The estate of a deceased religious leader sent the Wikimedia Foundation a DMCA request asking us to remove a book they had written from Wikisource. Under U.S. law, copyright protection for a work lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years after their death, and the author had passed away more than 70 years ago. However, the author’s estate created the work at issue posthumously. When it was created, the book secured copyright protection for ninety-five years, and the copyright had not yet expired. Since the work was still protected by a valid copyright, we removed the work from Wikisource.
