Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I really don't think that the fact that it's "a non-profit with a laudable public purpose" makes a difference. There are numerous works that are perfectly legally held on "archive.org", being in the US public domain, which would infringe copyright if you or I were to download them. Australian and British copyright law are not the same as US law. As you know, anything published prior to 1923 is automatically in the US public domain, but that's not the case in Australia or the UK. Early works by long-lived authors can, therefore, be legally downloaded by people in the US, but not by you or me.
If you were talking about a site such as PG Australia, then you would have a reasonable claim that it was their responsibility to check that the works they were offering were legal for people in Australia to download, but that certainly doesn't hold true for a site in a country with entirely different copyright rules, such as the US.
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It's an interesting point though, archive.org has been around as long as Amazon, has it's servers in the US and has never been shut down so on that basis you would assume they are legal. Amazon gives away free books and no one questions their right to do it. I'm wondering where the burden of proof would lie for downloading illegal stuff, there are so many free/subscription sites out there that I suspect the average user wouldn't know if a site was illegal or not.
Even here the worst thing that can happen with the Creative Content UK Act is they will throttle back or temporarily suspend your internet if you consistently download from illegal sites.
The main problem is that there is no way to check if content is legal or not.
And I think we can all agree that your average person-on-the-street is not going to understand international copyright law, I think the general rule of thumb is that if its offered to you and looks legit then it's probably legit and a quick read of it's about page doesn't say it's US only.