Quote:
Originally Posted by markbot
If you go to the UK and download a bunch of out of copyright books (in the UK) from the Internet but then travel back to the US where those books are still in copyright, are you breaking US copyright law?
Same with books...if you go to England and photocopy "1984" and bring back the pages to the US, is that breaking US copyright law?
if not, I'd like to travel to Canada and download a couple gigs of books.
|
IANL
There are books which are out of copyright in the UK but not in the US (and of course vice-versa) but "1984" isn't one of them. Gerge Orwell died in 1950 and the UK is Life+70 so it's still or again in copyright there.
You don't really have to travel, MR's downloads section has "out of copyright in Canada" books and similar for Gutenberg Australia. Even if the site notices you are in the US and forbids the download a friend resident elswhere could do it and email it to you.
The copyright owner could, I understand, take legal action to forbid the import of infringing copies but they are unlikely to bother.
Equally, if you bring back a digital copy, reading it in the US involves a copy (internal to the hardware) so is technically an infringment too.