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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."
Why not have a simple piece of text 'if you are in Austria you can download this, otherwise, sorry, move on.'
This is the problem with the internet and local laws... annoying!
I hope (well I am sure) they will not take it down, but although the France / Yahoo! (or was it ebay?) case may be relevant, this might provide new precedents in dealing with such stuff.
I mean, I'd preffer to see Blown Away anyway, starring Rock!*
*: Century of the Fruitbat, Holy Wood.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Next week the japanese government will start issuing cease and desists for porn sites in the US for showing content against their laws.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
I severely doubt this would fly in a court room. Australian law says it's public domain and it's hosted in an Australian server. Now, of course, the problem is that the copyright holder is aiming at "winning" by hoping the GP guys won't fight over it.
Perhaps Australian politicians like to please the US (as I've read in comments by aussies in some internet boards, no idea if that's the case), but I'd be very surprised if the judges are going to play along nicely when someone tries to push their country laws over their own.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
The threat is completely meritless indeed. Its illegal to post nazi propaganda in Germany yet as an American citizen I can post it with no worries from Germany.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
So PGA, an australian entity(!), is subject to U.S. copyright law and jurisdiction? Wouldn't that also mean, that australian copyright law is applicable to U.S. entities, or is the U.S. the only country in the world who can dictate their laws unto others?
This is defintely a case where the services of Sealand and their hosting services would be useful. It's sickening to see how these corporate bandits can lift stories from the wealth of the public domain, exploit them, then not ever have to contribute back their own derived works (think Disney, Snow White, etc).
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
With the Aus-US Free Trade Agreement and the extended copyright terms it has brought with it, this will most likely be a serious issue for PG within a few months once the FTA is legislated.
Of course, this is only one of numerous copyright violations the FTA will introduce for PG, but you're not going to find any politicians who give a damn about it since the election is over.
``They can't do a damn thing about it, heh.''
Remember Dmitri Sklyarov? He was arrested in the USA, because he worked for a company in Russia that published software that is illegal in the USA.
Do not underestimate the power of US law enforcement.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
We really do want to see this sort of thing thrown out of court immediately.
Australia screwed itself on this one - the party in power was going to get a deal agreed on within the time limit no matter how bad it was, and the US negotiators of course took full advantage of the fact (hence the wierd eighteen year re-negotiation offer). Serves us right really, we went into Iraq not for whatever multiple reasons the USA did , we just did it for the money and got screwed over. The party that did it got three more years, so they don't care.
Their case is based on the wholly ridiculous assumption that one country's laws apply in all countries. All they need to do is find a country with decent anti-barratry laws (there must be one somewhere!) and threaten to counter-sue under their laws.
If creating a world-wide infinte copyright extension was as easy as finding just one country that would pass a law like that, do these people really think that Disney would have bothered buying their own senator and bribing the government do it in America?
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Ever heard of allofmp3.com? It's based in Russia, and from what I've read it wouldn't be legal in an awful lot of other countries. It might still be illegal for you to download the music, but it's not illegal for them to share the material.
Martin
Why is this a nightmare? It looks like a perfect utopia for Free Software. Stallman created the GPL to use copyright against itself. If copyright become essentially unenforceable, creating an enviroment in which code can be integrated into communally developed projects without problems, there would be no need for the GPL anymore and Free Software would triumph.
You mean like HavenCo, on the principality of Sealand?
(You can read a lot more about Sealand over at the Wikipedia article.)
BULLSHIT!
BULLSHIT!
BULLSHIT!
BULLSHIT!
BULLSHIT!
BULLSHIT!
BULLSHIT!
BULLSHIT!
http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ is not under US jurisdiction? It's under australian jurisdiction.
You can see at the adress that you are in an other "country".
If the US are so eager to push their laws into other countries maybe they should join the International Crime Court [ICC] and not avoid it like some vampires the sunlight! I think the ROI at WIPO is better than at the ICC!
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
Who has to pay $25? -- copyright is free, though I understand some registrars charge you to document it. Aside from that, I don't think you need a high fee -- a nominal charge for an extension beyond an initial period (say 20 years) would shake out a lot of stuff that's currently in limbo because no one knows who or where the current owners of the copyright are, meaning that even if you're willing to negotiate a fee, you can't republish an old work. That's the real downside of indefinite copyright, stuff goes out of print and becomes unavailable and lost through neglect.
The letter says "there is nothing to prevent any U.S. user from simply downloading GWTW from the Web Site. Indeed, we were able to do so easily."
Yes there is! There's a warning that some works may not be out of copyrighyt outside of Australia. And they're relying on their users to be honest law abiding citizens.
PGA should be highly offended that the GWTW estate considers their users tro be a bunch of criminals.
The solution seems simple, sue every single american that logs onto the PG site. Hosting the works isn't illegal (provided you don't do it in the USA). It's viewing it from backwards countries that's the illegal part, so sue the living daylights out of all of them, see how long they keep up their silly notions.
In 2002, the Australian High Court in Dow Jones & Company Inc. v Gutnick http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/2002/56 .html
http://vigilant.tv/article/2544
said that an Australian defamed on a website hosted overseas could sue, and that Australian courts did have jurisdiction.
In this landmark case testing the limits of legal jurisdiction in the Internet age, Australia's highest court clearly said that the harm was done to the Australian person defamed, despite and regardless that the material was hosted on a foreign server.
So, as Australians, we can't then turn around and say that just because it's hosted on servers in Australia, that the harm done is irrelevant to the Americans IP owners
This is a logical analysis, that doesn't take into account the very dubious merits of the Sony Bono Act. (IMHO)
Regardless of wether we personally like a law, the courts will attempt to maintain coherence of legal principle.
In this case, reducing it to mathematics ;
IF (hosted overseas) AND (harm done in Australia) = within Australian jurisdiction
then the converse must be true...
IF (hosted in Australia ) AND (harm done overseas) = within overseas jurisdiction
If the GWTW party sues and this goes to court, I would expect them to argue the jurisdictional question on the basis of Australian law, and not the merits of Sony Bono.
This way they can bring the case in Australia, seek Australian remedies, and neatly sidestep the international jurisdictional questions.
Bugger, hoisted by our own petard !
Sure, everything would be free to download, for people in that country, and for people in any other country with similarly lax copyright laws. While people in other countries would also be able to get to the files and download them, those people would be violating the copyright laws of their own country.
As in this case, the copyright holders have no right to sue you, because you aren't breaking any laws in your own country, and you also aren't actively violating any laws in their country. The offense is not yours, it is on the part of the people doing the downloading.
Just because technology is allowing people in some other country to break their own laws, that's not your problem. This is just the typical American hubris, thinking they (we) have the right to tell people in some other country what to do.
Unless you mean detaining a Bali Bombing suspect and not allowing him to be questioned or to testify. . .
Yes, that's exactly the support I'm refering to, as per the requirements of the mutual aid pact which America called upon Australia to support in Iraq.
As an American citizen I'm proud as punch at the way we were able to come to the aid and support of our ally down under when they too suffered grevious civilian losses at the hands of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists and I'm sure due to our swift and thourough intervention on your behalf such incidents need never occur again.
Oh, bummer about the Marriot and your embassy. Oh well, shit happens. At least you're in our hearts, when we aren't thinking about the Red Sox.
KFG
Copyright rules vary greatly from country to country, though lately there's been more harmonization. The general rule is that copyright lasts for X years past the author's death or Y years in absolute terms if the author is in fact a corporation. The values for X and Y vary by country. Even within a country they can vary depending on when the work was created and what copyright legislation was in effect at the time. This makes it extremely difficult to figure out which works are in the public domain or not. Sometimes things ended up in the public domain because they weren't properly declared. But with the Berne convention in force over most of the world, you can't assume that no copyright declaration means that there is no copyright. It's a bit of a mess, and this surely won't be the only lawsuit they'll encounter.
Eric
Reading C Declarations: A Guide for the Mystified
you gotta love Pure GREED.
and this is a prime example of pure unadulterated GREED.
Citizens of the USA can vote using absentee ballots even if they are in other countries.
Be careful. If you put the server in a copyright-free country but continue to reside in a country which has copyright laws, you could find yourself sued or prosecuted. Servers don't break laws, people do.
Downloaded a Sherlock Holmes collection that was nice.
I have no idea if hollywood lawyers consider this currently legal. However, I could care less what a hollywood lawyer thinks, these works went into the public domain a long time ago, and you can not change laws after the fact, constantly upping and reversing what works are in the public domain and owned by us. To do so violates several constutional provisions and basic principles of law and property.
Project Gutenberg is one of the best uses of the Internet. Thousands of Books in ASCII text format, downloadable for everyone, for free.
Copyright laws should have a limit, covering books for only 50 years - after that - the book is a classic. The owner of the rights should be able to apply for another, one time extension of 25 more years. After that (75 years!) all books should become public domain.
Same goes for films, software, and all other IP.
Make it public domain after 50 years, with the one time extension to 75 years if the product still is making money for somebody.
IAMAL, So what does the current law say?
- If Knowledge is free, why does education cost so much ?!?
Hmm, geography as a dumb american, I'll give it a stab as I R 1.
Chuck Taylor = Liberia, an artificially created nation in Africa that served as a repository for returned slaves from america. Plenty of civil war action there, natch. It is always more productive to kill people and break things than it is to work. See also, tribalism, greed, ignorance
Zimbabwe, formely Rhodesia, currently under one man one party and only one vote that counts, heh, headed up by Robert Mugabwe, who had his "veterans", many of whom weren't even born during their civil war, wipe out the opposition political parties and folks of any color, and most of the farmers, killing many of them. Most of the still alive and reasonably clueful farmers noticed this and despite it being an economic loss for them, decided to cut tothe chase and relocate,to mozambique (which is welcoming them because they still understand "food = good idea", or south africa or the US or australia, the ones left are an endangered species. Mugabe is embarrassing even to other despots. See also kim ill dung
South Africa, currently doing the same thing to it's farmers, but not getting much international press because it is even more embarrassing since the ANC takeover has given the multiculturists little to brag on since it's obviously the same old stealth genocide they've always had there is now up and running. See also manipulated media
USA, strange grouping of allegedly 50 soverign nations that are supposed to be a cooperative "union" -hence "united" in the name, for extremely limited and equistely detailed economic and self defense purposes on paper, but in reality is run as a serious top down police state, headquartered in a completely artificially maintained "district" where about every penny starts out as stolen, then it goers down hill from there. Currently run by a cartel of two cooperating political gangs who maintain an illusion of "diversness and choice", but in fact are a junta and seized power and use that power to keep themselves rolling in the pork. They are currently running a candidate for president who apparently has two different faces and two different names,a very good media photoshop effort, but who is in reality a single spoiled never had to work a day in his life Yale upper crust skull and bones frat boy, who every other statement in the press tries to convince the public that he's just a good ole boy, just like them, and really knows what's best, so please pick him to make all the decisions. He even rolls up his shirt sleeves once in awhile for photo ops, proving without a doubt that he is just a good ole boy.
How did I do?
Besides my spelun and grammer, which I know can sucketh bad at times. I think I got the geography quiz fairly close.
Note that PG and PGA, while related, are distinct entities. When PGEU and PGCanada get going (both are in the planning stages), then we'll have a group of projects, all with the same aim, but tailored to their particular geographical areas. PGEU, in particular, will concentrate on the large amount of *non-English* public domain material out there -- you can help proofread some of it by joining the European version of the US-based Distributed Proofreaders.
It's a nonsense to say that the only things PG should publish should be public domain in *all* countries -- indeed, the major difference between copyright laws in the US and those in the *entire rest of the world* is the main reason to want to branch out and create regional 'editions' of PG. Due to corporate interests, no new material will enter the public domain in the US for at least the next 14 years -- in the rest of the world, new material is added to the public domain on January 1st each year. By 2018, when material published in 1923 becomes public domain in the US, every work published by authors who died before 1948 (for the EU), 1958 (for India), or even 1968 (for Canada) will be public domain in those areas.
The US is currently trying to push life+50 countries to become life+70. When it succeeds in this, it will start pushing for life+70 countries to become life+90. The trend for ever-increasing copyright terms has to be resisted. One of the key ways to do this is to build people's understanding of the need for, and benefits of, the public domain. PG is a key part of this.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
So, let me get it straight.
An american is threatening an Australian about an Australian server in Australia about what an Australian person who placed this Australian server?
Hmmm.
Someone reeeealy needs to explain to these people that the only way you can get your way in the world is by diplomacy or by force. And when you use force, well... we can all plainly see where *that* leads.
Some people in some more inwards-looking countries seem to forget that their cultures and their laws stop functioning at their border. Beyond these borders, one only get to choose between asking permission and acting 'all bully-like'.
And international bullying always seems to lead to expensive karma debts with unexpectedly high interest. One might even be tempted remind them that the road to happiness is through diplomacy.
The best reaction to this attack on the Gutenberg project seems to me to laugh hearrtily at the arrogance of some foreigner to Australia who doesn't seem to know enough geography to find the USA's borders.
Hackmare
-- ronan at roasp.com roasp.com
I see it that they need to apply the same principles to this as NBC did during the Olympics this summer when they blocked USers from accessing the sites in real time.
:)
The link is still valid from the US as I send this message. However, inasmuch as I can get a paper copy from the library, and its legal to do so, I'm not really interested in downloading such a lengthy tome. Classic it may well be, but I'd see it as a huge waste of bandwidth, time and paper. I can drive to the library for less cost for the gasolene. Small town