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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."
When did the author die, then? AFAIK that is the only thing that matters here. If the copyright has expired, then there's no claim here..
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
The car that is parked in a street is "steelable".
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?
Yet another example of how the global internet isn't actually global. But what can you do? Have one server per country, and make sure that people only connect to the server in their country (if allowed at all)? Block incoming requests from abroad? Ask users politely to not download if their laws forbid it? The fact that they have this file on the Australian server and not the US server prooves that they are law-abiding, and yet they are still attacked.
I live in Europe and therefore I can't easily download strong-encryption PGP, but if I do, whose fault is it? Mine, or the server that hosts it in the US?
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.
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
The implication of this lawsuit is, of course, that there is some justification in international IP treaties, to make terms of copyright equal from one country to another.
Of course, the bad news is that because legislatures around the world are driven by the almighty dollar/pound/yen/euro/whatever, the trend will be for IP treaties to favor the longest term copyright of any of the participating states.
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?
This will mean works that are now in the 50-70 year period after the death of the creator will be back under copyright. :-(
That and we'll all start enjoying the US's wonderful software patents...
I mean, really, what is the point of all this? What can the plaintiff hope to gain from this frivelous legal fracas?
Free Gamer - Free games list and commentary
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
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?
I would say the distinction would be that PG is simply making the text available. They are not "pushing" it to other countries per se, they are simply making it available to download. As someone mentioned above, you should be able to post Nazi related material on your website with no fear of action by French or German governments.
If on the other hand I emailed Nazi related material to a French or German person, perhaps there would be grounds for a cease and desist order. Just making it available to those users to ignore if they want to abide by the law in their own country shouldn't be.
I guess it is also comparable (although it's the other way round) to the posting of encryption technology on US websites. I would argue (although IANAL as mentioned previously) that it should not be the responsibility of the webmaster to enforce US export law in regards to countries like Syria and North Korea since this is almost impossible to do. If it was like this you would have to check everything you post just in case there was an obscure law relating to giving material to foreign nationals of any country (since every country on earth has the potential to read your site).
From the sounds of it the Stephens Mitchell Trusts sound like litigious bastards anyway.
"And then I visited Wikipedia
Hmm. At the risk of committing thoughtcrime, here is the links:
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200161.zip
Ads? What ads?
You'll find the illegal contraband on this page.
And here are some nyud.net cachelinks to the ebook in question:
Margaret MITCHELL (1900-1949)
Please spread this work far and wide. Also remember that this is the same greedy estate that killed off a great derivative work entitled The Wind Done Gone . This sort of extreme Intellectual Property protectionism is counter-productive to the intent of copyright, and we must put a stop to it.
(posted anonymously to preempt karma-whoring whiners.)
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?
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.
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.
We really do want to see this sort of thing thrown out of court immediately.
Unfortunately we just re-elected our conservative US-Loving government, who will gladly feed us to a pack of dogs if the US asked for it. John Howard is completely spineless.
Fuck it makes me made that the dick heads of this country voted them in again.
-- The doctor said I wouldn't get so many nose bleeds if I just kept my finger out of there!
Are here
My pics.
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.
So if the copyright holders lose this case, that means it will be open season on copyright infringement.
Simply find a corrupt country that refuses to recognize the GPL etc., and do all your software development there. Steal the code from any and all open source software, and distribute the software from servers located within that country. International law won't be able to touch you.
Copyright and patents need to be standardized AND world-wide, or they are useless in this day and age.
This would let us get rid of all those low grade sherlock holmes, hg wells junk. Jungle book: back to kipling estate. We'd even have to knock down the castle in the middle of disney{land,world} because of its infringement of the Neuschwansteinschloss in Bavaria, Germany.
:)
I'd like to see disney supporting that law
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?
Dr Mr N Monkey
It has been pointed out to us that you are now in possession of the works of the Bard. We would like to take this opportunity to remind you that you and your 999,999 mates owe us a metric shitload of money for the million typewriters you have leased from us for an improbably long time.
Yours etc
Olivetti Typewriter Corp.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
This is a fundamental problem, caused by the Internet transcending national borders. If countries' laws conflict, which ones apply? The ones in the country of the author of the site? Those of the country where the site is hosted? Or those of the countries from which the content can be accessed?
Many parties are trying to push through the last option (which is, after all, the most restrictive one). However, I believe it to be infeasible in practice. A lot of information that can be found on the Internet would probably be illegal in China. Does that mean we ought to take it down? I don't think so. But then, can we expect this site to take down its content, because that content is illegal in the USA? I don't think so either.
I am vehemently opposed to people suing accross the borders for things that are not illegal in the place where they are done. China actually tries to solve the issue in a cleaner way by simply making illegal (in China) content unaccessible (in China). However, it's obviously a lost cause - there will always be sites that slip past the censorship, and there are many sites that don't have anything illegal, but are still inaccessible from China.
So what's the solution? Do not publish anything unless you know for sure it's legal to view for everyone who can view it? Now _that_ would be some world-scale censorship! Or put up a note that "this content may be illegal for you to see, break the law at your own responsibility"? Such a note would have to be applied to virtually all content (which is what Google does, for example). We can as well make it implicit. And then we're back where we started.
Perhaps somebody has a better idea, but I think a pragmatic way of going about it is this. Just publish your content, as long as it's legal where you live. If you find out (by yourself, or because someone notifies you, etc.) that the content is illegal in some place, put up a note that warns surfers that if they live in X, the following content is illegal for them to view. This way you avoid global censorship, yet give surfers from X a clear message that they shouldn't be viewing the content.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
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.
Really I think the two answers are for the USA to fix it's stupid copyright laws and for Hollywood to stop getting so much representaion without taxation. Set the IRS onto them! Define the lobbying system more clearly and jail blatant bribers, and those who take bribes. Other countries are probably getting more tax money out of Hollywood than the USA these days - even films set in California are filmed in places like Australia.
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.
Is there some sort of 'if things get bad, here's where to paypal us' kind of thing?
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!
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
Not for breaking copyright law, but import law (I believe that's where it is located). In a very convoluted way, it says that you can only import a copy if that copy would be legal, had it been made in the US. In the US, you would need the copyright holder's permission, which you do not have. Hence you can not import it to the US.
No, they're not so stupid as to leave such a gaping hole in copyright law. The only reason they can't do a damn thing about it is the same reason they can't stop millions of people doing p2p.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Get Gone With the Wind from Gutenberg Australia:
as txt (2.3MB)
as zip
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/
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.
1. Have copyright extended indefinately
2. Prove to be the sole heir of Shakespeare
3. Profit
Shouldn't there be a ??? in there somewhere?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
...but it loads up fine on our server in California.
Interestingly, we don't get any ads on yahoo.com searches, while from the CA server there are lots (we do get ads on yahoo.ie searches).
Perhaps I'm discriminating against "AL" blindness sufferers, but why would visitors from "Austria" be special on a site that is Australian?
;-)
Perhaps it's for those visitors who (allegedly) emailed the Australian tourist information service asking when the famous boys choir performed......
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?
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.
If this really turns out badly... then it seems like Aussies would have a lot to phear from DMCA and the possible Induce act and what nots sprouting from the cesspool nation!
When will it stop?!
Why must the world follow that cesspool nation that owes everybody else huge money?!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
It is "Pom", you insensitive "Yank" :)
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 !
I would say the distinction would be that PG is simply making the text available. They are not "pushing" it to other countries per se, they are simply making it available to download. (...) Just making it available to those users to ignore if they want to abide by the law in their own country shouldn't be.
With an extremely slight modification, that sounds like the description of a P2P share. You're simply making it available, if they choose to copy it, the downloader is the violator of copyright law. If people want to abide by the law, just ignore it.
Depending on the situation, they can blame:
a) The publisher
b) The ISP/network provider
c) The host/server (e.g. newsgroups servers, liable here but not in the US)
d) The "border control" on the backbone
e) The application (P2P anyone?)
f) The downloader (e.g. Canada, photocopier in library argument)
Who's responsible for what is a very complex gray area of the law. Intent and ability to control will often be decisive. If you publish a site that casually happens to be read by a North Korean is one thing, if you put up what is basicly a "HOW-TO for NK", it is something completely different.
P.S. Sorry about my other junk post, hit the enter button by accident. Why can't default at least be preview?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You forgot the key to the equation. Was the defamer austrialian? If defamer and defamed are australian I would most defnitely think australia should have jurisdiction.
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.
The defamer was NOT Australian, NOR was the server located in Australia ; so says the Australian High Court:
# Dow Jones has its editorial offices for Barron's, Barron's Online and WSJ.com in the city of New York. Material for publication in Barron's or Barron's Online, once prepared by its author, is transferred to a computer located in the editorial offices in New York city. From there it is transferred either directly to computers at Dow Jones's premises at South Brunswick, New Jersey, or via an intermediate site operated by Dow Jones at Harborside, New Jersey. It is then loaded onto six servers maintained by Dow Jones at its South Brunswick premises.
Gutnick claimed that he was defamed , where it mattered to him, Melbourne Australia.
The Australian High court agreed with him, and said that it had jurisdiction, because the the place of the wrong was Australia.
This is why this is a landmark, precedent setting case for disputes where one party is claiming jurisdiction because of a percieved wrong performed half a world away over the Internet.
The good news for PGA, is that following the principles from this case, Gutnick agreed to limit his claim to damage caused in Australia.
Importantly, in the proceedings before the primary judge the respondent confined his claim to the recovery of damages and the vindication of his reputation in Victoria. He also undertook not to bring proceedings in any other place.
So, if GWTW brings and action in Australia, then they could presumably only claim Australian copyright infringment damages, and not worldwide damages.
I think ! - INAL .. (just a law student)
... 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
Don't underestimate the pressure of foreign law for international organizations. Think of the problems Yahoo had with selling Nazi artefacts to France on their international site, which they where actually forbidden to do in a court ruling. Although I do absolutely not agree with the idea that web content providers should have to abide to law everywhere on our globe (imagine what this could mean if getting common case), I do understand that this may not only be a matter of "trying to please other governments".
I really hope that Project Gutenberg will win this case (which surely is in it's favor), as they are doing a fantastic thing, both for spreading the very idea of free literature and providing the huge library.
Citizens of the USA can vote using absentee ballots even if they are in other countries.
This is very dangerous if their lawsuit has merit. Since that would mean that all countries have great powers over other independent ones. Imagine if Pitcairn Islands (pop. 47), would create a law stating that all copyrights is valid for infinite amount of time.
And howcome it is the "most draconian" law that is supposed to go global, instead of the otherway around?
No, this lawsuit must not be valid - if it is, something is seriously wrong with the world.
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.
In fact the basis of the problem is one that is lurking around every corner on the Internet:
What countries laws ara applicable when a transaction is performed by a person in country X, when the server is in country Y?
In this case: whenever somebody in Australia will download GwtW from that Australian server it is clear that only Austeralian laws are applicable.
But when somebody in the US downloads that same e-book from that same server. Is the transaction of obtaining that book performed in Australia or in the US?
Suppose it was not Gone with the Wind but Main Kampf and that the packets between Australia and the US are routed over France. Is in that case the French law applicabble? There are some Frensh laws that prohibit the distribution of Nasi parafernalia...
The same question is of course also applicable to differences in child porn law, etc.
Another example closer to my home is the belgion law for buyer protection in the case of remote selling. This law explicitely includes internet sales and it says that the buyer has the right to return any remotely bought product within seven days after reception of the goods and get a full refund (except for transport costs).
Does this law apply when somebody in Belgium buys via E-bay something from an individual in The Netherlands?
Very complex issues for which somebody needs to find a solution in this global economy.
Somebody interested in more?
We allready defined countries X and Y. But suppose that the company that is expploiting the server in Y is in fact located in country Z...
120 chars is not enough!
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?
Dang, that was hard And yes, access denied from a Western Australian ISP.
IPOF gutenberg.net.au blocks access from North America to the Australian ex-copyright materials which might still have a legal millstone around their collective necks in the USA. Same old, same old.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
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.
I think that sealand was an abandoned military base, after WWI by the Brits. Not an oilrig.
They were outside of territorial boundaries when it started, but the UK extended those boundaries to include sealand. Read all about it
http://www.sealandgov.com/history.html
My logic skills are a bit rusty, but I'd like to see this one explained a bit more. If I'm not mistaken,
doesn't necessarily imply thatbecause it might be the case that r is always true regardless of p and q.'If anything, just use the same kind of disclaimer that they have on cryptography pages: "If you are Osama bin Laden you are not allowed to look at [t]his."'
Does Osama bin Laden read English?
Just wondering.
I am anarch of all I survey.
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.
While this is of course a nuisance for PG and PGA, it is rather amusing that at the same time Disney is being sued by Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital for infringing the copyright on Peter Pan. They claim it's out of copyright in the US, while Mickey & Co are still protected. It's just all an awful mess...
no taxation without representation!
...from outside the US - this is mentioned in the Netcraft article. Certainly they were having something of a load problem so perhaps they just want to concentrate the site on where it would be most valuable for them (most people looking at it from outside the US wouldn't have a vote).
Comprehensive Data havens may not be too far off, eh?
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
You could do that with no legal concerns over serving the information.
However, anyone who downloaded the content from outside of your little island could be breaking the laws of their country.
Plus, you'd probably find yourself on block lists pretty quickly.
Actually there was a ruling in Canada a while back about file sharing... Basically said that you can serve whatever you want; the people downloading are responsible for ensuring that they don't breach any copyright laws. And since we can download music freely thanks to the media levy, this basically meant free music sharing for all... the recording industry was none too happy about this, since they really want to go after the uploaders, being easier to track and relatively fewer of them.
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 ?!?
I could go on, but the thing I really want to say is don't reduce law to mathematics, at least not unless you understand a bit about law and the circumstances under which it is reasonable to do so. Failure to do this may result in embarrassingly bad reasoning.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Site is still accessable from my primus.ca IP address.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
That the work is downloadable is not a problem, any more than leaving the front door to your house unlocked. If someone actually enters and takes something, then it is a crime under whatever statutes apply.
Let them prosecute U.S. citizens who violate U.S. copyright laws by downloading a copy of GWTW to which they're not entitled. Recall that if the downloader already has purchased a copy of the book, then it's hard to see where they might be in violation by having an electronic copy - so long as they don't redistribute it for money.
It just brings up that internationally consistent laws for so-called intellectual property need to be setup. Cynic that I am, I expect any such effort to come up with laws to combine the worst and most regressive parts of IP law from around the world.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
They only have to wait until the free trade agreement kicks in: http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/negotiations/us_fta/f inal-text/chapter_17.html
It'll put the copyright up to 70 years, and means we have to wait another 15 years.
In the grandparent post, "converse" was technically the wrong word; that would be
which is pretty nonsensical. The converse of a conditional statement isn't necessarily true, nor is the inverse (adding NOTs to everything) -- only the contrapositive is logically equivalent.Thus, it's while it's definitely true that
that isn't exactly relevant here. A statement doesn't imply its inverse, but that wasn't even the inverse -- that would be which is another way of saying-- But even if I got that last mess wrong somehow, it doesn't matter: the original line of argument was that the original ruling can plausibly be generalized to
and then you do get the stipulated conclusion simply by substituting different values for X and Y ("Australia" for X and "U.S." for Y, instead of the reverse.)I disagree. The major difference is that the wronged party in this case is not an australian. If Bill, an aussie, painted "Bob is a dingo" on the moon, that would defame Bob (an aussie as well), and Bob can sue. If someone put up a Billboard in Melbourne which said "Yan Ping is a eggroll-head", why should Australia care? Yan Ping is not an Australian, and may not even have slander/libel laws in his country. If such laws exist, he would seek recourse in his country because that's where the billboard had its effect (assuming the billboard was big enough to be seen in his home country).
Finally this problem is starting to see the light of day.
Combine this with the unilateral rules of the WTO, there is potential for a BIG mess.
Its great that this problem is finally starting to see daylight for what it is, and perhaps just perhaps it will get solved.. before it gets worse and effects even more important items...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So whoever thinks they hold copyright here needs to be solidly kicked. 'Legal' is growing to be increasingly at odds with 'Right', and has for been some time. This is how Empires rot and fall.
Soon. .
-FL
No, it's the Bono law, not the Bonobo law. (Although a bonobo law might be a good thing.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
something like "Gone With The Broken Wind".
The heir will eventually go after the legal
owner of the Australian website. The C&D
letter is merely the opening salvo. This
might limit the owners from ever visiting
any USA territory without being subject to
arrest. (Of course, if G.W. is re-elected,
the FBI might go after the website owner on
Australian soil and kidnap him/her for USA
prosecution.)
How much money is the printed work really bringing in these days? And how much will they lose by the work being available on gutenberg? BTW: I often buy books even when the same stuff is available online.
Is this just a matter of the USA being over-run with lawyers? There are not enough legitimate claims to go around, the lawyers desperately sue everything that moves.
This post brought to you by Bruce the Impaler.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"No one demonstrates how better to bend over and take it up the arse while simultaneously screwing the public, like the Aussie politicians."
Not quite true; these politicians got re-elected after they had let Australia take it up the ass. The real losers, therefore, are the majority of the Australian public.
(Unfortunately, things don't seem to be much better in other countries. People outsource government exactly because they don't want to bother thinking about political issues themselves.)
Every time something like this happens, Slashdot posts a piece using words like "threat".
This isn't a threat. Porject Gutenberg can remove the file and proceed as usual.
What this is, actually, is a failure of national laws to cope with the un-national nature of the Internet. The Gutenberg folks should not be surprised by the GWTW letter. A number of well known precedents exist. It is Gutenberg's responsibility to understand the law in all the different nations they serve and to deal with them appropriately. Or, they can decide to ignore reality and strike a pose as guerillas in the imaginary war on copyright. It's their choice. Personally, I find martydom to be pointless.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
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!
In this case, assuming everything went ahead, Yan Ping would bring suit in, say, the great nation of NotAustrailia. Bill would be found guilty in absentia, and if he ever tried to enter NotAustrailia, he'd be arrested, forced to pay a fine, whatever.
NotAustrailia could conceivably try to get Austrailia to extradite him, or to enforce a sentance on him, which might happen for international relations reasons.
Think of it this way. If an eight year old standing on his lawn is yelling insults at an eight year old on the next lot over, the second kid's mommy might not be able to grab the kid and scold him, but she can certainly bar him from coming over, and can certainly ask the first kid's mommy to do something about it.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
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.
I know the US government under Bush is a member of /.'s Big Bad Guys list, but the implication that this is some sort of attempt by the US government to push their laws on other countries is just wrong. In fact, the opposite is true. 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. Even if there were no Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, the lawsuit could easily come from Europe.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
I mean, why can't we all do what the heck we want?
BC
Gone With The Wind was published June 30, 1936
Works published between 1923 - 1963 can be protected for upto 67 years, therefore Gone With The Wind became public domain last year, July 1, 2003. These estate Nazis have no legal recourse and should look for a real job rather than trying to police the internet.
Quick and easy copyright lifetimes:
http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm
davecb@spamcop.net
25.4 microns to the mil, baby!
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
PG should simply reply "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
Sola Deo Gloria!
Gutnick argued that he was defamed in Australia because of defamatory comments published on a registration-required site.
One of his arguments was that the content should have been restricted so as not to make it available in Australia (and specifically Victoria) where he was located and where his reputation suffered the harm. As Dow Jones had subscription information for people, it was technically possible for them to do so.
Defamation is a peculiar form of law - particularly when it comes to jurisdiction. The jurisdiction arose in the end because publication was deemed to have taken place when people downloaded it rather than when Dow Jones uploaded it, in this instance.
For non-registration required sites it would be much harder to prove. And remember - defamation is different to intellectual property so jurisdictional issues differ too.
The Liberals were a much better alternative to Labour's loony Latham and party.
I hope the Liberals elect Costello PM soon.
If you'd read your own link, you'd've seen that they didn't kill it off, and instead they settled out of court. The settlement permitted the book to be published in exchange for a donation to Morehouse College.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
Or the fact that defamation isn't the same thing as copyright infringement. Incidentally, there are treaties governing copyright infringement.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
There was actually something in the local paper related to this awhile ago. It seems that many peopl e were quite upset that EA was distributing nazi figurines (to match the characters in a game, it was either Battlefield or Medal of Honor). It would likely be illegal in Germany, but acceptable business in the US.
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
What with American copyright holders going out of their way to be dickweeds in public, and the fact that things actually make it into the public domain in Australia, something like this was bound to happen.
It should have been a more fitting title than Gone with the Wind, though. 1984 entered the public domain in Australia in 1999.
-- This void intentionally left null.
Crap, we see an article on here that says "dude eats corn flakes for breakfast" and within two minutes somebody will be going "uhuhu I read that as pr0n flakes!" but all of a sudden two letters means all americans don't know the difference between austria and australia.
Blame the news cycle; as of 1230 EDT it was on the front of Yahoo! news.
All's true that is mistrusted
Project Gutenberg has been publishing multiple books for which my family owns the copyrights for. They never received permission to use these books. They are private property. We have been mulling over the idea of whether or not its worth it to request (or sue) that they remove these pieces of literature (which we own). This does not surprise me that they're being sued.
Even though they are not making a profit off of publishing books electronically, they are (in some cases) removing a publishers ability to make a profit.
Calling it "Intellectual Property Rights" only
buys into their world view. Call it what it is,
Information Control Laws.
--
Somebody should get a shitload of monkeys together
and have them hammer out every piece of existing
ICL.
Were that I say, pancakes?
The movie "It's a Wonderful Life" lapsed into the public domain due to a clerical error - someone forgot to renew the copyright.
However, some lawyer realized the songs in it were still protected, and started sending cease-and-desist letters. It worked.
This means that it's ok to play the movie, as long as you don't play the songs. Great if your audience is deaf, but not what the general public wants to see at Christmas.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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
The legal solution to that one is to have various public-domain repositories around the world be legally independent of each other.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yes, for all intents and purposes it's legal to host things if your home country allows it.
However, you could put yourself and your country in the firing line for sanctions.
For starters, you could be blacklisted from entering the country that complained, or worse, arrested on criminal charges (if applicable) if you ever did visit that country. In an extreme case, an international arrest warrant might be issued. I doubt most countries would honor such a warrant, but some might.
If your name is General Manuel Noriega and you are a dictator and the US Government wants you badly enough, they'll send in the troops to arrest you personally.
The more likely scenario:
If it's a civil matter, nothing will happen, except you might not want to announce your travel plans if you visit the country where the complaint is filed (you want to avoid subpeonas).
If it's a criminal matter, you'll probably just find yourself unable to travel to that country.
If it's a systemic matter, your country may become the target of American political pressure and trade sanctions.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Just wait until they get sufficiently annoying to the USA.
The USA took out the gov't of then-Communist Grenada in the '80s, Panama under General Noriega in the '90s (drugs), and Afganistan (terrorism) and Iraq (presumed WMDs, among other obstensible reasons) in the '00s.
If the UK thinks it's a soverign nation, the UK may not feel obligated to defend it from a US incursion.
BTW, the USA's invaded small countries throughout its history, so this is nothing new.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
to DL "Gone With the Wind" from PG-AUS at http://gutenberg.net.au/
and put it on their web site(s). Make Mitchell's heirs sue *everyone*. >:)
Make it available for DL. My copy is at http://www.eclectic-cheval.net/gwtw.txt
In my *ahem* humble opinion, a "limited time" is your lifetime plus the lifetime of any heirs that were alive at the time the work was created.
For practical purposes, we can just set this as the world-record-age for verifiably-longest-lived person, and extend it for works still under copyright as that world record gets higher and higher. Today, that would probably be about 120 years.
For corporations, using the same longest-lived-person also makes sense.
Now, as to works that have no current stakeholders, such as the stuff in the "crap bin," ancient computer software by defunct companies, etc:
After an initial period of time (say, 1/3rd of the copyright lifetime), you have to renew at relatively frequent intervals, say, every 20 years. To renew, you are required to demonstrate a certain number of actual customers since the last renewal. If you forget to renew or can't provide sales figures, the work lapses into the public domain.
Assuming a 120 years, this would put abandoned works in the public domain after 40 years and low-sales-figures work in the public domain after 60.
I doubt such a regime would really increase the amount of things in the public domain. Rather, such a regime would spawn the creation of "copyright holding companies" that buy out the IP of defunt companies and keep the copyrights current. However, to meet the required customer quotas, they'd have to sell the items at reasonable prices, or bundle them into a subscription service, much the same way CCLI bundles church music subscriptions.
This is still A Good Thing, in that works that would otherwise be out of print would be available to those willing to pay, yet the price would be low enough to bring in legally-mandated sales volumes.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
1) the actual precedent does match your statement, after all, where x is "Australia"; and
2) the precedent hasn't actually been explicitly drawn yet, and may never be -- because this is law, not logic, and you never can tell...
Okay. Everybody put this topic down and -- back -- away -- slowly --
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.
Remember, the average lifespan was a lot shorter then, thanks in large part to better pediatric health, antibiotics, and treatments for previously almost-always-fatal conditions like cancer.
However, adjusting for "lifespan inflation" that still leaves a copyright limit of somewhere in the 30-50 year range.
Note that the maximum lifespan hasn't gone up much. The oldest person at death with reliable records was well under 130, although some people in the last 50 years claimed to be older. At the time of the founding fathers, reaching 100 was not unheard of.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If I'm an established author, and I'm in ill health and contemplating retiring or continuing to write, the additinal financial legacy for my heirs IS incentive to "create useful works."
Death of the author should not automatically cause works to fall into the public domain.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
First, please check with the local laws where the site is hosted.
PG will correct mistakes - if the work in question is protected where the site is hosted, a simple request, with documentation that the copyright is still active, is sufficient.
I assume the works in question are still in print or that the publisher plans to reprint them, make a movie out of them, or otherwise utilize the copyrights on them before the copyrights expire.
If this is not the case, consider "dedicating" the works to the public domain.
If you dedicate one work, you may create a market for the author's other works.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Project Gutenberg uses a standard set of rules to determine if the works they publish are under copyright. You can review these criteria here if you like. If you feel these rules are somehow being incorrectly applied to specific works, you can of course contact them. For works which are published after 1923, they are supposed to maintain records about how they determined the work was not under copyright. You could merely ask them to provide their reasoning.
I also seriously question whether they are eliminating any ability for a publisher to make a profit. Widespread electronic distribution of texts does not seem to decrease the saleability of dead tree versions of works. Of course even if it were true, copyright does not work to protect the publishing industry, but rather just to promote creation of new works. The two are rather distinct.
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
Oh yes, I'd forgotten about my .sig. I imagine that particular thread's been archived for several years not. It was an example of auto-troll rating on an incredibly large scale: hundreds of people who replied to an (admittedly off-topic) posting were being modded down, even when the individual posts were on-topic.
That's one of the reasons I don't moderate any more...
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
We used to actully do such translations at U of WIndsor, which had both a school of law and of philosophy. I don't claim the lawyers thought this was logical, though (;-))
davecb@spamcop.net
out of curiousity. also it would be interesting to see if anywhere those copyrights have expired.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
Which books are you talking about? Have you considered _asking_ Project Gutenberg to remove the books in question?
(I assume you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that these books are not yet in the public domain.)
"Remember, the average lifespan was a lot shorter then, thanks in large part to better pediatric health, antibiotics, and treatments for previously almost-always-fatal conditions like cancer."
I hope Jon Ingram will respond to this, because he studied this line of reasoning, and found out (IIRC) that the average lifespan _for_authors_ has not differed much between now and a hundred years ago. It was probably just manual labourers who died early.
Hmm, I bet there was a correlation between good longevity and literacy, and a correlation between good health and those with the means to get things published.
I wonder what the average lifespan of creators of copyrightable-under-today's-laws work was in 1787?
Remember, under today's laws, artisans have a copyright on ornamental designs. This includes quilts, purely-decorative elements of furniture, and other things that don't require the creator to be able to read and write or have the money or connections needed to get things into print.
Most young ladies knew how to sew, and I bet most created at least one quilt or other item from an original design before age 20. Boys knew how to whittle, and no doubt many created original works of art.
If you add them into the age statistics, you'd come up with approximately that of the general population, after subtracting those who died in childhood.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
They clearly state in the file that the copyright is to be "released" in 200X (X > 4), but with the continual lobbying done by Disney, some of the works will clearly not be released to the public anytime soon.
If you had read my original post and you'd know already.
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.
but in canada, we have free trade agreements in which our local government ceeded authority to the united states, and allowed for american interests to prosecute canadians for breaking american law. Unless i misread something in the NAFTA, it is a friggin' huge document.
If australia has yet to sign this sort of agreement[unlikely], may this message be a warning to them.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I just looked and easily found it on http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty.html.
Specificly http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200161.zip
- Greg Newby, Project Gutenberg's CEO
PS: Neither Project Gutenberg nor Project Gutenberg of Australia has been sued, ever. Neither over the claim thisWhich of course would make the whole matter moot, since GWTW is public domain in Australia ...
Actually though (and I'm not even a law student, let alone a lawyer), wouldn't the reverse apply if the principles of the precedent are being followed? Gutnick was concerned with his being damaged in Victoria by material posted overseas, so it makes some sense to restrict the damages to Victoria, but Mitchell's estate is claiming they are being damaged in the US, not Australia, so logically they could sue for damages incurred in the US. Again, IANAL.
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.