Quote:
Originally Posted by 6charlong
Here’s the issue I’m concerned with. Franz Kafka was a citizen of Bohemia, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His work was published in Germany and around the world. Bohemia became part of Czechoslovakia, Germany, then Czechoslovakia again, and now the Czech Republic. Kafka died in 1924. Finally, the Mobileread servers, where we download his work, are located in Canada and I live in the US.
I want to respect Kafka’s rights-....
The final issue, I think, is how important is it for me to know whether I’m entitled to download one of Kafka’s works. It’s hard for me to see how I could possibly be expected to obey a law if I don’t know how to apply it, so my own answer to that is that I need to know, somehow, what is legal and what it not. As this thread shows, there is no universal agreement about what is fair and what isn’t. None of this was a problem before the Internet connected all of us, but now that it has, how do we proceed?
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It does get complicated doesn't it? At least we are kinda back on topic. We have very few shared global laws or even ethics or morals. Any country could potentially pass laws that allow their citizens to take your property. Would that be legal? Would it be ethical? moral?
I think/hope that part of what is being discussed in these "Secret" meetings is ways to come up with a more global agreement of how to manage intellectual property rights. Of course that may not be at the heart of it at all.
