Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Unfortunately it's still a copyright violation for someone in Germany to download a book that's not in the public domain in Germany, even if it's legally held on a server in Canada. That's why PG Canada tells you to check that the book is in the public domain in your country before you download it.
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The issue is that the received morality at MR seems to be that it's fine to use a VPN if necessary, with Kobo it's not, to shop in other countries, but it's wrong to download books that are in the public domain in other countries but not in one's own.
In this case, the books are for sale, entirely legally, in Canada. But they're only for sale since someone who has no rights to the books in countries where they're still under copyright has OCRed them and uploaded them to Kobo. It makes no sense that it would be wrong to download them from Gutenberg CA (and only one is available) but somehow it's ok to buy them from Kobo CA, when, again, they're only available at Kobo CA because they're in the public domain in Canada.
The hairsplitting that says that copyright violations are wrong but license violations are fine has never made any sense to me, but I acknowledge that seems to be the thinking here. License devolves entirely on copyright.