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In The Non-US Public Domain
truthsearch writes "Lawrence Lessig's weblog points to 'a page by John Mark Ockerbloom at the University of Pennsylvania listing books that are in the public domain elsewhere but not, because of the Copyright Term Extension Act, in the United States. Check out the books you are not allowed to download.' Includes books like 'Animal Farm' and '1984'."
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I'm not trying to get around the copyright, but I have an honest question. If I were to download these books and then bring them into the US, would that be an illegal act? Specifically, how would I declare them when coming into the country? I doubt any immigration people have a clue about online books, let alone which ones are copyrighted.
I suppose it's the same case as coming into the US from Amsterdam and carrying weed with you, but it would seem that immigration is probably more apt to ask you about drugs than illegal books.
--trb
Do NOT download or read these books online if you or your system are in the United States or in another country where copyright protections can extend more than 50 years past an author's death.
Why doesn't he institute some way of preventing anyone with a .com, .edu, or .us domain from downloading them? If this is "warning: don't do this" website is intended to make some kind of statement against US copyright law, then he should just come out and say it. This reminds me of the Ren & Stimpy episode (Space Madness) where Ren places Stimpy in charge of guarding the History Eraser Button: "What ever you do, don't touch it!"
GMD
watch this
Mein Kamph...
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Rather than adopting the suggested regime change in Iraq through military force, the United Natioins must instead consider an entirely different course of action. This new course is based upon the facts alone, rather than political pressure. A regime change is indeed necessary, but not in Iraq. The primary regime which needs to be changed, is the one found in Washington DC. The greatest tyrant and true threat to world peace who needs to be ousted, is George W. Bush. The facts which clearly show the need for such a resolution against the U.S. are self evident...they demonstrate a clear and present danger to the world community. America is clearly a nation which aspires to global domination, through the use of the most expensive and high tech military the world has ever known.
In demonstration of the above assertions, let us be very clear about Americas 300+ billion dollar a year expense, for weapons of mass destruction. These include;
The United States possesses, and has openly discussed using, such weapons of mass destruction upon a great number of other nations. Among these nations are those listed in George Bushs' so-called axis of evil list, as well as many others which it says, harbor terrorists. The so-called War on Terror targets Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Columbia, Nicaragua and many others. Upon these nations the U.S. has repeatedly issued a series of very aggressive and threatening statements to the effect of; You are either with us or against us, implying dire consequences of economic, diplomatic and military measures in the case of non-compliance. It has openly discussed the possibility of a first strike use of conventional nuclear warheads, and tactical nukes on the battlefield. Its' military policy of, win no matter what the cost of truth or human lives, as a surrogate for sane foreign relations, has earned the wrath of the world. U.S. belligerency has been a major contributor to international hostilities, instability, war and the creation of reactionary terrorist groups, as well as the oppression of peoples worldwide. Its irrational posture threatens to catapult the world into another, and probably final, world war.
The United States has repeatedly shown its willingness to target civilian populations with weapons of mass destruction, especially via the carpet-bombing of cities and infrastructures. It is the only nation to have ever used nuclear devices in war, and upon civilian targets. Among the structures bombed have been desalinization plants, water treatment facilities, police stations, electrical substations and generators, radar and communications stations, hospitals, highway, railway and other transportation facilities, factories for the manufacture of metal, plastic and wood products, and numerous other civilian centers. Countless examples of this behavior have been witnessed in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The result has been millions of Iraqi and Afghan children dying of unnecessary diseases and malnutrition, due to a severe lack of food and safe drinking water. U.S. allies such as Israel, (whose military it literally makes possible) have also exhibited such behavior, as has Great Britain, through constant urging toward mindless, mutually accomplished war frenzies.
A primary export of the United States is weaponry of mass destruction, including so-called conventional weapons such as guided missile cruisers, bombers, small arms, mortars, rockets, tactical advisors, self guided missiles, attack helicopters, high tech surveilance and imaging systems, tanks, explosives and various other tools desigen primarily for the sake of destroying human life. Added to this list of exports are multi-lingual propaganda, biological agents, tear and nerve gas, atomic weapons and their constituents, as well as technical advice regarding their construction, maintenance and use. The U.S. has frequently urged countries to use these weapons against each other so long as it benefitted its political interests, while simultaneously criticizing those who use them without American sanction.
Permanent State of WarThe U.S. has repeatedly told its own citizenry to expect involvement in what amounts to a Permanent State of War, due to the War on Terror. A large and increasing number of foreign nationals are being held in American prisons unlawfully, often without charges, legal due process or access to legal counsel. These persons are often subjected to psychological and physical torture due to their nationality or religious beliefs. Its' Afghan prisoners of war in Cuba are treated without dignity, in violation of the Geneva Convention. At the same time, the U.S. has insisted that its military personnel must be held exempt from war crimes charges by the international community, regardless of their actions.
The United States repeatedly defies the resolutions and authority of the United Nations, making is clear that it views this body as merely a tool which can be occasionally used to achieve its special interests, rather than those of humanity in general. America has also made it quite clear that if its desires are not met by the international community/United Nations, that it will act on its own regardless of their wishes, and in whatever manner it sees fit. This includes pre-emptive military invasion of any country which dares to oppose its policies, and for whatever flimsy, baseless justification it gives to the world as an excuse for such actions.
The international community must seriously ask itself, Who's next? in this series of American invasions of sovereign lands. Who will die next...by the thousands, tens of thousands or millions... at the bloody hands of American imperialism?
For these reasons and others, it is hereby proposed that:
The functional means necessary to achieve this goal are hereby suggested. They include;
In effect, the United States must feel the full pressure of international sovereignty, as it expresses its supreme dissatisfaction with the US imperialism around the globe.
The United States must also understand that its anti-humanitarian, corporate-minded, industrial-military schemes for global dominance are nothing short of those employed by Hitler, and other fascist dictators and governments, throughout the course of history. [Constantly declaring war and occupying one country after the next demonstrates this.] The international community, and indeed the peoples of the entire world, find this American attitude and behavior unacceptable. They will no longer be coerced or made to feel insecure in their own places of residence and worship, at the behest of American whims.
I was excited about this for a second until I actually looked at the list. Can you imagine trying to read Dreiser on your monitor? Or, oh my god, James Joyce?
I know this has little do with the point of the article, but I bet I could buy any of these books for 50 cents or so and save money on aspirin and eyeglasses by not circumventing the US copyrights on these works.
Best Windows Freeware
So I'm reading through that list of books which I'm certainly not downloading the background as I type this -- *cough* -- and I noticed Mein Kampf is on the list of copyright-extended titles. The first question that pops into my head is: "Who's getting the royalty checks on that nowadays?"
Kids, next time when you want to find the meaning for the (presumably) Spanish word "hupia", don't google, don't click on the third link and no, don't download the page even through Google's cache. You'll be violating a couple of copyright laws, not the least of which is the Copyright extension thing.
I mean, we still haven't seen any "Michael Crichton is dead at 58" trolls, have we?
More than mere navel gazing.
In today's "information economy", knowledge is power. And now we have news of a real situation where everybody is allowed to freely access several important pieces of work .. except if you happen to live in the United States, that is. And the irony is that this is because of a particularly silly law from these same United States!
In light of recent events, I wonder if Congress might not be willing to reconsider this law. Broadly interpreted, the intent of this law can almost be considered as treasonous. In a world where knowledge is power, it seems to me that it is borderline sedition to have a government forcibly restrict its citizens from access to knowledge that the rest of the world has for free. I don't see how Congress can (non-hypocritically) express support for U.S. troops in foreign lands while at the same time expressing support for legislation that prevents the American people from arming themselves with information that we may well need to fight the war on terrorism.
Ashcroft and his pals will probably consider these states to be against America's interests. They will be labeled as aiding pirates(terrorists) and bombed like every other nation that Ashcroft doesn't like.
Lessig is presenting the Eldred v. Ashcroft case in front of the Supreme Court right now. His intent is to overturn the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which has added 20 years. Lessig is the only publicly visible person I've seen who's actively fighting against copyright abuse.
Developers: We can use your help.
Why should he do that? It's not his job to police other people. Let Asscroft worry about it.
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand
Presumably because .com domains are not and have never been the exclusive domain of those within the US. It's far from being a reliable method of ensuring that the people downloading are not located in the states - this is the net after all - geography is invisible.
So a warning does the job as well as anything else will. It's not a "statement AGAINST copyright" it's a statement ABOUT copyright. Ie, a fact, not an editorial.
http://eldred.cc/howyoucanhelp/
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Because it wouldn't work. As much as you americans would like to think so, 'com' does not mean 'USA-owned'. Nor does 'edu'.
.com addresses just because people recognize them. And this is from the UK, with the .co.uk domain name that probably is the only thing that is even remotely close to com/net/org as far as mindshare goes. Imagine how countries with obscure country codes feel.
My old ISP was named 'niagara.com', because it served the Niagara region of Ontario. Not Niagara Falls, NY. Back in the day, the registrar for 'ca' was pretty anal (still somewhat, but less so) and it was very difficult and expensive to acquire even a '.on.ca' address for Ontario, Canada, much less an actual top-level '.ca' address. So '.com' was slightly shorter, and much cheaper, and much easier, so that was the domain name they used.
There are many other countries around the world in the same position, not just Canada. I've seen the number of UK companies, for example, that use
Secondly, I now run my own reverse DNS servers. It's trivial to change my reverse lookup DNS address to anything I want. It's a hideously insecure way of trying to deal with the problem. You'll get huge numbers of both false negatives, and false positives, and both will make the system useless. It's a bad idea. Repeat after me: Geoprofiling people by domain names is ludicrous.
Now, perhaps Geoprofiling based on IP addresses is a little bit less hit-and-miss, but it's still not entirely accurate, and I would be pretty miffed if it caught me mistakenly and didn't let me download things that I wanted to download.
Random and weird software I've written.
For something else you better never do, or "the man come, and take you a way," Click this link. Just say no to copyright infringement!
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
What will happen if copyright keeps getting extended?
From what I gathered in the transcript of the Supreme Court argument of Eldred v. Ashcroft, the Supremes seem not to have a high opinion of the Bono Act. Even if the Supremes narrowly affirm the 1998 extension, a third extension in under half a century (1976, 1998, 2020) may constitute clearer evidence of Congress's pattern of behavior, that instead of deciding the balance that would best "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", Congress is trying to go around the "limited times" language of the Constitution. In that case, the court would almost surely overturn a further extension. Think about it: a 19-year extension in 1976 (which had been phased in from 1962), a 20-year extension in 1998, and a hypothetical third extension in the early 2020's?
Three strikes and you're out. I vote.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'll be grabbing some of the works published in 1923 to 1926, which would currently be in PD were it not for the Bono Act, and posting them on my web site in civil disobedience of the Bono Act. Come and get me beotch.
And so I can make sure that the federal police is reading this, I'm throwing in a few Echelon keywords (which, incidentally, are good for getting around lameness filters):
Will I retire or break 10K?
If you have read anything about Germany, you will know they are so anti-anti-semetic that they made it illegal to use anti semetic rhetoric. Mein Kampf is certainly nazi propaganda so
a.) why is is copyrighted
b.) is not receiving royalties illegal?
Makes no sense to me!
--Joey
Bavaria holds the copyright and uses that copyright to actively stop people from printing and distributing the book. It was printed a few years ago in Sweden, but Bavaria protested, and the book was withdrawn.
This is of course crazy. "Mein Kampf" is an important historical document, and it should be available in printed form. We must learn from history, not try to bury it.
this reminds me of the choice you are presented with when downloading the debian cd iso's from sites outside america (like my own country, australia)
for the first cd you are given the choice of two versions - disk1, and disk1-non-us (labels not exact here)
one's initial reaction is to think - hey, i want what all those lousy american bastards are getting, i'll go with the standard disk1
however a little more reading shows you that the non-us cd actually contains lots of goodies that those lousy american bastards are unable to legally obtain - mostly security and encryption stuff
same with this page - those ppl fortunate enough to be living in america - 'land of the free' - are unable to obtain these books due to their government making a pact with the corporate devil sometime in the late 70s early 80s
those of us living having to make do with living outside the borders of the 'leader of the free world' are however able to access them
this, my dear american friends, is called irony
Tim Stang owns!
Hooray for ICN!
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
posting them on my web site in civil disobedience of the Bono Act
Come and break the law with me. http://www.pineight.com/bono/
Will I retire or break 10K?
Alarming term isn't it?
He's a pretty darn smart guy, he and TechTV did a "Big Thinkers" about copyrights and technology. Recommended viewing.
ahem, this is not a troll.
Tim Stang is the owner of ICN
which is also known as "niagara.com"
stupid moderators, get a clue stick
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
Of course, I would have to figure out which stories fell into the Sonny Bono Act black hole
Will I retire or break 10K?