http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/10/02/copyright-forever-less-one-day-vide...

On Sat, Oct 10, 2015 at 09:29:59AM -0700, James Adcock wrote:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/what-we-know-so-far-about-digital-righ...

Thanks for this. Meanwhile, I had just updated the TPP text at www.gutenberg.org (middle of the main page): -------- The TPP is passed, and not ratified Project Gutenberg is concerned about a new international treaty, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It has been reported as completed, but the countries involved still need to ratify the treaty for it to apply to that country. There is still time to resist the negative impact on the Public Domain, within each country. The near-final text, with analysis, is available at [WikiLeaks https://wikileaks.org/tpp-ip3/]. -------- So far, it appears that the Canada and New Zealand info pages, plus the WikiLeaks text, are the basis for all analysis. In a few weeks we'll have the final text. Much of what might impact PG the most was not clear in the WikiLeaks text: they indicated what was proposed and objected, but it's not clear to me what the final decision was. As has been observed, the TPP needs to be ratified to be in effect in each of the 12 countries. The Canadian government seems likely to change next week, which could have an impact. The US elections are awhile in the future, and ratification (or not...) before then seems likely. The urgency in the US is that a new term extension is needed in the US before 2019, otherwise the public domain will start to grow again for the first time since 1998. I expect that the US will, still, pursue an extension beyond TPP. The TPP text from WikiLeaks indicated the US wanted the world to normalize at life+120, which is longer than today's life+70 and publication+95 or publication+120. In other words, I did not see anything in TPP that would extend current US copyright term limits. There are at least two practical impacts on PG that might result from TPP: 1. Treaty enforcement. Currently, we can distribute items in the US that are not in the public domain in other countries. (And vice-versa with the international affiliates such as PG-CA and PG-AU.) With TPP, it might be that some conditions where an item is copyrighted in ANY of the signatory & ratified countries may have limitations on distribution, even from countries where that item is in the public domain in that country. 2. Changes to Rules 5 and 6, maybe others (https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_How-To). The provisions of renewal and compliance applies in the US, but not elsewhere. There are indications in the WikiLeaks text that this might change, even for items+authors entirely in the US. If any of those changes are retroactive, we'd have a big challenge to identify items for which status has changed. It seems that pre-1923 items are likely to remain in the public domain (barring retroactive actions in TPP). We will, of course, continue to monitor this closely. Any input or discussion would of course be welcome. - Greg Dr. Gregory B. Newby Chief Executive and Director Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation www.gutenberg.org A 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization with EIN 64-6221541 gbnewby@pglaf.org