Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic
I am not a lawyer, and especially with International laws, things are quite murky. Now, I'm not particularly concerned about a law agency breaking into MR, for there wouldn't be any reason for them to do so. Technically, MR is operated from Switzerland, but again, this would probably not be of interest to any US-based agency. We hosted our servers in Canada for many years, but it didn't stop US-based copyright holders sending out (usually fake) DMCA notices. In addition, our Canadian hoster was recently acquired by Internap, an Atlanta-based company no less. 
I suppose that's true, hypothetically speaking. Though I don't see how anyone would have an interest in doing so against a community sharing its love for eBooks and eBook gadgets.
Ralph, I am not an copyright expert (Harry knows a lot more about it than I do!), but the general US rule is that exclusive rights expire 70 years after the author's death. When there are exceptions we will of course honor them. |
Alex, here is a quickie on US copyright (I have a sticky about it somewhere around here on the site.) Anything released in the US before 1923 is PD. Anything after 1922 is still under copyright, no matter when the author died, unless copyright was not renewed after the first 28 year period. (copyright had been 28 + 28 years until 1978). While there is a life + 70 on the books, the repeated extensions of copyight on work not in the Public Domain as of 1978, (currently it is 95 years) render the point moot.
Let me give you an example. Zane Grey wrote very popular westerns. He died in 1939. Is his works PD in the US? Only the ones published before 1923. The rest are still under copyright in the US, even though they went PD in the rest of the life + 70 world in 2010. A simple rule of thumb is that if it isn't on Project Gutenberg US, most likely it's not PD here.
I don't want to be a Grumpy Gus, but I think you are at serious risk, should somebody complain...