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'."

Comments

Okay, question time...

[(trb001)]

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

Wow. Makes ya wonder...

[realgone]

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?"

Re:My selfish perspective

[foistboinder]

Or, oh my god, James Joyce?

One should be carefule loading Finnegans Wake on a computer. It's a hell of a resource hog: being that it's implemented as a huge infinite loop.

Lessig is in front of the Supreme Court over this

[truthsearch]

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.