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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."
During the Olympics, North America ip addresses were blocked from watching much of what was available to Europeans. This was done so that NBC could retain there rights. This seems to be something that could easily be considered for links to works that are not 'legal' everywhere.
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The August 17th article on this pages discusses this.
http://ice.citizenlab.org/archives/2004_08
What is stupid is confusing Australian and Austria. It is about as logical as confusing Americans with the Amish.
In America, it's the sender, not the reciever, who is guilty of copyright infringement. If I make a dub of a DVD and give it away, I am breaking copyright law, not the person I gave it to. Now, if someone from a foreign county is doing the sending legally, then who do you sue?
Mabye I'm wrong or pointing out canadian law or something, but still, it's pretty funny. They can't do a damn thing about it, heh.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
I'm in international waters right now, accessing the internet via a company server in the US, how to deal?
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Don't expect Project Gutenberg to back down on this. They were the ones who, with the help of Lawrence Lessig and the EFF, filed suit to have the Sonny Bono Perpetual Copyright Act struck down as failing the "limited times" clause in the US Constitution. Sadly, they lost that case. But it should illustrate that PG does not take $#!t like this lying down. Expect a fight.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Hmm. At the risk of committing thoughtcrime, here is the links:
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200161.zip
Ads? What ads?
Securing our nation's "digital boarders" to prevent American-hating foreigners from terrorizing dead artists by cutting into their profits.
Seriously, the IP address blocks that went on during the Athens Olympics (US IPs were blocked from live streams so that NBC could time-shift to our primetime) are evidence that this will become something of an issue (though not necessarily in the 2008 election). Protectionism extends beyond tarrifs on steel. Protecting rights is good, but protecting business models is bad. Where to draw the line? It seems that global communication and information technologies do not fit the nation-state model of government.
Something somewhere has to give. During the last wave of "globalization" (European colonization), it was native peoples who got trounced. Who gets it this time?
So if I find a country that has very lax copyright laws or none at all, can I make there a ftp-server?
Upload games, movies, music and, ok, texts (like Project Gutenberg)... free for everybody to download?
There must be countries like this, no? Maybe some small island...
I don't need a signature.
I'm interested to know what would happen to PG Australia once the free trade agreement comes along. Since we're going to most probably adopt US Copyright laws will PG Australia have to delete twenty years of material off their servers? Also will all the people who downloaded the material have to delete the copies?
...and for some reason, if try to access George Bush's campaign web site from outside the US, you get Access Denied.
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries Aricle I Section 8
I glanced over the wikipedia article on the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, and it looks like Bono were working to protect the hugely profitable characters and works, but without thinking about other works, such as all those crap films that wind up in the $2 bin after two years.
I think that perhaps what is needed is language giving copyrights extensions but with a high fee(much more than the $25 it currently cost to get a copyright), that way items that have been forgotten about or no current holder intrest can pass into public domain.
This isn't fully thought out, but a blanket extension approaching perpetuity should probably be denied by the Supreme Court. Heirs rights are an interesting issue, but corporations can be around forever. Therefore, if you say for the "Authors lifetime" and you define the corporation as the author the copyright WILL NEVER EXPIRE. This ramble left open for riddiclue, but at least I'm not trying to be funny.
Bacardi + slashdot = negative karma.
These are the same people that brought the case againist a parody of the Gone with the Wind all the way to the Supreme Court. They can't be making that much money off Gone with the Wind, the whole estate must be devoted to paying their lawyers.
Ah, just like those "Sex Tourists" we've heard so much about, travelling to Thailand to screw underage kids...
I can't imagine what they are attempting to gain from this. If your dead set on reading this online you can get it with or without the help of TGP. And if your like me and dislike the eye strain of reading online, you can always go to a used book store and buy it for $2USD. In any of the above cases the estate doesn't see one cent.
The only case I'd imagine the suit has merits, to lost revenue, is as mandetory reading material for school children. Such as mass purchases by schools for the students (who should be buying it used anyway, but that's not relevent here). In that case there really just gouging schools. Way to go!
Can anyone else think of a ligitimate reason why this law suit should matter to the estate holders?
I would rather be ashes than dust!
At a Vienna train station, they sell T-shirts with a picture of an orange road warning sign with a Kangaroo on it (you Aussies will know what I mean).
In large text above and below the picture are the words:
"There are no Kangaroos in Austria!!"
This is entirely for the benefit of visiting Americans who are apparently unaware that Australia is not actually a small country next to Germany.... :-)
Not accessable from .edu.au though...
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
An interesting variation would be some country deciding that *all* copyright lasts for 90 years, and allowing publishers *there* to sue the US and rest of the world for infrigement everytime a public domain text is posted elsewhere. This the exact symmetry of the US vs rest of world situation.
This is not a signature.
I should have been more descriptive on the google/France, I put it out in relation to the previous post how he was alluding that the US sues. Just like the US isn't suing, an individual is; multiple companies inside of France sued Google over it's adwords business.
s tm
Back to topic, and what do you think this is then?
Germany & France sues Yahoo because people in their country can see auctions for nazi material on US servers, even though it's allowed in the country it's being housed at.
Person threatens suit because people in US can access US copyrighted material on Australian servers, even though it's allowed in the country it's being housed at.
I guess you could argue ones about not allowing a physical thing and other electronic, but the core thought behind it is the same. If you look at the article, the parallels to the Germany & France bans at yahoo are even closer:
"The Stephens Mitchell Trusts wants Australian Gutenberg volunteers either to remove Gone With the Wind from their servers or else take steps to prevent downloads in countries where copyright law bans unauthorized distribution of the 1936 classic."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/760782.
"A French judge has ruled that the US Internet Service Provider Yahoo! Inc must make it impossible for French users to access sites auctioning race hate memorabilia. "
One is preventing French users from accessing a site, the other is preventing US users from accessing a site. I'd say that's really close to apples to apples.
Well, Peter Pan is copyright in the UK *forever*. and Disney et al. have to pay the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children if they want to show their films in the UK. Interestingly, the hospital is sueing Disney in the US courts for making a prequel; a case that's on grounds about as secure as this one (i.e. not a hope)
Do you think anyone in the US will seriously consider laws in other countries or heck even international laws? Did you check compliance for North Korean laws before putting your website online?
... you could buy an oilrig and set up your own prinipality fron which to thumb your nose at the world. Although international reckognition might be a problem.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Well I surfed and unfortunately it looks like I was denied this classic in school. Says it was the most popular book (and film) ever or close to it. Anyway, there is a huge list of external reviews at imdb
and according to this one, the film at least and maybe the book for all I know glorify marital rape. Who'd a thunk?
I wonder how hard it would be for a concerted email bomb^H^H^H^H writing campaign to get this book and maybe film banned from schools and maybe libraries and rental? Seems for the U.S., revisionism is only the next step, and if books are already being banned in one state or another why not add one that is so richly deserving, seeing as how its owners wish it to be so hard to find. I don't know if it is supposed to be a parody or a snapshot of the time (since I haven't read it yet, doh) but this case is just way over the top. Now they want to stop the Internet, better call Al Gore.
How can something be removed from the public domain?
For example - say I took the existing GWTW text, which is in the public domain, and inserted a new paragraph, changed the name of one of the key characters everywhere in the book, and released the new text into the public domain as well. When this law is enacted, what is the status of the text? It is no longer GWTW, it is a derrivitive work - so the copyright does not belong to the original GWTW writer. And it was made a derrivitive work under a public domain work?
Any lawyers care to explain?
Yeah, when I was taking basic chemistry in middle school the teacher corrected my spelling of Aluminium on the quiz and took off points. So, on the next quiz I spelled Natrium, Kalium, and Ferrum properly.
I was about to lose points, except that she decided to show me the spelling on the chart that she had instead of the book. Imagine her surprise when she discovered that the chart had the official names.
Still a warm memory.
badness 10000
Actually, this is almost a sensible suggestion. ISPs are generally very keen on doing anything they can to avoid exposing themselves to litigation. Since so much copyright-related litigation originates in the US, it would be a fairly simple measure for the rest of the world to just block all IPs allocated to the USA until they bring their legal system back into line with the rest of the world. Call it trade sanctions, if you will...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Aren't the laws to be observed the ones on the country where the server is located? Isn't it how the online gambling industry operate.
Just curious about this point, if anyone cares to clarify it.
3) Torturing Human beings, killing innocents and holding prisoners in violation of the Geneva convention are justified because "the terrorists are worse".
Donny Rumsfeld actually said this.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Actually, copyright law should be 14 years like it was in the beginning in the USA. Anyone that says otherwise is anti-founding fathers and thus anti-american. Including Bono, MPAA, RIAA, and Disney and friends. Not that this matters anymore when we've got big business/big government passing roughly 30k new laws each year. The entire check and balance system of the government is almost entirely gone. The only way for progress against the current system is a revolution. Sadly, I think congress/office would nuke entire cities and states before letting that happen. Marshall law would be at least be declared within moments of any uprising.
Project Gutenberg is definitely a good start towards an active collection of works that have no governmental control over them. Obviously you still risk cross country hassles but it's very much worth the cost of such hassle to have IP free works. Sorry for this OT rant: Richard Stallman and other pro-GPL advocates take note, this is your brain on copyright (or copyleft). Avoid the system, don't try to use it against itself.. it'll only end up biting you in the end. If you're so against intellectual 'property' then don't use IP laws to cover your works, release in the public domain.
I say we throw out the bums that turned the 28-year copyright into virtually eternal. Sonny Bono, who did huge harm, is dead already (I'm not gonna say God was punishing him... not gonna say it). I'm betting Orrin Hatch is party to this since he loves the media companies so much. Any others?
Seriously though, this is one of the worst instances of corporations buying themselves influence and power from Congress at the complete expense of the public domain. How does the artist or creator benefit when the copyright lasts 50 or 70 (or 90 or whatever it is) after he dies? That's because it's not about the artist but about the corporation pimp daddy who financed his work in exchange for all rights to it.
Oh well, when the copyright on Steamboat Mickey gets close to expiring again, I'm sure Disney will buy another round of extensions, and the World War I era will continue to be the end public domain in the U.S..
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
"The Bono copyright extension was merely to bring the duration of a US copyright up to the same length of time as the European Union's copyrights."
Can't say as that it was a very succesful attempt then. I don't know much about US Copyright law, but I seem to remember something about corporate copyright to last twenty years longer in the U.S. compared to the E.U., and the gap between recording rights is vast; rights to the first Elvis recordings cease to be in 2005, IIRC.
And that's set up a China style firewall around the entire country & limit its citizens information access within its own borders
Here's a fun game to play for those of you outside of the US - try to go to http://www.georgewbush.com/
The server isn't a person - it isn't "acting". The act of copying, whether legal or otherwise, is performed by the person clicking the link, typing the command, or otherwise acting to initiate the transaction. Unless they're going to go after the programmers, sysadmins and managers who installed the systems, whose acts "enabled" the copying act. Based on that sensible jurisprudence, where humans have rights to, and responsibility for, our actions, and machines have no rights or responsibilities, the greedy GWTW estate can find liability only in Americans who download, if GWTW is under copyright here.
--
make install -not war
To remove works from the public domain, it typically takes a law, and that law must itself be legal.
It's hard to do in "democratic" countries but easy in a dictatorship.
You can sometimes accomplish the same thing if you are creative. Until a few years ago, It's a Wonderful Life (1946, copyright NOT renewed on time) was played every Christmas, in large part because it was in the public domain.
However, someone realized that one of the songs ("Buffalo Gal," I think) was still under copyright. This means nobody can show this film without the rights to play that song. Presumably, the studio that made it has the right to say "you can play the song as long as it's part of the movie," which gives them the right to license the movie again.
So, in effect, what was THOUGHT to be legally unconstrained was, in fact, under partial copyright the while time, but that copyright was not enforced for 20 years.
Memo to self:
Next time I make a movie, include at least one song that's already under copyright.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.