Hi, Does PG have any future plans to ascertain the status of books for countries other than the U.S.? Whilst I think that clarifying the status on the download page is good; Not copyrighted in the United States. If you live elsewhere check the laws of your country before downloading this ebook. A link to some relevant information would be better. BTW: The submit the item link on the copyright-howto page needs updating; http://beryl.ils.unc.edu/copy.html
I would say the answer to your first question is no. See Faq C4, Why does Project Gutenberg advise only on U.S. copyright issues? http://www.gutenberg.org/faq/C-4 I have found that copyright is a set of issues that continually gets more complex the closer you look into it. Copyright is not actually one "right", but a bundle of separate rights. Every country has its own laws which often differ in the small details, and laws can be updated, modified, etc. at any time. It could be a liability for PG to make claims about the copyright status of items in different countries, if the information that claim was based on turns out to be wrong, or outdated. If it helps to realise it, I suspect that one thing that led to the recent change of wording that you noticed was a challenge that I received through the catalog error email. (Which I forwarded on to others.) The gist of the message was "This text is under copyright in my country, you should remove it now or you will risk legal action." Andrew On Tue, 27 Dec 2005, Darren Burnhill wrote:
Hi,
Does PG have any future plans to ascertain the status of books for countries other than the U.S.?
Whilst I think that clarifying the status on the download page is good;
Not copyrighted in the United States. If you live elsewhere check the laws of your country before downloading this ebook.
A link to some relevant information would be better.
BTW: The submit the item link on the copyright-howto page needs updating;
http://beryl.ils.unc.edu/copy.html
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On Tue, 27 Dec 2005, Darren Burnhill wrote:
Hi,
Does PG have any future plans to ascertain the status of books for countries other than the U.S.?
It's not really possible for us to do this. We've interacted with world *experts* in copyright, and for many items there is no simple answer. Many countries don't even have a concept of "fair use," making it hard to offer guidance on what items are "safe" to view even if they're copyrighted.
Whilst I think that clarifying the status on the download page is good;
Not copyrighted in the United States. If you live elsewhere check the laws of your country before downloading this ebook.
A link to some relevant information would be better.
We decided against this because it would make it look like we're trying to give copyright advice outside of our expertise.
BTW: The submit the item link on the copyright-howto page needs updating;
Fixed! I also added two links to further information in the copyright HOWTO: http://www.gutenberg.org/howto/copyright-howto One link to John Ockerbloom's copyright FAQ (it lists countries & their terms); another to the kingkong New General Catalog of birth/death dates -- both are quite useful for determining likely copyright status for items outside of the US. But I don't want to add those same links to every download page, lest it appear that we're trying to give guidance. (Also, we already get way too many questions about foreign copyright, that we cannot answer.) -- Greg
"Not copyrighted in the United States. If you live elsewhere check the laws of your country before downloading this ebook."
I think it would be better not to use the imperative here. IMO, it would be better to say something like "Project Gutenberg is not concerned with and does not know the copyright status in other nations." I don't know the exact wording, but I think we should just state the facts.
participants (4)
-
Andrew Sly -
Darren Burnhill -
David Starner -
Greg Newby