Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
I would suggest they simply spin off a part of PG that is US geo restricted by blocking everybody else, and put all questionable new releases in as they enter public domain in the US.
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I guess I'm at fault for having oversimplified. It's not really true that
The Murder on the Links will only be public domain, in the US, next January. For example,
according to Wikipedia:
-- Colombia is Life + 80
-- Yemen is Life + 30
-- Eritrea is 50 years after publication
-- The Marshall Islands doesn't have copyright
Smaller countries don't count? In my opinion, that would be unprincipled. Blocking, say, Yemen -- or South Korea -- just because it's a pain to differentiate it from Europe, would be disrespectful to their readers. Also, bigger countries may have more complex laws having exceptions only found in case law. In order to really say that a book is, or is not, in the public domain, in even one foreign country, would take a long legal analysis by someone familiar with how to do legal research in that nation. It might even be that there's no real way to know a nation's policy, on old-book copyright, without a court case.
By giving in to the German courts, and blocking their site in Germany, even temporarily, Project Gutenberg is going down an impractical road.