Hi. sorry to nitpick here, and I admit this is out of my league, but wouldn't a plain text edition remove any and all fonts or typography anyway? Let's say that you harvest an html or pdf from a country where typography is still under copyright. It is converted to plain text to comply with PG standards, plus valid html etc. Now it gets imported back into the original country. Wouldn't it be legal because the fonts have been removed? Am I missing something obvious? I've followed the thread and understand it relates to google's idea of public domain, but it would seem to me that the copyrighted portion was removed (the typography) so it wouldn't matter. At 12:17 PM 3/5/2006, you wrote:
Yes, but that's missing the point of typographical or edition copyright: a new typographical arrangement or edition of the work, in that form, has a copyright attached to it. Not the work, the typographical arrangement or edition of it. PG is infringing neither the copyright in the work nor the copyright in the typographical arrangement; but the PG edition may have copyright status in a country that DOES recognize typographical arrangements or editions, subject to national treatment and shorter-term provisions in that country's national law.