Quote:
Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel
it doesn't seem very grey to me, if Gone With the Wind was posted to PG australia before the US bullied them into extending copyright term, although it is still under copyright in the US... that seems on the contrary to explicitly resolve the question. probably there are plenty more examples.
besides which, AA Milne, if i am not mistaken, was a british author, not american. so i don't see what the US should have to say about his texts, frankly.
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It does, in Austrailia. But now Austrailia is a life + 70 country, so the books mention by VR are not going into the public domain in Austrailia for another 19-20 years. (Existing P.D. works were grandfathered. Therefore, the Mitchell estate
can't sue, because the copyright loss was explicitly agreed to by treaty.)
In Canada, which is the last major life + 50 country, the legal threat is not that the works aren't PD in Canada, but there is nothing to stop, say Ralph Sir Edward - Texan, from downloading a copy of the work from Canada that is still in copyright in America (and by US edition, also under US copyright law, as well, even if it is originally from another country.) Whether a copyright holder in the US has the
right to sue a Canadian provider, located in Canada, for providing electronic copies of works in the Canadian Public Domain, that can (and will) be downloaded in other countries where they are illegal, is not settled, as nobody has been willing to spend the money to find out. So US copyright owners can (and have) used the
threat of litigation to stop the posting of some titles that
are legal in Canada.