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Project Gutenberg Threatened Over PG Australia
Jon Noring writes "Michael Hart's venerable Project Gutenberg, based in the United States, is now being threatened with a lawsuit from the estate of the long-deceased author of 'Gone With The Wind.' The threat is being made because Project Gutenberg of Australia (link not provided) has the digital text version of GWTW on its server (GWTW is Public Domain in Australia), which, according to the estate's lawyers, is downloadable from the United States. Further information, including the copy of the 'take down' letter, and some commentary, is given at TeleRead. It is likely the threat is legally meritless, yet it is troubling, showing how online repositories of public domain works may be impacted by threats from other countries where the works are still covered under copyright."
The car that is parked in a street is "steelable".
I think they should extend it back indefinitely and then I'm going to prove that I'm the only living heir of the estate of Shakespeare
:-)
No need for steps 1 and 2 just proceed to
3. Profit!
They should have known that US laws hold nearly everywhere in the world today.
Otherwise weapons of mass deception might be found in the country very quickly.
As I see this the only location where you could pull this off would Red Rising Star Project Kim Gutenyong in North Korea or Project Ali-al-gutemdulla-al-allah-al-mecca in Iran.
You must delete the work within 24 hours of downloading. Seeesh, you'd think that a reader of /. would know that by now.
AUSTRALIA, damnit! AUSTRALIA! Not Austria! We're two completely different countries, on virtually the opposite side of the globe to each other!
"And, if you're in Australia..."
Now, if you'll pardon me, I'm going to go and see if that Swiss Bikini-team is still hiring. I'm so tired of working in the Swedish Army Knife factory...
...because the site is in Australia, not Austria...? =P
I can just see the warez crowd racing to download GWTW and other works, just because you can get a copy while its still legal.
..
.. can I swap you a copy of GWTW for a Moby Dick???
And then later on
Psst
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I suggest this is the next thing some pissant country like Liberia or Nigeria should do to raise money.
Extend copyright back retroactively to include a great deal more work, then charge companies to bring their copyright lawsuits in that nation.
Taken from Douglas Adams' unfinished Novel/compilation of essays: "Salmon of Doubt."
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
I was going to say that when the Powers That Be in the US say "jump" the Australian 'government' asks "how high?", but
a) you can't jump when you're kneeling,
and
b) you can't ask questions with your mouth full.
The face of 'evil' is always the face of total need
Yeah, the whole thing is silly. Who wants to read Gone With The Wind anyways?
But tomorrow is another day!
They only see what they wanna see, like the dead people in 6th Sense....Remember in the American Bizarro take on the world the following are all true:
1) Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are brothers
2) Iraq is full of WMDs
3) Torturing Human beings, killing innocents and holding prisoners in violation of the Geneva convention are all okay if you think you have a big dick.
4) The Metric system is for wimps
5) Anybody who's neither black nor white must be a terrorist.
6) India = Pakistan, Australia = Austria and there is no such country as Kazakhstan.
7) Pakistan is a liberal secular democracy which respects human rights, is responsible with it WMDs and good team player, and thus merits the purchase of F-16s and Stinger Missiles, miraculously similar to those owned by Osama Bin Laden's Men.
8) India is a place where people rid on elephants and camels. If you're not an elephant-rider or camel-fucker, then you must be a software developer who stole an American's God-given right to own an SUV.
9) Those dang Brits have corrupted "American" and speak it with funny accents, spelling and words. (Who the fuck takes a 'lift' to the 4th floor anyway?).
10) (my Favourite) It is better to be committed to your cause and completely wrong, then to support a cause and change your position on the release of new information(i.e. flip-flop).
Never before have I witnessed the spectacular idiocy of a dumbarse American reading a text article that clearly says "Australian" and parsing that as "Austrian"
Hey now, I take exception to that. There is no evidence to suggest this dumbass is an American. America despite evidence to the contrary does not have a monopoly on dumbasses, if you've taken a visit to Perth you'd know what I mean.
If the lawyers in the US have a problem with Australians distributing content which is public domain in Autralia, but not in the US, I suggest they find a way to block those internet sites in their end... Sort of a "Great Firewall of the US". Honestly I can't see why an Australian would even care and the American part of the Gutenberg project hasn't done anything illegal. If I remember correctly it actually says in the top of each fil you download from the Gutenberg Project, that you should check your local copyright law, I would say that they done all they need to do.
Maybe I should start sueing American companies for violating Danish enviromental laws?
It is blocked from Norway. Besides, Netcraft confirms: GWBush is dying. ;-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
It was an optical read error! Gutenburg conjures up german speaking nations to me, and I was skim reading and well, the same applies.
Except the read through would be:
"Strewth mate, if yer not a bona-fide aussie then maybe you wanna go walkabout this arvo, because bang my wallaby, shielas gone and put some book of sorts on this interweb site, and you some limey outback wanderer from the creek trying to get it right? have a tinny and push off!"
Needs some work. creative commons license.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
or collect call to (212) 980-0120
So everyone that reads the message should call collect to let them know they recieved the e-mail in error?
It is "Pom", you insensitive "Yank" :)
Fortunately, this one still is accessible:
:-)
www.georgewbush.org/
This is interesting. I'm in Canada and it makes Mozilla (1.7, XP) crash and disappear before displaying any page elements. That's a pretty good trick. Is that supposed to be indicative of GWB's foreign policy to Canada?
Dear Thomas D. Selz You mentioned in your letter that you were able to download a copy of GWTW easily. Please provide us with your IP address so that we may prevent you from doing so. Thank you.
access from Austria is blocked too...
Probably because GWB doesn't like kangaroos!
This space left intentionally blank.
But that just makes sense, after all, when G.W. gets re-elected he, led by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Pearl will concoct a scheme to invade Canada to protect the U.S. from "Salmon of Mass Desctruction".
Even as we speak, salmon are crossing the border into the United States unchecked and thereby threatening the "American Way of Life (tm)".
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
It also works very well at american Post Offices, where they tell you "Austria is not a valid abreviation for Australia"
And yes, this is a first hand story, I lived in Austria for 18 years. during a trip to the US, in boston I had a Postal Worker tell me that.
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Lets not stop with just information. Total quarantine and seal he borders. Just give me a chance to get out.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
1. Get some small country dictator to pass a law that retroactively extends copyrights for 19th-century works (or even further!)
2. Sue Disney for copyright infringement
3. ?
4. Profit!
PG should simply reply "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
Sola Deo Gloria!
It appears to us that Australians have established the Commonwealth of Australia to permit the commission of acts that are proscribed in the U.S. and elsewhere. The Australians' willful, knowing and unauthorized action is a blatant violation of our nation's rights under applicable statutes and common law of the US Planetary Government. If Australia does not take down its government and apply for status as a US Protected Territory within five (5) days of receipt of this letter, we shall be forced to, er, shout. Yes, that's it, and you'd better be ready, because it will be LOUD.
*struggling*
...to resist flaming
...the ignorant assclown
trying so hard...
OH, THE AGONY!!!!
p.s. Congrats on getting through that comment without mentioning France. It can't have been easy.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
if some small Pacific or Caribbean island country passed a law granting copyright protection for 1000 years (with a very stiff copyright registration fee of course) to any resident (two weeks required to establish residency) or to any corporation chartered there. It could be a gold mine.