This pages offers guidelines for Wikipedians (and others) for dealing with Dutch copyright law when wanting to reuse objects - texts, scanned pages from publications (books, newspapers, magazines etc. e.d.), images, illustrations, photos etc. - from the collections of the KB on Wikipedia, Commons, Wikisource and other Wiki-projects. Remark dd July 2013: This pages has been written in 2013, the boundary years of 1872 and 1942 mentioned below are only valid for this year (2013 that is). For example, you must add two years to them when you read this page in 2015.
As far as the duration of Dutch copyright law is concerned, there is a distinction between publishers (legal persons) and individual makers/freelancers
copyright for publishers is valid until (and including) 70 years after the year of publication.
copyright for individual makers/freelancers (authors + image makers such as illustrators, photographers etc.) is valid until (and including) 70 years after the year the maker died in.
Then: out-of-copyright as far as publishers are concerned
But: (heirs of) individual makers/authors/freelancers could still claim copyright.
How do you find out if (heirs of) individual makers can still claim copyright?
Check who the maker(s) is/are by looking for any acknowledgements surrounding the image/text etc. or in places like the colophon. If no acknowledgement is given, the copyright is held by the publisher. Because this ends 70 years after the year of publication, the work is in the public domain.
Check the year the maker died: using eg. Google or the authors' database of the DBNL determine the year the maker died in. Add 71 years and if the sum (in the year 2013) is 2013 or less, the work is in the public domain and thus out-of-copyright. If not, it's still under copyright and you'll need permission from the (heirs of) the maker(s). For more details see below, also about the right to quote from a work.
Exception: Do not reuse images, text and not even citations from the 'politically incorrect' newspapers from the period 1940-1945, the Second World War in the Netherlands. The Dutch government owns the copyright of these materials. These newspapers can be recognized by the warning message on the Historic Newspaper website of the KB.
Then: copyright applies, both for publishers and freelancers
Main rule: you must ask them persmission for reuse!
Exception: if you meet all the legal a) conditions and b) requirements for quoting an in-copyright publication.
a) Legal conditions for quoting an in-copyright publication:
Citing is only allowed in the context of an announcement, report, judgement, scientific treatise or a expression with a similar goal. Example: a contribution to Wikipedia.
A citation must be small in size compared to the Wiki(pedia) page you embed it in. The quotation thus must have a modest length compared to your own contributions to the article. Rule of thumb: your Wiki(pedia) contribution should contain less than 20% of citations.
A citation can only and purely be used to clarify or underpin your own Wiki(pedia) contribution and cannot be used for embelishment or decorative purposes.
You can only cite from works that have been previously published with permission of the author (example: citing from unpublished letters or diaries without consent of the author is forbidden).
You can not quote from the 'politically incorrect' newspapers from the WWII years (1940-1945 in the Netherlands), which can be recognized by the warning message on the Historic Newspaper website of the KB.
b) Legal requirements for quoting an in-copyright publication: Assume you meet all the conditions above, then you can quote provided that:
You clearly mention the name of the maker and the (location of the) source you used for your quotation in your Wiki(pedia) article and;
You respect the personality rights of the maker (that is: you cannot modify or alter the citation in your Wiki article).
By the way:
Laws, resolutions and regulations that have been issued by government, as well as judicial verdicts and administrative decisions can be freely reused in Wiki-projects.
Governmental documents (such as proceedings of Parliament(page in Dutch)) or reports from governmental departments & services) that have been created and published by the government itself (that is: by civil servants, not by external subcontractors hired by the government), can be freely reused in Wiki-projects, except if a copyright disclaimer is provided.
Unintentional, incidental processing of a work of secondary importance as part of another work is allowed (example: a book cover that accidentally shows a shop window in which a copyright protected poster or photo can be seen).
CONCLUSION: for any other type of use you will need to ask permission beforehand.
For quotations/citations it is only possible to provide global guidelines, as it needs to evaluated case by case if all necessary conditions and requirements are being met
