by then. –LPfi (talk) 19:03, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

There's clearly a consensus that the copyright status of pre-1990 stamps are unclear and that they aren't specifically mentioned in the copyright law. That's literally why we are having this discussion, because it's unclear what their copyright status is before 1990. You removed both of those things from the article when you reverted my edit even though no one disagree about it. So I'd appreciate it if you added those parts back and stop with the ownership. You don't own the article and while your edit is better then how it was written originally, it's still wrong.

Other then that, while you are you are technically correct that the current version doesn't say that stamps are decisions, what it does say is that "the Finnish copyright law specifies that no copyright exists in decisions", which it makes sound like the article is indorsing that stamps are decisions. Otherwise, it should clearly state how exactly the law relates to stamps. In other words, by saying "no copyright exists in decisions" it implies that's why stamps are copyright free. No thinks they are decisions though and it's still undecided if their inclusion in decisions matters. Let alone is there any evidence that they are included in decisions in the first place. If you want to edit the article to say that stamps might (and "might" is the key word here) be copyright free because they are possibly parts of decisions then be my guest. How it's currently worded is completely inaccurate and doesn't reflect the consensus though. Otherwise I can just change it again myself, but I rather not deal with just being reverted again or otherwise turn this into an edit war. Plus, you reverted and removed parts of how I wrote the article that were correct. So I think it's on you to restore the article to how I wrote it. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:03, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

The current version of the page says "Whether this can be assumed to cover pre-1990 stamps is being discussed on the talk page." I think that is very clearly saying that there may be problems with their copyright status, and as that sentence directly follows the one you complain about, I think there is no risk a careful reader misses the point. (Post-1990 stamps are handled in the next paragraph and nobody claims they are free.)

Yeah sure it says there's a discussion on the talk page. I don't see why it would be a problem to clearly state in the article why that discussion is going on and what the consensus (or the reason for there to be a lack of one) is though. What's the problem with saying why there is a discussion and what the current state of the discussion is? That's the point in the articles. Otherwise, it just seems like your trying to maintain the status quo by keeping the article as it was originally written while arguing with everyone who comes along so you can claim the article can't be changed "because there's an ongoing discussion" or whatever. Either way it's clear that we aren't going to agree about it and there's a point where the fact that there's no agreement should be reflected in the article. I'm fine waiting for a while to see if anyone else comments, but you can't just revert edits made to the article to reflect the lack of consensus or clarity about the law just because it's not the outcome you want. Especially if it's purely being done as a stalling tactic. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

from 1961 - 2005, it was very generally stated in the law that there is no copyright in laws and decrees, as well as in the decisions and statements of authorities or other public bodies, so there is no point in getting caught up in whether they mention something specific. For example, the law does not say that this covers matriculation exams, but it still falls under the law.[2] -- Zache (talk) 09:34, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Sure, everyone agrees that stamps aren't laws or decrees though. Obviously stamps are products of a law, but that's not what the copyright law is talking about when it says "laws and decrees" are copyright free. It's talking about the actual laws and decrees. So it does matter if they mention something specific or not if your going to try to argue stamps are laws or decrees. Using miss-leading weezle phrasing like saying the law says "in" when it doesn't or stating things like "was very generally stated in the law that there is no copyright in laws and decrees" don't help either since the opinion of Borenius & Kemppinen makes it clear that before the 2005 clarification, it was unclear whether or not those other works were copyright free or not. Hell it's not even clear that something added to a law or decree automatically becomes copyright free either. Like LPfi said above it depends on how it's being added. With stamps, we don't even know if individual stamp designs are being added to decisions. Let alone how they are being added to them. Citing an exception like matriculation exams doesn't help clarify things because a specific exception was made after the fact for matriculation exams. While there was none made for stamps. At least not that I'm aware of.

It would obviously be ridiculous to say that just because there's a special exception in the law made for matriculation that it then means whatever other random thing I want to be copyright free is though. That's not how the law works. Either something is copyright free because they have made an exception for it, or it's not because they haven't. Otherwise, your just twisting yourself in knots by miss-representing the law to force your opinion. We aren't here to do that. Either it's clear something is copyright free because the law says it is or we air on the side of caution and default to the Precautionary principle instead of doing our own extemporaneous interpretations of the law or assuming. Like Mr. Choppers has said, there's way to much extrapolation going on here and the whole thing on your side is rather contrived. The guidelines make it clear that in such cases we air on the side of caution and assume whatever we are talking about isn't copyright free. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

The reasons for making Finnish stamps PD seem rather contrived. I recommend erring on the side of caution, sadly. mr.choppers (talk)^-en- 19:33, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Moving forward

An attempt to summarize positions of the contributors to the above debate:

• User:Adamant1, User:Aymatth2 and User:Mr.choppers consider that Section 9(1) on decisions does not mean that postage stamps are free of copyright.
• User:Zache considers that inclusion of a stamp image in a decision would place that image in the pubic domain.
• User:LPfi considers that we may assume all stamps are included in a decision and are therefore free of copyright.

After the exhaustive discussion above, I do not see any of the participants changing their position. I propose that we change the section in stamps to read:

Stamps

. Finnish copyright law does not mention stamps. Unprotected works in Finland are limited to laws, decrees, statutes, decisions by pubic bodies and the like. However, a stamp will lose copyright protection 70 years after the death of the author, if known, or 70 years after publication if the author is anonymous.

If anyone can find a plausible document that says Finnish stamps are in the public domain, we can always change this text and ask for restoration of images that were deleted due to the change. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:18, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I may be leaning a bit more towards "we don't know whether they may be considered PD", but that would still have the same result. mr.choppers (talk)^-en- 19:49, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I second Mr.choppers opinion. As to the proposed changes to the article, I mostly indorse them. Although I think it would be worth specifically mentioning the lack of clarity about their status since that's what is usually done in similar circumstances. Like with Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory/Poland the article says "according to Article 4, case 2 of the Polish Copyright Law Act of February 4, 1994 "normative acts and drafts thereof as well as official documents, materials, signs and symbols are not subject to copyrights. Unfortunately it is unclear if Polish stamps and banknotes are considered official materials, signs or symbols." So something along those lines would be good here. Although, your wording is fine to I guess. Whatever. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:58, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I will clarify my position: copyright law 9 § (before 2005) means that there is no copyright in laws and decrees, as well as in the decisions and statements of an authority or other public body. Suppose public authority attaches or quotes a work defined by copyright law 1 § to its decision. In that case, the attached or quoted parts become part decision or statement and work is deprived of copyright protection. For example, "Posti ja telelaitoksen kiertokirje 1984/76" is fully covered by 9 §, including the black and white images of the stamps. For example the Kiertokirje 1984/76 could be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. I think that the law itself is rather clear on this. However, this covers only the kiertokirje itself and black-and-white images on it. If we want to claim that it is ok to scan colored stamps from postcards based on 9 §, we should have hard proofs that there are decisions, etc., which contain the colored version of stamps. Currently, we do not have these and it would require actual visit to archive to know what there is. -- Zache (talk) 20:41, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

or 70 years after publication if the author is anonymous is redundant in case of finnish stamps as AFAIK author information for all stamps can be found from postimerkkiselain. More relevant text could be to define that author information should be always added. Edit: there is least some 1800s stamps without author in postimerkkiselain. -- Zache (talk) 21:08, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Revised wording to reflect the above comments:

Stamps

. Finnish copyright law does not mention stamps. See #Not protected (above): unprotected works in Finland are limited to documents such as laws, decrees, statutes and decisions by pubic bodies. However, if an image of a stamp is included in a document of this type, that image will be free of copyright. If the image is low resolution black and white, only this low resolution black and white version is free. A stamp will lose copyright protection 70 years after the death of the author, if known, or 70 years after publication if the author is anonymous. Information on the author of a stamp will often be available at Postimuseo Postimerkkiselain, and should be included in the stamp description where available.

Comments? Aymatth2 (talk) 21:39, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I have no problem with that. If people want to upload the actual documents containing images of the stamps cool. I would assume low resolution black and white images of the stamps would still be covered by copyright if they are cut out of the documents and uploaded separately without the original document as context though. Least because we need evidence that it came from the document in the first place, but also because the law clearly states "no copyright exists in decisions or statements" and that the work is copyright free if it's "included" in the document. To quote from the law "the attachment must also be considered part of the document and thus be deprived of copyright protection." It's not "part of the document" or "in" the document if it's just a cropped image of the stamp. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:12, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I see some problems in the above suggestions. I think we should be cautious both ways. 1) Having the "copyrighted" symbol is clearly taking a position as if we new they were copyrighted. 2) The "unprotected works in Finland are limited to" phrase is daring: how does one know there aren't any other classes of unprotected works? It is also unnecessary: we should as much as possible limit our statements to what is relevant for the context. 3) Also the statement on low resolution images is problematic, cf the discussion on how CC-licences on low-resolution versions might affect the copyright on originals. 4) For the section 9, I think laws are irrelevant, but statements are not. What about:

Stamps issued before 1990.

Finnish copyright law does not have any specific wording on stamps. However, before 1990 stamps were issued by a public body. Decisions and statements by pubic bodies are unprotected by copyright (in addition to laws etc, see #Not protected above). If an image of a stamp was included in a document of this type, that image will be free of copyright. If the stamp has features above the threshold of copyright that are not specified in the document (such as probably if only a low-resolution black-and-white image is included), only the included work may be unprotected. A copyrighted stamp will lose copyright protection 70 years after the death of the author, if known, or 70 years after publication if the author is anonymous. Information on the author of a stamp will often be available at Postimuseo's Postimerkkiselain, and should be included in the stamp description where available.

For the low-resolution-black-and-white issue, I would like to compare the decisions on stamps with those on CoAs. For coinage, the images included in the statute book were not that impressive quality. However, I am not visiting any archives in the near future, and I think this writing is defensive enough.

–LPfi (talk) 10:12, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Yep, the resolution is irrelevant. If the image is pd under 9 §, it is trivial to vectorise it or AI retouch it to be high resolution. -- Zache (talk) 10:35, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

According to the copyright law the types of work defined in section 9 are the only ones that are unprotected. The proposed provision clarifying section 9 to show that independent works included in a decision or statement would remain protected made it into the current law. See [3]

Mitä 1 momentissa säädetään, ei koske itsenäisiä teoksia, jotka sisältyvät momentissa tarkoitettuihin asiakirjoihin.

The provisions of paragraph 1 shall not apply to independent works contained in the documents referred to in the article.

We can, I suppose, stretch our interpretation of this to say that if a stamp is the subject of a document then the stamp is not an "independent work", so is not protected. "Public domain" means that anyone may freely use the document for any purpose, and that includes extracting the image. If we can verify that an image is taken from a public domain document, we may publish the extracted image. We should not publish a version of this image that has been further modified, although Wikimedia users may of course modify these images. I see nothing in the law distinguishing stamps issued before or after 1990. Posti is 100% government-owned, and therefore counts as a "public institution". Revised version below:

Stamps

. Finnish copyright law does not mention stamps. See #Not protected (above): unprotected works in Finland are limited to documents such as laws, decrees, statutes and decisions by public bodies. However, if an image of a stamp is included in a document of this type and the stamp is the subject of the document (not an independent work), that image will be free of copyright. If the image is low resolution black and white, only this low resolution black and white version should be uploaded to Commons. A stamp will lose copyright protection 70 years after the death of the author, if known, or 70 years after publication if the author is anonymous. Information on the author of a stamp will often be available at Postimuseo Postimerkkiselain, and should be included in the stamp description where available.

Aymatth2 (talk) 14:57, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

No. The copyright law's section 9 says that there is no copyright in the works mentioned. It does not say that there are no other unprotected works, and presenting it in this way is unnecessary and distracting. My version works as an introduction to the circumstances where stamps may be unprotected, which I find much more relevant.

A reading of the complete law shows no other types of work that are inherently free of copyright, other than works whose protection has expired. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:28, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

No it doesn't, but that's already one category, and one cannot rule out that there are other laws on the matter. Anyway, the statement is unnecessary, as works should be assumed to be copyrighted unless there is evidence to the contrary. –LPfi (talk) 17:14, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Unprotected works are listed in Section 9. These are works that are never protected. Works whose copyright has expired are no longer protected, but not "unprotected" in a legal sense. The Finnish copyright law (404/1961 with amendments) is the only law that defines copyright rules for Finland. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:14, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

One group is that the stamp done solely by public bodies as part of their official duties could be fully covered by 9 § and there is no separate work which would be protected by copyright law 1 § as result. (note: the stamps are protected with anti-counterfeit legislation so this is one reason why copyright has not been relevant question with these as the reproduction of the stamps is regulated anyway ) However, this is again something which requires going to the archive to check this. -- Zache (talk) 10:21, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

The amendment of 2005 is not relevant to stamps from before 1990 (I don't think there were any retroactive copyrights), but if you agree on the "stretched" interpretation, then we need not argue that point, and until we know what the decisions are like I don't want to argue whether stamps generally have features above the threshold of copyright not included in such an image.

The amendment of 2005 clarified the status of independent works included in unprotected documents, which was previously ambiguous. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:28, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Not for works from the 1980s, as it had no retroactive effect (or do you think it had?). The related PMs do have some relevant discussion, but so do earlier documents, which should be regarded more relevant, as they are about the actual law of the time. –LPfi (talk) 17:14, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

However, I don't want to establish policy that extends beyond copyright law. If the stamp consist of (say) a red cross (and value markings etc.), then the choice of hue hardly is original enough to create a copyright (in fact, the designer should in such cases keep to non-original choices). Actual cases are more complicated, but let's leave such interpretation to uploaders and DRs.

A stamp that does not meet the threshold of originality may not be protected. I doubt that there are many of these. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:28, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

There are e.g. stamps that depict the Finnish coat of arms. I am sure the colour was specified (at least in general terms) in the decision; there is very little freedom to do original choices in such cases. I assume most cases where the colour choices reach work height are about landscapes, people or animals; graphic subjects often have a more-or-less given single colour. –LPfi (talk) 17:14, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

It seems that until 1963, the stamps did not include any colour blending, so a greyscale (read: pixelated black-and-white) image would specify them quite well. Depending on the wording of the decision, there may not have been many choices left in the later colourisation. Advanced colour use seems to have become common only in the 1970s. –LPfi (talk) 17:58, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

The current Posti Group is a government-owned company. Posti ja telelaitos was a governmental agency. I assume the new law of 1989 was the relevant dividing line, which made stamp designs and the decisions on them company-internal issues. At one time the company even allowed customers to design their own stamps. If you want to argue that later stamps are PD, that's fine, but then we need some evidence that their designs were a matter of public decisions or statements.

We need evidence that a stamp was part of a document published by a public body, not just an internal document, and that it was the subject of that document. "Public body" would include government departments, agencies, government-owned companies and so on. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:28, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

From where do you get the notion that government-owned companies are seen as authorities in the sense of the section 9? On the other hand, if a decree states that a decision has to be made, then that decision cannot be an "internal document". –LPfi (talk) 17:14, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

The UK gives a typical definition:[4] A public body is “a formally established organisation that is (at least in part) publicly funded to deliver a public or government service, though not as a ministerial department”. In fact, some public bodies are funded from user fees and charges and do not receive any direct public money. Public bodies generally operate with some independence from central government. For instance, many have their own boards and CEOs, and some are expected to scrutinise and critique government when appropriate. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:14, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

In Finland it was in TN 1995:5 According to section 2, subsection 3 of the Act on the Publicity of Public Documents, authority means the authorities of the state, municipality and ecclesiastical and other self-governing communities, including public law meetings, representative councils, committees, boards, commissions and committees with their officials and officials. In the legal literature, the provision has been interpreted broadly so that it means all such bodies whose personnel work under criminal official responsibility (virkavastuu = liability while in office), (I copypasted original+google translate above). since the employees of state-owned companies are not authorities and do not act with official responsibility, then state-owned companies are not authorities or comparable public bodies. Tietopyytajan-opas also explains what the publicity act of Finland covers and has examples of what is a public body and what is not. In this list, state-owned companies are examples of things that are not public bodies. (list is under the subtitle: "Viranomaisen ulkopuolisia tahoja") --Zache (talk) 03:39, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

@Aymatth2 There should be mention that Posti stopped to be a public authority at 1990 when it was privatised. (ie. it is end year for using 9 § rationale) ) --Zache (talk) 05:28, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

So them if I'm understanding things correctly the postal authority of Finland wouldn't be a public body and therefore statements they have released related to the issuing of stamps like the one you sited a couple of times wouldn't be copyright free since it's not a "statement or decision by a public body" then. Is that correct or am I miss-understanding something? --Adamant1 (talk) 04:52, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Finland's post and telecommunications services were privatized in 1990. Before 1990, the post was a public authority, and after privatization it became a state-owned company operating under market conditions. Zache (talk) 05:14, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm aware. But the document you provided references to was signed by the CEO of the postal service and the last time I checked government bodies don't have CEOs. So either it was still considered a company before 1990 or you repeatedly referenced a document that has nothing to do with this since it was about stamps issued after 1990. Take your pick as to which one it is, but neither of those options at all helps your side of the discussion. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:41, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Pääjohtaja = Executive director. -- Zache (talk) 05:45, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

CEO means "chief executive officer." So I'm not what you think that shows except that his title is as an executive, which is exactly what I said. Either way though, do think government bodies usually have executives or is that more of tittle for people who are in charge of companies? --Adamant1 (talk) 05:50, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Organizations in general have directors. For example this is how you can use word "Pääjohtaja" . in Finnish and same in English. ) -- Zache (talk) 05:56, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Sure organizations in general have directors. I asked you specifically about government bodies though. So why not just answer the question instead of just citing random documents that have nothing to do with what I asked you? --Adamant1 (talk) 06:02, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Pääjohtaja is a normal title for the head of an organization in Finland, and it can be used for both public administration directors and business directors. The literal translation is the pää=head AND johtaja=director. -- Zache (talk) 06:16, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, but that doesn't really answer the question though. It just reiterates what you've already said without answering how it relates to government bodies. That said, I this whole thing is extremely tangential to the broader discussion anyway. It would be great if we could just move on and have this come to some kind of conclusion instead of us endlessly debating biennial, meaningless side points. Personally, I think the last suggestion by Aymatth2 about how to re-write the article is fine. Any constructive feedback about it or are you good with the proposed wording? --Adamant1 (talk) 06:45, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

We are trying to explain the things that seem to confuse you. Can we agree to discuss only the situation before 1990? If you want to discuss the later stamps, that's fine, but please leave that until this discussion has concluded. There was a new law and we don't see any reason to believe they are PD. –LPfi (talk) 08:03, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, but I am little bit lost what you are trying to get. But lets be clear: Posti- ja lennätinlaitos and, after the name change, the Posti- ja telelaitos was the agency under the Ministry of Transport that carried out postal and telecommunications activities. Agency operated between 1927 and 1990. The title of the head of the agency was the Pääjohtaja and it was defined in formal decree. Example: Asetus Posti- ja telelaitoksesta 5 § (928/1989) -- Zache (talk) 08:07, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

All I'm trying to get is us to agree on how the article should be worded. So again, do you have any feedback about the wording proposed by Aymatth2 or are you good with how they want to edit the article? It's a pretty simple question, either you have feedback or don't. There really shouldn't be this much teeth pulling just to get an answer. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:16, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

My feedback on that is in connection with my suggestion higher up in the thread. Of my four objections only one was addressed. Please discuss why you don't agree on the other ones (yes, you commented the claim that there are no other unprotected works, but you did not tell why this was a point worth mentioning). –LPfi (talk) 08:26, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I already know what your opinion is. The question was directed at Zache. I'd appreciate it if they answered it. Thanks though. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:32, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

So you think it is OK to ignore my concerns without comment. I think a valid consensus requires that good-faith significant concerns are addressed. –LPfi (talk) 08:51, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

No. I plan to address them eventually. I just don't have time to right now. It's not like Zache can't answer my question in the meantime though. So maybe stop playing defense and let them answer it. Thanks. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:02, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

It just doesn't make sense to formulate a proposal without taking stated objections into account – if you are striving to reach a consensus, not just trying to force your opinion. You could as well have asked for opinions on your earlier proposal, which was identical, save for your now adding "and the stamp is the subject of the document". –LPfi (talk) 11:14, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

It just doesn't make sense to formulate a proposal without taking stated objections into account That's a pretty ridiculous statement considering Aymatth2 has revised the wording of his proposed edit like 5 times now based on comments that you have and Zache made. But sure, your objections aren't being taken into account because I asked Zache a question instead of responded to something you said the second you wrote it. Whatever you say dude. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:37, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Also the Bank of Finland has a pääjohtaja. Few would claim it isn't a public body. –LPfi (talk) 08:19, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I support the last version of the wording by Aymatth2. The other (IMO extremely minor) details about government bodies can always be ironed later if need be. I don't think it's a big enough issue to hold this up over though. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:38, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Ok, this is my take on this

Stamps issued before 1990
Prior to 1990, stamps were issued by a public body, and as such, decisions and statements made by the public body are not protected by copyright #Not protected (above). If an image of a stamp was included in a document of this type, the image would be free of copyright as part of the document, document can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and image can be cropped from this document. However, it is uncertain how this affects the copyright of the stamps depicted in other places, and there is currently not enough information for evaluating this. Precautionary principle is that the stamp remains copyrighted unless proven otherwise, and a copyrighted stamp will lose copyright protection 70 years after the author's death or 70 years after publication if the author is anonymous. Information on the author of a stamp will often be available at Postimuseo's Postimerkkiselain, and should be included in the stamp description where available.
Stamps issued after 1990
Postal servervices of Finland were privatized in 1990 and it was not public body anymore. In 2005 copyright law also changed so that 9 § did not apply to independent works contained in the documents anymore.

--Zache (talk) 09:55, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

• @Zache: : You are confusing public authority and public body. A public authority is one whose employees report directly to the government, while a public body is one whose employees work under the legal responsibility of the government, which includes state-owned corporations such as Posti. Posti has not been privatized. A public statement by Posti is a statement made on behalf of the government, and has the same legal status as a statement by a government department. I do not see what LAUSUNTO 1995:5 has to do with this discussion. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:25, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  In TN 1995:5 Copyright council has explained copyright law 9 § and its scope in more detail than most of their answers. Including history and terms like 9 §, what teos=work, lausuma=statement, päätös=decision, viranomainen = authority, julkisen elimen = public body means in context of copyright law 9 §. In any case, Posti after privatisation has not been considered as authority or public body in context of Finnish law. --Zache (talk) 13:38, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  Posti ha not been privatized. It is owned 50.1% directly by the government and 49.9% by the State Business Development Company Vake Oy, which is owned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The government is fully responsible for actions and publications by Posti. It is a public body. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:01, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, you are correct. Privatized is incorrect term. Is corporatized correct term for incorpartion to joint-stock company? (btw. Posti is not any more owned by Vake, it is currently 100% directly owned by state after Vake was axed down.) However, term doesn't change that the in legal context where Posti employees aren't any more civil servants and the company is not under legislation which covers public authorities or public bodies. -- Zache (talk) 14:17, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Moving forward (break)

As a state-owned enterprise, Posti is not an authority but is a classic example of a public body. Section 9 applies to Posti. I am generally o.k. with this version otherwise. Suggest the following:

Stamps
Stamps are issued by a public body whose decisions and statements are not protected by copyright. See #Not protected (above). If an image of a stamp was included in a document of this type and the stamp is not an independent work, the image would be free of copyright as part of the document, the document can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and the image can be cropped from this document. However, it is uncertain how this affects the copyright of stamps depicted in other places, and there is currently not enough information for evaluating this. The precautionary principle is that the stamp remains copyrighted unless proven otherwise, and a copyrighted stamp will lose copyright protection 70 years after the author's death or 70 years after publication if the author is anonymous. Information on the author of a stamp will often be available at Postimuseo's Postimerkkiselain, and should be included in the stamp description where available.

Aymatth2 (talk) 15:01, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

and the stamp is not an independent work, ... point of whole thing is that before 2005 law change there were no such requirement. I have pointed this out it here with examples. If the work was included then it was not protected by copyright. About if the Finnish post after corporatizion is public body or not in copyright law context is not our opinion question as public bodies covered in Finnish law is rather well covered in Finnish legal discussion. So we can refer to external sources (as I did) --Zache (talk) 15:25, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Comments

1. The 1 January 2006 change to the copyright law does not have retroactive effect, but is in effect going forward. This is a typical transitional rule. See [5] 73 § and scroll to 14.10.2005/821: "The regulations that were in force when the law entered into force apply to actions taken before the entry into force of this law, rights acquired and contracts concluded." That is, copies of an unprotected document that contains protected work do not violate the law if made before 2006, but copies made after then do. We cannot copy the original document or a copy of it. If we had any copies loaded into Commons before 2005 we could keep them, but nobody could legally copy them, which makes them useless for our purposes.
2. I have dug around a bit on the subject of public bodies in Finland, but have not found a good definition. The section #Definition of public body in Finland refers to section 2, subsection 3 of the Act on the Publicity of Public Documents, which defines an authority but not a public body. The meaning of "public body" does vary from country to country, but it seems unlikely that an administrative reorganization from an agency to a state-owned enterprise would affect application of copyright laws. This seems to be an open question. When in doubt, leave it out...
3. Based on this, yet another draft...

Stamps issued before 1990
Stamps are issued by a public body whose decisions and statements are not protected by copyright. See #Not protected (above). If an image of a stamp was included in a document of this type and the stamp is not an independent work, the image would be free of copyright as part of the document, the document can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and the image can be cropped from this document. However, it is uncertain how this affects the copyright of stamps depicted in other places, and there is currently not enough information for evaluating this. The precautionary principle is that the stamp remains copyrighted unless proven otherwise, and a copyrighted stamp will lose copyright protection 70 years after the author's death or 70 years after publication if the author is anonymous. Information on the author of a stamp will often be available at Postimuseo's Postimerkkiselain, and should be included in the stamp description where available.
Stamps issued from 1990
Posts and Telecommunications of Finland became a state-owned enterprise known as Posti-Tele in 1990. It is not clear whether this entity and its successors retained the status of public bodies. The precautionary principle is that we assume it did not, and any new stamps issued from 1990 onward remain copyrighted.

Aymatth2 (talk) 21:55, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

About the #1, it is actually very good argument on how it could effect to existing works. I need to think it through before I know if you are correct or not. About #2, public bodies are defined in Publicity act 4 § mom 2: In addition to authorities, law applies to communities, institutions, foundations, and private individuals who exercise public authority based on a provision or order issued under a law or regulation when they are using public power.. Anyway i droppedd some quotes more here as refs --Zache (talk) 04:58, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

You often see transitional clauses like #1 in revisions that extend the duration of copyright, e.g. from 50 to 70 years after death. A work that was no longer protected is now protected again. Copying when it was not protected is not retroactively illegal, but new copies are not allowed. On #2, perhaps Julkisuuslain soveltamisalan laajentaminen 2019:31 VI.8 is relevant. I think it would depend on the act that created Posti-Tele, which may have said that decisions and statements should be treated as if they were issued by the owner. I would expect something like that, because otherwise there would be all sorts of questions about things that Post & Telecom as an authority could do but Posti-Tele could no longer do. I have made some cosmetic tweaks to the wording in the draft below.

Stamps issued before 1990
Before 1990 stamps were issued by a public body whose decisions and statements are not protected by copyright. See #Not protected (above). If an image of a stamp was included in a public body's decision or statement and the stamp is not an independent work, the image would be free of copyright as part of the document, the document can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and the image can be cropped from this document.
It is uncertain how the above affects the copyright of stamps depicted in other places. The precautionary principle is that we assume a stamp is copyrighted unless proven otherwise. A copyrighted stamp will lose copyright protection 70 years after the author's death or 70 years after publication if the author is anonymous. Information on the author of a stamp will often be available at Postimuseo's Postimerkkiselain, and should be included in the stamp description where available.
Stamps issued from 1990
Posts and Telecommunications of Finland became a state-owned enterprise known as Posti-Tele in 1990. It is not clear whether this entity and its successors retained the status of public bodies. The precautionary principle is that we assume it did not, and any new stamps issued from 1990 onward remain copyrighted.

Aymatth2 (talk) 13:54, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Since there were no further comments, I have gone ahead and implemented the last draft. I will update {{PD-FinlandStamp}} to reflect the change. Interested editions may review existing stamp images to see if they should be retained or deleted. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:21, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. Also just to document things. Based on information what have gathered my guess is a.) only way to know what is the copyright status of stamps released before 1990 after 2005 copyright law change is to ask it from copyright council. (except stamps which are free by age) b.) About the second thing, AFAIK, Posti is not a public body because it operates as a state-owned company under private law. Posti is subject to the same laws and regulations that apply to all companies in Finland, including the Limited Liability Companies Act and other relevant legislation. It is managed by a board of directors and executive management team, and its operations are guided by commercial considerations and the need to generate profits for its shareholders. This means that it is not governed by public law and does not have the same status or responsibilities as a public body. --Zache (talk) 16:18, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

I have tried to keep my hands off this since I was told by Adamant1 that my opinions aren't wanted (and I have been busy AFK anyway), and I have appreciated your newer drafts. I agree with Zache on Posti Group Abp: Ownership doesn't affect a company's legal status. It does have some special liabilities through the law on postal service, and those may give some of its actions or employees a special status. Beside a wording change on this, one thing I would like to include is that the decree tasked the body with deciding on the design of stamps. To my understanding that gave such decisions an official status, whoever made them (signed them off).

So (I also changed an "is" to "was"):

Stamps issued before 1990
Before 1990 stamps were issued by a public body whose decisions and statements are not protected by copyright. See #Not protected (above). This public body was tasked with deciding the design of stamps. If an image of a stamp was included in a public body's decision or statement and the stamp was not an independent work, the image would be free of copyright as part of the document, the document can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and the image can be cropped from this document.
It is uncertain how the above affects the copyright of stamps depicted in other places. The precautionary principle is that we assume a stamp is copyrighted unless proven otherwise. A copyrighted stamp will lose copyright protection 70 years after the author's death or 70 years after publication if the author is anonymous. Information on the author of a stamp will often be available at Postimuseo's Postimerkkiselain, and should be included in the stamp description where available.
Stamps issued from 1990
Posts and Telecommunications of Finland became a state-owned enterprise known as Posti-Tele in 1990. While this new entity and its successors retained some public liabilities, the company should in any other context be seen as a normal private one. Based on the precautionary principle we assume that any new stamps issued from 1990 onward remain copyrighted.

LPfi (talk) 08:30, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I have tried to keep my hands off this since I was told by Adamant1 that my opinions aren't wanted Jesus Christ, your bad faithed. Where exactly did I say anything even remotely along those lines? Also, I reject the wording of your draft edit saying "This public body was tasked with deciding the design of stamps" since there's zero evidence the public body was tasked with deciding the design of pre-1990 stamps. Let alone the degree to which they were involved in designing them or even how it affected the copyright status. Conversely I think Aymatth2's change to the article stating "If an image of a stamp was included in a public body's decision or statement and the stamp is not an independent work, the image would be free of copyright as part of the document" is perfectly reasonable in the interim. Saying The public body was tasked with deciding the design of stamps is just needless speculation that adds nothing to the paragraph. The more concise and less speculative it can be the better. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:34, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

OK, I might have overreacted. Sorry for that, but I really got offended by your comment(s) on 9 March.

You say there is zero evidence. Why do you dismiss Förordning om ändring av förordningen om post- och televerket (1086/1987) (and whatever the wording of the cited bullet in the original decree was)? (Search for the decree name above for our related discussion; here I include an anchor to the relevant paragraph, which I didn't in the URL above). This "needless speculation" gives guidance on how to find the decisions in which the stamp designs may have been (I would say "most probably were") decided on. Without it, the mention on possible existence of such decisions, in turn, sounds as needless speculation. You did not believe those decisions exist (perhaps you just didn't find a translation?), but this is indeed evidence that a public body was tasked with those decisions:

"Post- och telestyrelsen har till uppgift att leda post- och televerket och att i detta syfte: [...] 3) bestämma om utgivande, utformning och emitterande av frimärken."

"Post- och telestyrelsen shall lead post- och televerket, including [...] 3) deciding on the publishing, on the design and on the emission of stamps."

(My translation and my bolding; I didn't notice before what body got the task, I thought it was the company but it was this governing body.)

–LPfi (talk) 16:07, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

No worries. I've probably done that myself a couple of times in this discussion. I apologize if I said anything that lead you to think your opinions aren't wanted. I just don't want the discussion to be derailed with minor side points, but that goes for anyone. Not just you. Anyway, I guess what this comes down to is that the document says "deciding on the publishing, on the design and on the emission of stamps." Which to me is completely meaningless because deciding on the design could be anything from choosing the colors, shape, Etc. of the stamps or simply saying "yes we approve of the stamps design." Probably it's the later and that's already a given in the wording of the article says "If an image of a stamp was included in a public body's decision or statement and the stamp is not an independent work." There's be zero reason that the stamp would be included in a public body's decision if the public body didn't decide something in relation to the stamp. So it's pointless to restate it. Otherwise, especially given that we have zero idea how much involvement in the design they have. Also, if it only applies to post 1987 stamps it doesn't really help us anyway. Otherwise, I'd be interested to what difference it makes if that exact wording is included in the article or not. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:14, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

You are right that exactly what "utformning" means is unclear, but I think the interpretation closest at hand would be that they would decide on the design itself, probably by first giving some general guidance ("the 75-year anniversary should be celebrated by a stamp series") and then signing off the final designs as attached to the decision. Yes, that is covered by "if an image of a stamp [...]", but the additional wording tells were to search for those decisions, which is the point of the addition. A stamp could be included in any other statement, but it sounds kind of ridiculous to point out that far-fetched possibility (the bulletins cited by Zache are real, of course). For 1988–1999: we know the wording for those years, but we also know there was a corresponding bullet in the original decree. As there has been deregulation going on, I assume the original bullet was more specific. Seems I have to visit a legal deposit library one of these weeks to take a copy of the original decree. –LPfi (talk) 07:20, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

the bulletins cited by Zache are real, of course) Obviously, I never said they weren't. But according to the article "If an image of a stamp was included in a public body's decision or statement blah blah blah" and I don't personally think that covers press releases by employees of the postal service. Since employees aren't "public bodies." If you want some supporting evidence of that, documents like Statement 2001:3 make it clear that the statement is directly from the Copyright Cancel. There it would be free of copyright per the law. No where does the law insinuate that every random piece of half scribbled piece of paper released by a government employee is a "statement or decision by a public body" either. Does that mean I think I think the bulletin Zache cited doesn't exist? No of course not and I'd appreciate it if you didn't miss-construe my position by like acting like I did. How exactly that's relevant is that it's highly likely the CEO of the Finish postal service or someone from one of their departments did most of the decision making of how to design that particular stamp. Which makes sense since their the ones who created the press release. If that's the case, then the involvement of the government body that wrote the original decree would be either extremely minimal or essentially non-exiting. Either way, a press release by the CEO of the Finish postal service isn't a "statement or decision by a public body" regardless. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:24, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Copyright status of stamps (cont.3)

• Comment Just FYI, I notified on Finnish Wikipedia community portal (copyright) that there is discussion on commons about changing the guidance of finnish stamps. --Zache (talk) 09:23, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Forum shopping at this is point is rather bad faithed considering how far into the discussion we are and the fact that we've mostly agreed on how the article should be edited. We don't really need outside opinions about the copyright status of stamps at this point. Mostly we just need to agree on how exactly to word the article and I don't see that happening by bringing in people from Wikipedia who weren't involved and haven't read through the rest of the discussion. So why not just do your part to move this forward instead of trying to derail it or postpone a resolution by bringing in more people from outside of Commons. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:28, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

I would say that you have rather fast process on this for making global community affecting decisions with rather low number of people who are commenting. --Zache (talk) 04:19, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Weird claim considering I wasn't the one who started this section or came up with the proposed wording for article. Anyway, calling this a "global community affecting decision" is just dishonest since Commons and Wikipedia are different projects and have their own separate guidelines. Not to mention this has absolutely zero effect on Wikipedia what-so-ever since people can still upload images of stamps to Wikipedia if they want to no matter what the article says or how we deal with Finnish stamps. But sure dude, whatever helps you feel better about the badfaithed tactics. It's not like I expected you or LPfi to actually agree on any kind of compromise anyway. Both of you are obviously only participating in this just to try and derail things so the article isn't updated. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:45, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I believe we are one community and we should use the legal expertise that may be found on fi-wp. There may also be people there ready to visit the archive to get this sorted out. The invitation was neutral in wording and the page not far-fetched. Please assume good faith.

Wikipedias will be affected: even those that accept fair use (and sv-wp, which is directly affected does not), will lose the image depository where they can find the images and the ability e.g. to illustrate the Paimio sanatorium with the stamp depicting it, as the article doesn't discuss the stamp.

–LPfi (talk) 08:12, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I believe we are one community To a degree. But at the same time it doesn't make forum shopping at the last minute somewhere that is clearly going to be biased toward a certain perspective the correct action just "one community" or whatever. I probably wouldn't have had problem with him alerting Wikipedia about the start of the discussion though, but at this point it just seems like derailing. Especially since he did it right after I said I approved of how Aymatth2 wanted to edit the article and made the comment to you that two people don't magically get to maintain the status quo of over the wishes of three other users to change the article. It's pretty hard for me to assume good faith about it when this discussion has been open for 7 days and he just now left the message on Wikipedia when it was clear the article was probably going to be changed in a way you both seem to disagree with though.

Wikipedias will be affected: even those that accept fair use If efforts aren't made to upload the effected stamps to Wikipedia then they will be. That's not our problem though. You can't use a file being used on Wikipedia as excuse to host potentially copyrighted material on Commons, obviously. So there's no really excuse to drag out or derail the discussion just because of the impact it might have on Wikipedia. More so if your doing it purely based on the fact that the articles where the stamps are being used don't discuss the stamps. Just edit the articles so that's not the case. Someone's unwillingness to add information to an article so an image won't be deleted from Wikipedia isn't our problem though. To the degree that there's any light between Commons and Wikipedia it's purely a curtesy, not an obligation. Commons isn't obligated to do things based on the preferences of Wikipedia users and Wikipedia users aren't intitled to make us do things in specific ways that they want us to. At least that's how I understand the relationship, if you could even call it that. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:20, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

You try to tone down the effects, I am saying that deleting all reasonably new Finnish stamps from Commons is a big thing. It should not be made because there is a 3–2 majority. Instead we need to reach an informed decision. I don't think the disagreement essentially is on points that are legally uncertain, but based on guesses about the facts. Are there such decisions? The decree says there must be, you doubt there are. Are the stamps include in those decisions? I find it very probable, you assume not, based on common procedures abroad. Etc. If we delete the stamps as a precautional measure, it needs to be easily reverted if it turns out I am right.

I regard the legal risk of having these stamps online a few more weeks or months as small – they have been for a long time with nobody protesting and they are available at the postal museum – while the damage of premature deletion is big. We cannot, of course, keep them in the long run if they are indeed covered by copyright, but rushing the decision is not the way to go. Getting additional voices from fi-wp would be a way to get a firmer base for the decision. I'd hope also legally versed people from the larger Commons community would weight in.

If we decide to delete the stamps without having legal certainty, the least thing to do is to have them in a suitable category (...Finnish stamps/deleted) and their current usage documented.

–LPfi (talk) 11:31, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

It should not be made because there is a 3–2 majority. Instead we need to reach an informed decision. The discussion has taken place over a week, everyone has given their opinions multiple times, and most or all of everything said has been based on documents by the Finnish government. So this seems like a pretty informed decision to me. I think we've all gone way above and beyond the norm for these types of discussions in how much we've discussed it and used evidence to support our arguments. Otherwise what else would there need to be at this point?

I find it very probable, you assume not, based on common procedures abroad. Etc. No, I assume not because there's no evidence that such decisions exist. Although I'm willing to pretend that they do for the sake of brevity though and say that I'm fine with people uploading images of decisions that include stamps so we can move this thing forward. I'm just willing to go as far as agree saying we should allow for images of stamps regardless of if they are attached to the decisions or not. Since the law makes clear only decisions and their contents are free of copyright. Your really taking issue with something that's a moot point though since I agreed to how Aymatth2 wants to word the article anyway.

Getting additional voices from fi-wp would be a way to get a firmer base for the decision. In my experience anytime someone alerts a forum on Wikipedia to a discussion it just gets bridged by a bunch of people with a specific agenda who don't know or care about the facts. Either way, I think the cases all of us have made for our opinions are pretty firm as it is. There's really only a few choices here about how to word the article, and outside opinions aren't going to change that. The only thing it does is needlessly postpone us agreeing on things because we would then take into the opinions of people who are completely ignorant of the law and just want Commons to host images of Finish stamps "because muh Wikipedia!" or some nonsense.

The least thing to do is to have them in a suitable category...and their current usage documented. Usually what I'll do when I nominate stamps for deletion is document who the artist was in the DR and then make sure they have a Wikidata entry before I do the deletion request. That way we reference both later if need be. I'll probably do the same thing in this case depending on how it ends up. I doubt there will be a rush to delete stamps of Finland the second the article is changed though. It's taken like 11 years for German stamps to be deleted due to the law suit and changes in copyright law due to the URAA thing. So I'm sure we will have plenty of time to make sure everything is done in a way that the stamps can be easily undeleted in the future if anything drastically changes about this. Although, I doubt anything will, but whatever. It's always good to document things regardless. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:32, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that the issue is so wide and complex that it is next to impossible to process in one or two week. For example we are still trying to explain or understand terms such as "Pääjohtaja" and there is also very complex issues too :) --Zache (talk) 08:13, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Not really. Even if it was though I started this discussion almost a month ago and at least from what I can tell neither one of you have done anything to document who created the stamps or anything. Both of you have spent plenty of time pasting long diatribes and talking in circles though. Especially LPfi. Either one of you could raised those issues at the start of this, done things to mitigate them back then, and I wouldn't have cared. At this point though it just seems like a stalling tactic though. It would be ridiculous to wait multiple months to change the article while both of you sit on your hands and don't do anything to fix the issue the problems you brought up. Be my guest and start documenting who the artists of the stamps are though. I could really care less, but I'm not going to support the article never being changed just because both of you think it can't be modified until some completely ridiculous and are arbitrary standard is met. Especially not if neither one of are doing anything about it. Again, starting documenting who created the stamps. If you haven't even started to in a couple of weeks then I'm going to call BS and say the article should be edited anyone. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:46, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Uploading images cropped from statements made by the CEO of the Finish postal service

User:LPfi appears to be in the process of uploading images of stamps cropped from press releases put out by the CEO of the Finish postal service. According to the law and how the article is currently written, "If an image of a stamp was included in a public body's decision or statement and the stamp is not an independent work Etc. Etc." Press releases announcing the release of stamps by CEOs of the post-och telegrafstyrelsen aren't decisions. Nor are they statements being made by a public body. Otherwise literally anything released by the government of Finland would be free of copyright and that's clearly not what the purpose of the law is. If the law intended for any document created by an employee of the government to be free of copyright I assume it would have just so.

It seems that LPfi thinks otherwise though. So I'd like to know what his justification for thinking press releases by the CEO of the postal authority are "decisions or statements by a public body" is so we can clarify things if need be. Otherwise, I don't think the images are covered by the current wording of the article since it makes clear that images of stamps can only be uploaded to Commons if the public body's decision or statement is included with the upload. Let alone does the law say images of stamps are free of copyright in cases where they are published in press releases by government employees anyway. So I think things need clarifying before User:LPfi proceeds with uploading such images. Adamant1 (talk) 11:56, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

I am not in the process of uploading such stamps. I uploaded one stamp, the first that I found that was uploaded on Commons and present in one of the bulletins linked by Zache, to hopefully get some feedback on COM:VPC (see Commons:Village pump/Copyright#Finnish stamps and threshold of originality) on what can be uploaded based on such statements, or decisions with similar images. The stamp designs may of course have been attached in a 5-colour offset version, but most documents until the 1990s were in greyscale. I assume the uploaded example is representative of the print quality of most such material. I take the legal risk of uploading the image (few will use that version in preference of the linked colour version, so reusers will have little additional risk) and if it has to be deleted, so be it. Hopefully we get enough feedback on the differences before that.

The status of the bulletin is being discussed above, at the end of #Moving forward (break). The discussion can continue here of course, but in that case, my reasoning above should probably be copied to here, as it directly addresses these questions.

–LPfi (talk) 16:15, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

I am not in the process of uploading such stamps. That's fine. I just didn't want you to waste the time on uploading other one if there ends up being no reason to. I'd still like it to be clarified for the future though and it seemed like a side discussion from the one above. So I'll probably copy your comment from the other discussion here when I have the time and respond to it. Then we can discuss it further from there, or not if there's no reason to. Whatever. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:08, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

The cited bulletin is not a press release (although also those might be seen as statements; I am not checking that part now), but a bulletin directed at least at post offices, with directions for them. As such it is a clearer case of statement than a press release. The bulletin is signed by the pääjohtaja in that role, i.e. as a public authority. The crucial word in section 9 is viranomainen, which can refer also to single persons; decisions made in writing by the President of Finland, the Chancellor of Justice, the Arch Bishop etc. are covered, although I don't think they are "public bodies", and likewise is a statement from any other person in a position of public authority (not any public employee though) if the statement is from this position of authority. Of course the bulletin is not a "random piece of half scribbled piece of paper", and neither would a press release be. Please refrain from such language, as they make it hard to keep the discussion focused.

You are confused regarding the decree. Post- och telegrafstyrelsen was not authorised to write decrees, that's the task of the government and (in certain cases) ministries. They are, however, authorised to make decisions on stamp design. LPfi (talk) 15:44, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Of course the bulletin is not a "random piece of half scribbled piece of paper", and neither would a press release be. Please refrain from such language, as they make it hard to keep the discussion focused. Sure, but at the same time just because someone from the government puts out a document saying they are going to release a certain stamp that doesn't it's decision. It's confirmation of there being one, but it's not the decision itself. Which is what we need to be included with the upload of the stamp. Not a form put out by an employee of the government saying some other body in the government decided something. THE ACTUAL, ORIGINAL DECISON. Your the one making this unfocused by repeatedly convoluting the two and acting it doesn't matter if it's the original decision or not. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:54, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, so don't call it one (and don't say "an employee", say "the pääjohtaja", as this is not about a random employee). And nobody has said the bulletin is a decision. Instead it should count as a statement, and thus make the included images PD. I prefer to find the decisions, as there can be no argument about their status and as they should contain the definite definition of the design. The current wording of the template mentions both decisions and statements. –LPfi (talk) 07:56, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

@LPfi, you may want to check Suomalaisten postimerkkien kuvasto mielipidevaikuttamisen keinona 1939-1944 (pro gradu), page 12, there is some information about process related to SPR stamps. -- Zache (talk) 09:41, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Instead it should count as a statement, and thus make the included images PD. Maybe. Maybe not though, because it's still not a statement by a government body. Whatever the case though, there's clearly a difference between documents released by the government that are PD because they are statements or decisions by a government body and ones that aren't PD because they aren't statements or decisions released by a government body. You can't just say everything the government puts out is PD "because government" or whatever nonsense. That's not how the law works. So what exactly makes this an exception where it would be PD aside from you saying it is one? --Adamant1 (talk) 10:44, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

It is statement of public authority. --Zache (talk) 10:56, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

What document released by the government wouldn't be then? Or is just everything the government releases "a statement of public authority" and therefore PD? Also, what government authority is being exercised by the release of the document when the decision to print the stamp was already made by another government body at that point? There is none. There's zero authority being exercised by just retreating a decision that was already made by someone else in a different area of the government. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:00, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

I do not know exactly. For example, in copyright law in < 1961 pretty much everything was out of copyright: Outside the protection of this law are: 1. laws, decrees, declarations, documents, minutes, decisions and pleadings of public authorities, parliament, conventions and committees, as well as courts and ecclesiastical, municipal and other public representative bodies, as well as other public documents; 2. discussions held in parliament and other public representative bodies, as well as statements made in courts or in front of other public authorities or in general meetings gathered to discuss general matters; and 3. daily news and other newspaper notices in newspapers or magazines.. Between 1961 - 2005 it was note exactly defined, but it was thinked that in-spirit the old public law publicity was continued and when Finland joined to EU in 1990s document publicity have been syncronized with EU legislation and it is defined in Julkisuuslaki. In any case formal statements by public authorities such as Kiertokirje by Posti ja telelaitos is clearly under 9 §. -- Zache (talk) 11:14, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

In any case formal statements by public authorities such as Kiertokirje by Posti ja telelaitos is clearly under 9 §. Yeah, but it wasn't a statement made by the postal authority. It was a statement made by an employee of the postal authority. There's clearly a difference. Just like there would be if say Mark Zuckerberg or someone under him released a statement about something having to do with Facebook versus the company itself releasing the statement. They clearly aren't the same thing. Otherwise your just creating a fait acompli scenario where everything an employee of the government says or does is a statement by a public authority, which is clearly nonsense. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:39, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

This is same kind of discussion about Pääjohtaja earlier. You are wasting other people time with toying with words. Please stop it. -- Zache (talk) 12:08, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

It's not toying with words. It's an important distinction that could make the difference between document being uploadable or not. Why not address what I said instead of throwing around insults? How about this, here's the way I see this and you can tell me why you think it's wrong. IMO the word "authority" in this context means someone or something in the government who's word is legally authoritative or binding. In the case of employees of the government they aren't "authorities" on the law, because their word has no legal authority. Like if I go down to my local court house and ask someone in records about a case they will tell me what they isn't legal advice. The reason for that being, they aren't authorities on the law. It's no different for CEOs. Their word has zero legal authority or weight behind it. That's why they hire and consult with lawyers and parrot back what they tell them to anytime there's any kind of litigation. It's also why they sign contracts instead of just making verbal agreements. You can call that "toying with words" or whatever, but it's the facts.

In the case of anything having to do with the government an "authority" is someone who's word has the weight of the law behind it and CEOs don't have that weight behind them. Period. If you want some examples of is an authority there's many websites I could site. Here's a few though off the top of my head, any relevant administrative, judicial, executive, legislative or other governmental or intergovernmental entity, department, agency, commission, board, bureau or court, and any other regulatory or self-regulatory organizations. Are any of those CEOs? No. Otherwise, you can tell me how that's wrong and which one of those is a CEO. Otherwise, I'm going to assume your just deflecting because you clearly have no other argument. Either way, the word "authority" when used in the legal/governmental context has a specific meaning that doesn't include employees of government agencies. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:24, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

No, it is that we can loop to ad-infinitum with words like Pääjohtaja or if the w:Posti ja telelaitos is public authority is something or not in your head. These aren't opinions but easily verifiable facts. In wikipedia side it would be that you should go and back up your words with references even in discussions but here it is looping because person who is commenting can throw some random opinion. This is waste of time. If you have something new, then say it and back it up also with something else than your personal opinion. -- Zache (talk) 12:54, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

{{We can loop to ad-infinitum with words like Pääjohtaja or if the w:Posti ja telelaitos is public authority}} When did I ever say the Posti ja telelaitos isn't a public authority? I said the CEO isn't multiple times and he's the one who put out the statement. The only reason we are "looping" is because you keep miss-construing my position instead of addressing what I said.

Here it is looping because person who is commenting can throw some random opinion. I mean, this is a talk page. That's literally what we do here. I didn't see you attacking LPfi for the month worth of random opinions he throw out. It's not like didn't ask you what you thought about the "opinions" either. I haven't seen either of you ask what I thought about anything. So maybe spare me the sanctimony. Like I said, if what is wrong, cool. Just say how. That's fine. But maybe skip the insults and ad-hominins. Otherwise, like I said all I can conclude is that you have no other argument. Which is why you keep miss-construing things. You clearly can't just respond based on the actual discussion. Otherwise you'd have to admit a CEO isn't "public authority." --Adamant1 (talk) 13:53, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

So the question is whether the pääjohtaja is an authority. Forget about CEOs, as while he might have a CEO-like position, the terms aren't synonymous. What in his factual role makes him an authority or not an authority? "Someone who's word has the weight of the law behind it" says little: even the President isn't backed up by the law if they make statements they aren't authorised to make, while the pääjohtaja, of course, has the "weight of law" behind his words when he acts as authorised by law. He is an authority in the relevant sense if and only if he in this case uses public authority, which more or less boils down to whether he in this action is liable according to the law on liability of public servants. –LPfi (talk) 22:23, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

I would say that File:KiertokirjeNo15-1975.pdf is an official statement by the postal authority issued by the CEO Oiva Salolla. The cropped grayscale version File:Stamp of Finland - 1975 - Colnect 46741 - Official Seal Balance and Sword (greyscale).tif would be acceptable if it is not an independent work and contains nothing that could be considered "fine art". I am not sure about this image, which gives an artist's interpretation of the seal of the State Audit Office. Certainly the color version at File:Stamp of Finland - 1975 - Colnect 46741 - Official Seal Balance and Sword.jpeg does not qualify. Public domain status is not "inherited up" from a derivative work to the original work. I do not understand why File:Stamp of Finland - 1975 - Colnect 46741 - Official Seal Balance and Sword (greyscale).tif is tagged with {{PD-FinlandGov}} rather than the more appropriate {{PD-FinlandStamp}}. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:07, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Your first sentence makes sense and I tend to agree.

The "fine art" wording refers to a stamp depicting a previous independent work of fine art (that would be the seal and whatever document the numbers may be from – I wouldn't be concerned), it is not about whether the stamp design in itself is fine art.

For the DW part, it is unclear whether the stamp is a derived work of the design in the (assumed) decision or of the version used for the image in that decision. To me it seems probable the stamp was based on the approved design, not on a separate design kept in the artist's drawer. Of course the copy in the decision was a separate copy, but I don't believe it was a derived work.

Using PD-FinlandGov was probably a mental lapse, but I had to revert my correction, as the statement hasn't been uploaded to Commons, which the new wording of PD-FinlandStamp requires; it is just linked.

–LPfi (talk) 15:57, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

(Also, the stamp image wasn't cropped from the statement, it was extracted, as it was included in the statement pdf as jpeg2000.) –LPfi (talk) 16:00, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

I would say that File:KiertokirjeNo15-1975.pdf is an official statement by the postal authority issued by the CEO Oiva Salolla. That's fine, I guess. But I assume we would still need the original decision to know if the stamp was an independent work or not. So it's kind of a moot point anyway. At least in cases where the stamp clearly isn't based on a previous work that is free of copyright. If the stamp is a 1/1, exact recreation of something that is already free of copyright it probably doesn't really matter where the image comes from though. So cool, File:KiertokirjeNo15-1975.pdf is an official statement by the postal authority, but it makes literally zero difference in this case since we still need the original decision to determine if the design of the stamp was an independent work or not. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:01, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia, the artist was employed by Bank of Finland and seems to have been tasked with designing stamps and banknotes. The design seems unlikely to have been made for anything but the stamp. I am quite confident this wouldn't be seen as an independent work at the time or even after the 2005 amendment. –LPfi (talk) 11:10, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

An independent work is one that was not produced specifically as a part of an official decision or as an attachment to it. An example is a work of fine art included in currency. A test would be whether the work makes sense outside the context of the decision. The example is important, because a work of fine art included in a stamp is much the same as a work of fine art included in a banknote or coin. If it were protected by copyright it would not lose protection by virtue of a version being included in an official document. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:54, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

The work was made to be a stamp, and without the decision it wouldn't be a stamp. The same with the CoAs and the coinage. Their primary use is of course not to sit in that decision, but to be used according to the decision. Zache told above about the stamp depicting a famous painting, that's what the "fine art" thing is about. It is not uncommon that previous works made for other uses are included in stamps, to celebrate the painting, to use a well-known painting as symbol of an event or landscape it is depicting and so on. These are the independent works referred to as "e.g. fine art". –LPfi (talk) 15:19, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

The work was made to be a stamp, and without the decision it wouldn't be a stamp. That's just circular. We know some stamps (like ones based on already copyrighted works) are independent even though they wouldn't have been made into stamps without the decision to make them into one. So the conclusion that all stamps are dependent just because they were made due to being included in a decision clearly doesn't follow the premise. It's not what the words "independent" and "dependent" mean. They have nothing to do with if the work was made due to there being a decision to make the work (everything is made through a decision to make it). What matters is if the designer of the stamp is an employee of the government agency involved in postal matters and if they created the stamp with minimal direction from the government body that commissioned the work or not. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:41, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

The question is whether the work was made to be something else than a stamp. In such cases, the stamp is usually a derivative work, and the original work used for other purposes. I argue exactly that no works made to be stamps are independent from the decision. The independent works are an exception to the rule, covering famous paintings etc. that the stamp may be a derived work of. You argue that it is the employment status and degree of direction that matters. But wait: are you using the everyday definition of the word? It has a more specific meaning in this context. –LPfi (talk) 08:52, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

The question is whether the work was made to be something else than a stamp. That's not the generally agreed definition of what makes something an independent work or not and there's zero evidence that it's the definition of an independent work in this case either. Otherwise I'd like to see some evidence. I don't really care about what your "arguing" in the meantime either since your the one who repeatedly went off about how this shouldn't be based on personal opinions. Like I said though, if there's a more specific meaning to the word independent in this context then be my guest and provide the evidence that there is. I haven't seen any though. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:17, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

The seal of the State Audit Office would be described in heraldic terminology (the blazon) and is presumably free of copyright, since the description would be a public document. A given visual interpretation of a blazon (an emblazon) may be highly original, and typically remains the property of the artist. An official emblazon may perhaps be public domain. The image on the stamp is not exactly the same as the image at vtv.fi] (leaves are different shapes), but it may be an earlier official emblazon. I am not sure about this one. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:54, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

It is possible that the artist used the blazon, but it is also possible they used the visual interpretation of the seal, as used in the agency's documents. I wouldn't worry too much, as they are probably both PD-old and PD-FinlandGov, and the stamp contains other elements that it combines in an original way (I'd assume). If the image weren't a stamp, I would expect the artist (or their employer) to have the full copyright. The colours of the CoA, on the other hand, may be the natural choice for the given printing process and that CoA (the heraldic colours in a specific tradition). –LPfi (talk) 15:19, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

The stamps template

I noticed that {{PD-FinlandStamp/en}} has been edited to reflect this discussion and the new wording of the stamps section. However, I think the rewrite was partly problematic: few files presently at Commons are crops from decisions, and imposing that requirement for old uploads is unfair. If the difference between the design in the decision and the actual stamp doesn't reach the threshold of originality, then the source is irrelevant. We want a pointer to the decision, as long as we don't know all stamps were included in such decisions, but that doesn't mean that other sources cannot be used.

Some stamps are PD-old for Finland (in addition to a possible PD-FinlandGov) and PD-1996 for the USA. For them the 2005 amendment is irrelevant, but few are marked with PD-1996, so a note about the situation in 1996 is needed in the stamp template.

I added some wording allowing for such other situations. The wording might not be ideal, I just want to avoid unnecessary deletion nominations, therefore adding the wording quickly (the earlier changes were never discussed here that I can see).

–LPfi (talk) 15:57, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

I updated {{PD-FinlandStamp}} to reflect the discussion above. The 2005 amendment means that copies can no longer be made of independent works included in decisions and statements by public bodies. Copying before 2005 did not violate the law, but any new copying does. As agreed above, and stated in the revised COM:Finland#Stamps, we need to upload to Commons an image of a decision or statement containing the stamp, and then we can crop the stamp image from this file. We should also provide some evidence that the stamp is not an independent work. The text of the decision or statement may indicate whether this is true.

The concept of Commons:Threshold of originality is nothing to do with the difference between two versions of a copyrighted work. It is to do with whether a work can be considered sufficiently original to attract copyright in the first place, as opposed to a simple arrangement of letters and basic shapes. We can extract an image of a non-independent work from a public domain document. That does not give us the right to copy a more detailed and colorful version of the same work.

{{PD-FinlandStamp}} is for stamps that are not independent works and are included in decisions and statements by public bodies, as described in COM:Finland#Stamps. Other templates, such as {{PD-old-70}}, can be used for other situations where stamps are in the public domain. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:01, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

TOO: If a work is included in a decision, it is free of copyright (except the independent work complication). That means that we can upload the work from anywhere; we don't need to use the decision as source (which hardly ever is the case with files currently on Commons). There is wording about the situation being unclear on using other sources in the wording now used. The only thing unclear here, to my understanding, is whether there is copyrightable expression – i.e. expression above the threshold of originality – not included in the decision or statement. If not, it is another version of the same free work.

We can no longer use the decisions as a rationale for an independent work to be PD in Finland. However, if the work was PD in Finland in 1996, it is PD-1996, and thus a stamp included in a decision, based on a work from 1940 by an author who died in 1942 is: PD-FinlandGov for the stamp design, PD-old for the independent work and PD-1996 in the USA. If the 2005 amendment had been in effect in 1996, it would be PD-US-expired only in 1935. Thus the situation before 2005 is important. (A work of previous fine art included in a stamp may be one of the exceptions valid already before 2005, but let's say this isn't one of those cases).

I think the bulletins, if similar to the one about the National Audit Office anniversary stamp, are clear enough about the motifs to be sufficient evidence on what underlying works need to be taken into account. The decision may contain similar language. It seems we agree on this. Sometimes the underlying independent work is evident, such as when it is the Finnish CoA. In those cases we don't need to fall back on any official text.

–LPfi (talk) 18:56, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

The template was for stamps included in decisions. There was no requirement that the source of the image was the decision. Therefore the template must be valid also for those, unless the template is exchanged for a new one. For stamps with other sources, one may need to validate that they indeed depict the free work and not a work just based on the free one, but if the template cannot be used after that validation, what template do you suggest, in the cases where PD-old isn't valid?

Changed wording in a PD template is problematic also in that that a trusted user having added a template suggests that they have verified it complies with the template text. That is not the case with the current wording.

–LPfi (talk) 19:01, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

• A work must be public domain in both the USA and the country of origin. If the author died 70 years ago, or was anonymous and the work was published 70 years ago, that is true. If a stamp was included in a decision or statement by a public body and is not independent, the version in the decision or statement is not protected. But if the stamp is an independent work with unexpired copyright it is protected. We have agreed above on new wording for COM:Finland#Stamps and {{PD-FinlandStamp}} has been changed to reflect this new wording.
• A trusted user reading the former version of COM:Finland#Stamps would have been justified in uploading and tagging a file with the former version of {{PD-FinlandStamp}}. Now we have dug into the subject in more detail and gained a clearer understanding, we have a clean-up job on our hands. We should work through the stamps in category:Stamps of Finland missing source document tracking down the source documents and checking whether the stamps are in fact unprotected. For older stamps, {{PD-old-70}} or {{PD-anon-70}} may apply. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:59, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

The relevant language above is:

"It is uncertain how the above affects the copyright of stamps depicted in other places. The precautionary principle is that we assume a stamp is copyrighted unless proven otherwise."

Now, if it in some case is clear that a stamp is PD without being PD-old (such as a stamp from 1968, whose author died 2001), because the design was new and attached to a decision in greyscale and the colourisation is trivial and mentioned there. We have revisited the issue and need to check the images, but this is clearly PD without being a crop. What template do you suggest we should use?

–LPfi (talk) 20:18, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

A stamp published in 1952 ("70 years ago") that got copyright in 2005 as independent work is probably PD-1996 because of PD-FinlandStamp. If we ignore that the amendment wasn't in effect in 1996 we would have to delete it until 2047, when it becomes PD-US-expired. –LPfi (talk) 20:27, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

• The 2005 amendment says an independent work does not lose its copyright by virtue of being included in a decision or statement of a public body. The work will still lose its copyright in Finland and the United States 70 years after the author's death, or 70 years after publication if anonymous. It a work is not independent, the version in a decision or statement will not be protected. That does not mean all versions are unprotected. If the primary work is no longer protected, then derivative works with no original modifications are also no longer protected. That does not work in reverse. A painter may waive copyright on a low-resolution black and white reproduction of a picture without waiving copyright on the original. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:49, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

  Why would the work lose its copyright in USA 70 years pma? That's true for works published today, but not for works published before 1978. Those got a USA copyright by the URAA unless they were free of copyright in the URAA year, in our case in 1996. For these the legal situation in 1996 is significant, at least if the author died less than 25 years after publication (as the pma term is 70 years while the US after-publication term is 95 years).

  As copyright is in works, whether the copy in the decision is the same work as the original is important. There being a blot of ink obscuring the image in the decision (as signed) does not make the original a separate work. Neither is an image in black on yellow paper a separate work from a blue-on-white version in actual stamps, unless the choice of hue is original to the point of raising it above the threshold of originality. If the stamp depicts the Flag of Finland in the official colours with a sky in the same blue colour, then that choice of colours is not original and thus all copyrightable expression is included in the black-and-white version. For the painting there is a lot of copyrightable expression in the colours chosen. Not so for many of the stamps, especially the older ones, which mostly are in black plus auxiliary colour.

  –LPfi (talk) 08:30, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

  • The technical term "threshold of originality" has nothing to do with the difference between two images. It is about whether an image is more than a mundane combination of simple letters and shapes and may therefore be protected by copyright. Most stamps are above the threshold of originality. The relevant concept is "derivative work". A low-resolution version of a stamp in a public document is a derivative work. It is not exactly the same as the original, but is clearly derived from the original. The derivative work may lose protection under section 9, but that loss of protection is not passed up to the original stamp design. Of course, if the document has a high-resolution true-color version of a stamp, and the stamp is not an independent work, the high-resolution true-color version can be used. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:03, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

    OK, I may be wrong about the terminology. Anyway, the copyright is in a certain work, not a certain copy of that work. The Finnish municipal coats of arms do not need to be copied from the original decisions, the versions used by the municipalities are free and can be copied from wherever you find them. Only when the difference is significant enough that the depiction in the decision is a separate derivative work, only then the underlying work can be copyrighted. My understanding is that the differences need to include copyrightable expression. What constitutes such copyrightable expression needs to be checked (that's why I started the thread at VPC), but if the copy in the decision is in black on yellow paper, with an accidental blot of ink, and the stamp depicts the Flag of Finland in blue on white, then I think it is clear that they are the same work and also the stamp itself is free of copyright. –LPfi (talk) 15:51, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

  • All of this is grasping at straws. We have found no official statement that Finnish stamps issued before 1990 are in the public domain, or are usually in the public domain. In most countries they are not. The precautionary principle means that we must interpret section 9 narrowly. We must find a public document holding the stamp image, confirm that it implies the stamp is not independent, upload it to Commons, and extract the version of the stamp it contains. Even this may be stretching things. Is our interpretation that the stamp is not independent correct? As user:Zache points out above, we can only really be sure if we have confirmation from the Copyright Council. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:03, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

    I do not agree, but I don't think further discussion without further evidence (or opinions from legally literate other users) will change anything. Just one comment: the PCP is not about being "really sure", but about not having significant doubt. We need evidence, not proof. –LPfi (talk) 15:51, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

    • I still think the lack of consensus should show in the template text, to allow uploaders and administrators to make up their minds by themselves, based on this discussion and other available material. –LPfi (talk) 15:55, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Lol, your the one who reverted the edit saying there was no consensus about it in the first. But sure dude, now that there is and it just didn't go your way it's worth saying in the article that there's no consensus. Right. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:41, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

• • • • @LPfi: Consensus is not unanimity. The current wording was proposed here, adjusted several times based on feedback, then published a week after the last draft was proposed. Everyone involved in the discussion had ample time to object and none did. It reflects consensus. Since then you have come up with an original view of degrees of difference between a derivative work and the original. That does not reflect consensus. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:04, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

        I think that the practical step forward could be update licence information of the stamps which are known to be free by age or stamps are free because they contain out-of-copyright emblem, texts, flag etc. About the rest I think that there is no immediate need to do something as long processing of the stamps as whole is going forward. So there is time if somebody wants to visit to national archive, write to copyright council etc. -- Zache (talk) 17:45, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

@Zache: I am comfortable with that. There are 2,471 files in Category:Stamps of Finland missing source document. Most have a date in their file name. We could work forwards from the oldest ones, checking Postimuseo's Postimerkkiselain for the author and moving out of copyright ones to {{PD-old-70}} or {{PD-anon-70}}. Many of the older ones will have the same author. Stamps with out-of-copyright emblem, texts, flag etc. are probably not hard to spot. There probably is a good source for decisions and statements, and we could upload ones that seem relevant, extract the images and redirect the stamp file names to the extracted images with history purged. I do not see any urgency. {{PD-FinlandStamp}} shows that the status is questionable, which is the main thing.

I am not optimistic about the "not an independent work" argument though. The explanation of the 2005 clarification included the example of a work of fine art included in money clearly retaining its copyright. A work of fine art included in a stamp seems much the same. "Work of fine art" is a broad term, and most recent stamps will include something that could be considered fine art. I really think that section 9 is meant for things like diagrams, annotated maps, charts and so on that are an integral part of a decision or statement, not just the result of a decision. Aymatth2 (talk) 22:05, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

For those from before 1903 we can use {{PD-old-assumed}} if we don't find the author (or year of death?). For those from before 1928, we can add {{T|PD-US-expired)). These templates can be added without any further research, leaving us to concentrate on newer stamps.

For stamps of 1903–1928 the death year of the author is needed for PD-old while their US copyright has expired. I think these are the ones worth digging author info on in the first round. They need to have died before 1953, i.e. at latest 25–50 years after the publishing date, which should not be too uncommon.

As PD-old is not valid for US copyright for works published before 1978 and posthumously published stamps should be rare (1978+70 > 2023), we need {{PD-1996}} for the stamps of 1928–1989 (or 1994? Postimuseo writes that the post was a public body until then – needs research). For a post-1928 stamp to be PD-1996, it generally needs to be PD-FinlandGov. For stamps from before 1996 the 2005 amendment does not affect their copyright status in the US. A few stamps that commemorate an American event (such as Finnish emigration or the World Exhibition) may have been simultaneously published and {{PD-US-not renewed}} or whatever.

I don't think stamps with out-of-copyright emblem, texts, flag etc. are necessarily easy cases. Even the ones with the Finnish coat of arms have varying composition and background. Thus we need to assess whether there is additional copyrightable expression in these stamps.

It seems we need to ask the Copyright Council for a statement on the stamps. Adding author information should be done regardless, so we can start with that, but assessing whether there is copyrightable expression will be very time consuming even for comparably easy cases, and not worthwhile unless that's the only way to keep them.

–LPfi (talk) 08:44, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

We should not use history purge. Uploading with a new name with an "other_versions" redlink allows finding the old file and undeleting it when copyright has expired (or there is other reason for undeletion). It can also be easily pointed to in DRs with "undelete in X" categories. A history deleted version is much harder to restore. Even where the new file is of equal or better quality, we probably still want to have images of actual stamps, possibly postmarked (most of the current files are scanned from collections). –LPfi (talk) 08:53, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Not protected section

The section on types of work that are not protected should show the waiver that applies to works included in the works in the list. I propose to add the following after the list of unprotected works:

Copyright protection continues to apply to independent works contained in the documents referred to in the list above.^{[404/1961–2015 Sec.9(1)]} A work that is part of or attached to a decision or something similar is often such that it was not produced specifically as a part of the decision or as an attachment to it. In such a case, it is not reasonable that the attached work should also automatically lose copyright protection. An example is a work of fine art included in money.

Comments? Aymatth2 (talk) 14:37, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

It could be added that this is after 2005 copyright law change change. Another thing what could be added is to mention that use of included documents are allowed by 25 d §, but only in original context which doesn't allow works to be uploaded to commons. (and direct links to changed sections could be also added: 9 §, 25 d §) --Zache (talk) 15:03, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Good points. Revised draft:

As of the 2005 revision, copyright protection continues to apply to independent works contained in the documents referred to in the list above.^{[404/1961–2015 Sec.9(1)]} A work that is part of or attached to a decision or something similar is often such that it was not produced specifically as a part of the decision or as an attachment to it. In such a case, it is not reasonable that the attached work should also automatically lose copyright protection. An example is a work of fine art included in money. This applies to independent works included in both the text of the document and its appendices. These independent works could be reproduced in connection with the document in question and used separately from the document for the purpose to which the document is related, but due to these restrictions the document or the protected independent work it contains cannot be uploaded to Commons.

Aymatth2 (talk) 15:21, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me. It's probably super pedantic and unnecessary but I'd change "money" to "currency." It's not like it matters though. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:17, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Just to document this. In TN 2014:1 copyright council decided that the text sent by applicant in a patent application's explanatory section was a literary work defined by 1 §, but it was not protected by copyright because of the public interest in accessing information so it was covered by 9 §. --Zache (talk) 08:45, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Since there were no further comments, I have gone ahead and implemented the last draft. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:22, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. -- Zache (talk) 16:18, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

One note: the 2005 change, if retroactively applicable, still does not apply to the {{PD-1996}} status of pre-1990 stamps. If they were in the public domain in 1990, they still are in the USA. –LPfi (talk) 08:13, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

I now noted the "used separately from the document for the purpose to which the document is related" part. For money, this obviously includes images of the money. What it does not allow is using the included artwork in other contexts. This of course limits what derivative works can be created, but e.g. cropping out a portrait or landscape from the image of a banknote hardly differs from cropping out an artwork from the image of a building, and protected artworks included in such ways have not disqualified photos from Commons. Making parodies of the money is to my understanding still allowed. –LPfi (talk) 11:36, 21 December 2023 (UTC)