According to a recent article in my local paper in South Daytona Florida, the estate holders for Gone With The Wind, only have legal prosocution authority here in the United States, since the book falls under the life+75 rule governing copyright works. According to the news writter, the estate acted without authority by threatening the Australian PG group since it is understood by international copyright law to fall under public domain in Australia which has life+50 for copyritten works. Same applies to Canada's public domain publication of the book, life +50yrs. According to the article, it should be posted with a warning that the book is only under public domain in the Countries where the work meets life + 50, which means, my local PG group could be held libal in court if the work was offered for post and download without permission from the estate itself. Hope this helps to clarify a little. Perhaps a search for copyright and public domain copyright under the host nation would yield a free source for translation of the copyright laws. Here is the one for the United States. http://www.copyright.gov/ Naomi Walker enjoys reading the classics and PD books the volunteers have posted in good faith :) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Darryl Moore" <darryl@moores.ca> To: "Project Gutenberg of Canada" <pgcanada@lists.pglaf.org> Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 8:58 PM Subject: Re: [PGCanada] Gone With the Wind, redux
I have a copy already. I've also been told that Col Choat is away, and that the people minding the fort have taken it down until his return. I believe he is planning to get it back up upon his return. This is all just hearsay mind you.
Yes, since GWTW is the catalyst which has gotten me interested in this project anyway, it will be one of the first works that I would like to see made prominently available on PG Canada. However I'd like us to get all our legal, technical, and organizational ducks lined up first. Before we declare PGC hunting season open. ;-)
cheers, darryl
Wallace J.McLean wrote:
I received the following PM today at Distributed Proofreading:
From: [A DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADING VOLUNTEER'S ALIAS] To: [DP ALIAS] Posted: 10 Nov 2004 18:34 Subject: Another call to arms
Hello [DP ALIAS],
You are Canadian, aren't you? I need someone for a rescue operation; the pay is lousy* and the risk is ... er ... for you to decide.
As you know, the Mitchell estate threatened Project Gutenberg Australia (PGA) with legal action if they didn't remove their etext of Gone With The Wind, and although I do not know whether Col Choat (who effectively is PGA) removed that file, all links to it now say "Page not found", or something to that effect.
Luckily, my prodigious googling skills (cough!) allowed me to trace a copy. Unfortunately, although I am allowed to download it under [MY NATIONAL] copyright law, that same law prohibits me to publish it.
Could you perhaps download it? I am not asking you to publish it or anything (the Mitchell estate lawyers are a lot closer to Canada than to Australia), you could at least legally pass it on to someone who is allowed to publish it. Also, I believe Michael Hart and John Mark Ockerbloom (Online Books Pages) are interested in the whereabouts of any surviving copies of their etext.
Anyway, you can find a non-Gutenberg copy of the text at http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/GoneWithTheWind/. Also, part of a copy of the Gutenberg version seems to sit in the Google cache: http://64.233.183.104/search ?q=cache:rgeeJ5-OkIUJ:gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200161.txt +%22gone+with+the+wind%22 +Plain+Vanilla+Electronic+Texts &hl=en. Truncated at some point, it is not very useful reading material, but perhaps it can be used to establish whether Globusz used the Gutenberg version.
The search strings I used were:
"gone with the wind" plain vanilla electronic texts
and
"Melanie and Pittypat had gone"
I don't know if this is necessary; the Canadian volunteer who produced the text is known, and I would not be surprised if he still owned a copy, or even the original. In which case it could be rescanned and ran through DP Europe.
Perhaps I am getting too worked up over nothing. I hope I am not inconveniencing you too much.
Thanks,
*) As in: non-existant.
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_______________________________________________ Project Gutenberg of Canada Website: http://www.projectgutenberg.ca/ List: pgcanada@lists.pglaf.org Archives: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/pgcanada/