Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
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.
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well, i must be denser than the average pinwheel
because i sincerely still don't see where any ambiguity comes into play here. it seems quite straightforward to me.
- AA Milne died 50+ years ago.
- his works are therefore in the PD in Canada, under their current legislation.
- therefore any website based in canada could legally host on its servers the text of those works.
- what other people do with those texts (ie downloading them from texas, where they are still copyright) is not under the control of the website nor is it their responsibility, as long as they explicitly state a legal disclaimer about the pd state of the work and respect copyright by stating that visitors must verify the copyright laws in their country of residence before downloading.
the behavior you described (rich copyright holders with unlimited litigation ressources threatening a lawsuit
in another country to prevent PD work from being put online under the pretext that they might be accessed by people in countries where the content is not PD) seems at best unmitigatedly immoral and unethical, at worst illegal (and if it's not illegal it bloody well should be). it is absolutely shocking the attitude of rich copyright holders towards their cashcow-- sorry, "intellectual property", and their blatant disregard for the actual meaning and intent of copyright
and its legal expiration.