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Old 03-09-2011, 11:21 PM   #5
Kali Yuga
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No.

Disclaimers like that are a thin fig leaf that doesn't really absolve the site of its responsibilities. The site is distributing the title to an area where it is not yet in the public domain, thus it's infringing. From a purely practical perspective, few copyright holders actually want to do anything more involved than send a nasty letter and lots of works are PD in most of the world at the same time. That does not prove that the disclaimer is legally sufficient -- only that so far, no one is actually angry enough to launch an expensive lawsuit.

I don't believe PD hosting sites need to go crazy or pull titles, but it would not be difficult to filter based on geographic IP data.


This lawsuit isn't really about all that, though. In this case, Congress passed a law in 1994 that agreed to harmonize some US copyright laws with the Berne Convention, and this had the effect of pulling some works that were previously PD back under copyright protection.

Of course, if Congress can do this once, then it potentially sets the precedent that it can be done again and for other reasons. This could be highly problematic for anyone who works with public domain works, since in theory they would not know when a given work might lose its PD status.

So, I'm against it, but offhand I'm not aware of what legal grounds they can use to dispute the 1994 action. US copyright law does not outline any specific rights relating to public domain, and the SCOTUS has recently stated in opinions that it's up to Congress, not the Courts, to determine the appropriate duration periods for copyright.

Then again, I'm not a lawyer arguing before the Supreme Court, so they may well turn up valid legal reasons in the case.
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