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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."
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!
In TFA it was stated that the author died in 1949, international copyright expired in 1999, but US copyright (thanks to Bono act) will expire in 2019 or never (whichever has deeper pockets).
That's because the government and people of certain countries know where their national boundries end, and don't try to force their laws on to the rest of the world.
Very bad precedent; once you start doing that, you will soon find you are obliged to, and are liable if you don't. And anyway, as we all know, proxies make it easy to circumvent. 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 his."
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...
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?
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.)
There is (From the GWTW Ebook):
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.
...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.
They only see what they wanna see, like the dead people in 6th Sense....Remember in the American Bizarro take on the world the following are all true:
1) Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are brothers
2) Iraq is full of WMDs
3) Torturing Human beings, killing innocents and holding prisoners in violation of the Geneva convention are all okay if you think you have a big dick.
4) The Metric system is for wimps
5) Anybody who's neither black nor white must be a terrorist.
6) India = Pakistan, Australia = Austria and there is no such country as Kazakhstan.
7) Pakistan is a liberal secular democracy which respects human rights, is responsible with it WMDs and good team player, and thus merits the purchase of F-16s and Stinger Missiles, miraculously similar to those owned by Osama Bin Laden's Men.
8) India is a place where people rid on elephants and camels. If you're not an elephant-rider or camel-fucker, then you must be a software developer who stole an American's God-given right to own an SUV.
9) Those dang Brits have corrupted "American" and speak it with funny accents, spelling and words. (Who the fuck takes a 'lift' to the 4th floor anyway?).
10) (my Favourite) It is better to be committed to your cause and completely wrong, then to support a cause and change your position on the release of new information(i.e. flip-flop).
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.... :-)
There's a certain difference between this and the issue at hand here though.
When did France supposedly sue Google? I haven't heard of that.
But as for the Yahoo cae: France and Germany were trying to enforce their own laws on their own territory. They weren't trying to stop Yahoo US from selling Nazi stuff, they were trying to stop them from selling them to people in France and Germany, where such a sale would be illegal.
It seems a relatively reasonable given that there isn't any international law on this subject.
The case at hand here is a copyright issue. The international rules here are clearer. It's not much a matter of interpretation because this stuff is adressed in the Berne Convention, which the USA has signed.
As far as I understand Berne, the person downloading from the USA is the one committing the infringement, and liable under US copyright law. But the person in Australia serving the text which isn't copyrighted there is not commiting any crime.
I think you're comparing an apple to an orange here.
There is a Warez Literature Club just down the street from where I live. The door to the club is guarded by unassuming little old ladies so the Authorities won't know what's happening.
Ratios are strictly enforced too. Each club member has a card that tracks what Warez Literature they take home. Fines are levied by the little old ladies if a member doesn't bring in at least as much Warez Literature they left with on previous visits and the member can not take any more Wares Literature if the fines are not paid.
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/
Fortunately, this one still is accessible:
:-)
www.georgewbush.org/
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)
But that just makes sense, after all, when G.W. gets re-elected he, led by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Pearl will concoct a scheme to invade Canada to protect the U.S. from "Salmon of Mass Desctruction".
Even as we speak, salmon are crossing the border into the United States unchecked and thereby threatening the "American Way of Life (tm)".
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
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.