"An american is threatening an Australian about an Australian server in Australia about what an Australian person who placed this Australian server?"
Well, you got more wrong than just the missing verb.
What is really going is that "an American is threatening an American about an Australian server in Australia serving files to Americans in America".
The issue revolves around whether Project Gutenberg in the USA established a Project Gutenberg Australia in order to be able to serve in-copyright works to US citizens. I can already tell you that this is not the case. For one thing, they would need to be able to control the Australian volunteers (!) who run PGA.
Whether or not PGA is a subsidiary of PG (I don't think it is) is beside the point; subsidiaries need to adhere to local law, not to US law.
Also, it would need to be illegal for Americans to download in-copyright works from jurisdictions where these works are legal. Is that the case?
"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.
"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.)
You are joking,... yet: two of the countries that had some of the most progressive copyright laws in the world, have recently had their copyright laws changed for them by an illegal occupying army. Their names? Afghanistan and Iraq.
I seem to remember that a DMCA take-down notice amounts to perjury if you claim ownership over something you do not own.
Perhaps Project Gutenberg should reply that they will only respond to DMCA take-down notices, and failing that, that will have to see evidence that the estate actually does own all the rights they claim they own.
(In two recent internet related copyright cases, JibJab and Danger Mouse, it turned out that those who claimed to be the rights holders weren't, respectively probably weren't.)
"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."
They might be violating copyright laws. Some countries, like Canada and The Netherlands (and perhaps also Germany) allow copying for personal use, even if the work has been made available through illegal means.
The folks who make high resolution photos of the planet with run-of-the-mill equipment use such software. I believe it's called stacking software or somesuch. Failing that, run your favorite photo editor, load frames into layers and fiddle with the layer mode settings. Google is your friend.
How is this news? Cleaning film frames, whether of new or old films, is daily business. There's nothing exiting or revolutionary about it. What's the next Slashdot article, "Mac user found flipping burgers"? Sheesh.
Government has taken something that belonged to the people and given it to record companies using a law that was originally intended to protect the people from those same record companies. Go figure.
If the way copyright law is being rewritten nowadays would be applied to other areas, the maffia would soon be behind every racketeering and drug trafficking law.
Amateur satellites are of course nothing new, but it is great to see a bureaucracy like ESA more or less embrace the sort of chaotic collaboration that is one of the internet's strong points.
"Universal health care sounds nice, but I just don't think it'll work here in the US."
Well-reasoned, but I don't think it is necessary that a government provide for all health care, just for the bare minimum. Doesn't that already happen in the US?
"I'm waiting for somebody to publish the private data (financial, medical, legal) of federal officials and their families on an open internet web server out of the Bahamas. Is this what it will take for the US to enact stringent privacy rules?"
Although doing unto politicians what they do unto citizens has proven to be a very effective way to get new law passed time and again (although sometimes that new law just says that politicians are exempt), you would have to post the private data where it is already illegal to post it, because your off-shore friends will refuse to host it.
After all, these off-shore companies are in it for the money; hosting data that endangers their business makes no sense.
I do not think it was BoF's intention to point the finger of guilt at the ISPs (although the tone of voice of the PDF does seem to imply that to some extent), but rather at bad law.
So, your employer isn't one of the guilty, but Dutch parliament is (for passing bad law).
However, since you work at one of the ISPs that were a 'victim' of this test, could you please ask your employer to protest this bad law with the government? As it is, your method of asking the customer for his opinion seems the right thing to do, but the law doesn't force you to do so, and your company may still be held liable next time. (And even if you do ask the customer, it is still their words against that of the alleged copyright holder.)
Since public domain works are of the public, anyone can claim they are theirs. Whether they are is a matter of interpretation. However, some countries, like Germany, let you get a new copyright even if you only alter the lay-out a little bit, so even if the fictitious mr. Drooglever cannot claim exclusive rights to published works by Multatuli, he could have been claiming rights to just this instance.
(As a matter of fact, I believe all works are owned by the public, and only on loan to the author. But I seem to be alone in that interpretation of the reason behind copyright law, and it would dilute this argument.)
"Apparently this ISP is run by a 16-year old. He probably panicked. It is unfair to compare this with the likes of Tiscali, UPC, XS4all etc."
Ah, so businesses ran by 16-year olds can get away with anything? Good to know--it will give the meaning of "child labour at Nike" a whole different meaning when they appoint their first 16-year old CEO.
There are no such (or other) formalities involved with starting a business in the Netherlands.
In some cases, you have to register for VAT, in some cases you have to register with the local Chamber of Commerce, but there are many cases in which you have to do none of these things. The Chamber of Commerce and tax office can even deny your registration, which can be quite frustrating, because some customers expect you to be registered for both.
" The problem with this is that court is so expensive that the mere threat of lawsuit, however unlikely, is usually enough to get yourself taken down and banned."
In the USA.
There's a reason why the European branch of the RIAA is settling their lawsuits against consumers for way less than 2000 dollars; if they asked that much, the accused might as well take it to court, and at least have a chance of winning. (And, IIRC, some are indeed waiting for the court case. Which will presumably never happen, in case European judges would declare file-sharing legal, like a Canadian judge did.)
Reminds me of a couple of anti-spam lawsuits we had in the Netherlands. In the first one, the judge declared that spamming was legal (there was no E.U. directive stating otherwise back then). The judge even had the chutzpa to declare that if one does not want to receive spam, one simply changes one's e-mail address.
So some 'enterprising businessman' started sending gobs of spam to all the e-mail addresses of the parliament. Within weeks he got sued and another judge declared that it is illegal to send spam to members of parliament.
Undoubtedly, if you looked at the specifics of each case, you would probably find out that you cannot paint things as black and white as I do here, but unfortunately, as a citizen who has to work to pay the taxes that pay the wages of judges and parliamentarians, I do not have the time to closely study every pearl of wisdom that a judge might deign to release onto this frightened world.
Slashdot Mirror
" 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?"
Well, you got more wrong than just the missing verb.
What is really going is that "an American is threatening an American about an Australian server in Australia serving files to Americans in America".
The issue revolves around whether Project Gutenberg in the USA established a Project Gutenberg Australia in order to be able to serve in-copyright works to US citizens. I can already tell you that this is not the case. For one thing, they would need to be able to control the Australian volunteers (!) who run PGA.
Whether or not PGA is a subsidiary of PG (I don't think it is) is beside the point; subsidiaries need to adhere to local law, not to US law.
Also, it would need to be illegal for Americans to download in-copyright works from jurisdictions where these works are legal. Is that the case?
In theory, you are called a thinker for pointing out the discrepancy between dream and fact with such brevity and wit.
In the real world, you are called a wanker for being facetious.
"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.
PGA is subject to US law within the US. Regardless of Ron Howard's wishes, within Australia an Australian entity only has to follow Australian law.
Question of course is where the act of copying takes place.
(Plus there are exceptions, but none, AFAIK--IANAL, related to copyright law.)
Eldred is one of the tens of thousands Project Gutenberg volunteers.
Also, if I remember correctly, Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, initiated the case, but stepped down later (I forget why).
"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.)
You are joking, ... yet: two of the countries that had some of the most progressive copyright laws in the world, have recently had their copyright laws changed for them by an illegal occupying army. Their names? Afghanistan and Iraq.
I seem to remember that a DMCA take-down notice amounts to perjury if you claim ownership over something you do not own.
Perhaps Project Gutenberg should reply that they will only respond to DMCA take-down notices, and failing that, that will have to see evidence that the estate actually does own all the rights they claim they own.
(In two recent internet related copyright cases, JibJab and Danger Mouse, it turned out that those who claimed to be the rights holders weren't, respectively probably weren't.)
"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."
They might be violating copyright laws. Some countries, like Canada and The Netherlands (and perhaps also Germany) allow copying for personal use, even if the work has been made available through illegal means.
Isn't corpus neuter?
The folks who make high resolution photos of the planet with run-of-the-mill equipment use such software. I believe it's called stacking software or somesuch. Failing that, run your favorite photo editor, load frames into layers and fiddle with the layer mode settings. Google is your friend.
The problem is not so much a lack of gravity, but rather that the astro- and cosmonauts have been falling for more than 180 days.
How is this news? Cleaning film frames, whether of new or old films, is daily business. There's nothing exiting or revolutionary about it. What's the next Slashdot article, "Mac user found flipping burgers"? Sheesh.
Government has taken something that belonged to the people and given it to record companies using a law that was originally intended to protect the people from those same record companies. Go figure.
If the way copyright law is being rewritten nowadays would be applied to other areas, the maffia would soon be behind every racketeering and drug trafficking law.
Amateur satellites are of course nothing new, but it is great to see a bureaucracy like ESA more or less embrace the sort of chaotic collaboration that is one of the internet's strong points.
"Universal health care sounds nice, but I just don't think it'll work here in the US."
Well-reasoned, but I don't think it is necessary that a government provide for all health care, just for the bare minimum. Doesn't that already happen in the US?
ROTFL
Yeah, and a fat lot that has helped us.
"I'm waiting for somebody to publish the private data (financial, medical, legal) of federal officials and their families on an open internet web server out of the Bahamas. Is this what it will take for the US to enact stringent privacy rules?"
Although doing unto politicians what they do unto citizens has proven to be a very effective way to get new law passed time and again (although sometimes that new law just says that politicians are exempt), you would have to post the private data where it is already illegal to post it, because your off-shore friends will refuse to host it.
After all, these off-shore companies are in it for the money; hosting data that endangers their business makes no sense.
c't had a couple of such solutions a while ago. Check out their Mucken statt drucken and Wohnzimmer-PC projects; or look at all their projects. Is this sort of what you are looking for?
I do not think it was BoF's intention to point the finger of guilt at the ISPs (although the tone of voice of the PDF does seem to imply that to some extent), but rather at bad law.
So, your employer isn't one of the guilty, but Dutch parliament is (for passing bad law).
However, since you work at one of the ISPs that were a 'victim' of this test, could you please ask your employer to protest this bad law with the government? As it is, your method of asking the customer for his opinion seems the right thing to do, but the law doesn't force you to do so, and your company may still be held liable next time. (And even if you do ask the customer, it is still their words against that of the alleged copyright holder.)
Since public domain works are of the public, anyone can claim they are theirs. Whether they are is a matter of interpretation. However, some countries, like Germany, let you get a new copyright even if you only alter the lay-out a little bit, so even if the fictitious mr. Drooglever cannot claim exclusive rights to published works by Multatuli, he could have been claiming rights to just this instance.
(As a matter of fact, I believe all works are owned by the public, and only on loan to the author. But I seem to be alone in that interpretation of the reason behind copyright law, and it would dilute this argument.)
"Apparently this ISP is run by a 16-year old. He probably panicked. It is unfair to compare this with the likes of Tiscali, UPC, XS4all etc."
Ah, so businesses ran by 16-year olds can get away with anything? Good to know--it will give the meaning of "child labour at Nike" a whole different meaning when they appoint their first 16-year old CEO.
There are no such (or other) formalities involved with starting a business in the Netherlands.
In some cases, you have to register for VAT, in some cases you have to register with the local Chamber of Commerce, but there are many cases in which you have to do none of these things. The Chamber of Commerce and tax office can even deny your registration, which can be quite frustrating, because some customers expect you to be registered for both.
" The problem with this is that court is so expensive that the mere threat of lawsuit, however unlikely, is usually enough to get yourself taken down and banned."
In the USA.
There's a reason why the European branch of the RIAA is settling their lawsuits against consumers for way less than 2000 dollars; if they asked that much, the accused might as well take it to court, and at least have a chance of winning. (And, IIRC, some are indeed waiting for the court case. Which will presumably never happen, in case European judges would declare file-sharing legal, like a Canadian judge did.)
Reminds me of a couple of anti-spam lawsuits we had in the Netherlands. In the first one, the judge declared that spamming was legal (there was no E.U. directive stating otherwise back then). The judge even had the chutzpa to declare that if one does not want to receive spam, one simply changes one's e-mail address.
So some 'enterprising businessman' started sending gobs of spam to all the e-mail addresses of the parliament. Within weeks he got sued and another judge declared that it is illegal to send spam to members of parliament.
Undoubtedly, if you looked at the specifics of each case, you would probably find out that you cannot paint things as black and white as I do here, but unfortunately, as a citizen who has to work to pay the taxes that pay the wages of judges and parliamentarians, I do not have the time to closely study every pearl of wisdom that a judge might deign to release onto this frightened world.