Copyfraud - public domain's fate?

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Doug Huffman

I had been reading at EFF.org's Wall of Shame, yesterday, on bogus take-down notices. Today eff.org is quite disabled.

It's a sinister plot don't you know.

[Worldwalker]

Google Books lists scans of books from the 19th century as copyrighted because of this. Not new books with any material added -- their own scans of old books. They're afraid to use the books that they themselves scanned because someone else is claiming that they "own" the copyright to, say, a late 1800's Horatio Alger novel (note: Horatio Alger has been dead for over a century).

The law isn't on the side of right or justice; it's on the side of the loudest lawyers.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

This is PGA's warning notice for Gone With the Wind. What more is needed?

H'm. Well, they could block non-Australians for starters.

In general I support PG, but yeah, if they're going to distribute public domain works without verifying the recipient's location, unfortunately they're asking for trouble.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

The problem is that a Gutenberg website in Australia is almost certainly not restricting its downloads to Australian citizens.

That should not be a problem. Drawing parallels with the pbooks is favourite pass-time so let me give it a try...

Last time that I checked, the employees in Canadian book stores were not asking for a proof of Canadian citizenship when they sold books written by authors who are in public domain in Canada, but not in... ahm, other parts of the world. If I am correct, it would be the job for customs of the country with more prohibitive copyright laws to seize illegal copies, when and if they reach the country where said laws are in effect.

So, if you are in favour of blocking, you should, really, petition your own government to employ such a technology. The rumour is that it is mature, and quite effective, that technology, judging by the experiences in certain parts of the world where it is deployed.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Ankh

Last time that I checked, the employees in Canadian book stores were not asking for a proof of Canadian citizenship when....(etc)

No, nor are they required to. If you're buying the book in Canada, you're buying it in Canada; citizenship is not relevant.

However, with online sales the point of purchase is the nation where your butt is sitting on the couch, not the vendor's location. So if you are in the US (where the book is still protected by copyright) and the online retailer is in Canada (where it isn't), they are not allowed to sell you the public domain version.

I have no idea how the specifics would work in this case. However, I don't think that a fig leaf of a disclaimer is really sufficient, especially once a copyright holder starts to complain. The onus ought to be on Gutenberg to figure out how to respect the international copyrights while also granting access in the nations where the book is PD.

IMO, a basic IP geolocation that blocks non-Aussies from accessing those specific downloads would probably be a cheap, easy and acceptable solution -- or at least, preferable to pulling the ebook altogether, since it is legitimately a PD book in Australia.

Originally Posted by Ankh

If you are in favour of blocking, you should, really, petition your own government to employ such a technology.

No thanks. Even if there is a legal means by which governments can do so, IMO there are much better ways of handling it.

Plus, it seems to me that the whole point of Gutenberg is to both promote and respect public domain, rather than to shove everything they possibly can into PD and thumb their nose at copyright holders.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

The onus ought to be on Gutenberg to figure out how to respect the international copyrights while also granting access in the nations where the book is PD.

IMO, a basic IP geolocation that blocks non-Aussies from accessing those specific downloads would probably be a cheap, easy and acceptable solution -- or at least, preferable to pulling the ebook altogether, since it is legitimately a PD book in Australia.

The thing is, if it's a public domain book in Australia, then it's also a public domain book in other Life+50 countries like Canada. Blocking all non-Australians from those particular books seems unfairly restrictive, and there's the additional consideration that PG Australia also hosts works by authors dead long enough that they would be PD in countries with longer copyright spans as well, or Life+50 authors with pre-1923/copyright-not-renewed titles that are eligible in the US while the rest of their works might not be.

The overhead it would take in terms of both human working hours and server resources to even try and selectively deny particular page/file access based not only on originating visitor IP, but also date of death/original publication of the work and list of acceptable countries for each, would be far better spent on other things.

An international ebookstore like Kobo has incentive to work that way (and this in fact is exactly how Kobo works, sparing its customers from the disappointment of geo-restrictions by just not showing them the non-eligible books at all). A non-profit volunteer organization like Gutenberg doesn't. And then there are the mirror sites to consider.

Also, I find that their notices are fairly prominent, across all the Project Gutenbergs (Projects Gutenberg?). A big obvious text block on their various front pages states that their books are public domain in the host country.

Another smaller notice is posted on each of the initial pages you click through to get to the final download link.

Project Gutenberg, whether in the US, Australian, or Canadian flavours, seems to have made a reasonable accommodation towards the acknowledging the differing copyright lengths of other countries while presenting public domain books to people who may well be eligible to download them, regardless of location respective to the PG host.

And they do respond when copyright holders contact them with legitimate complaints, as the other thread shows.

The task of ensuring their public domain books are being downloaded by eligible readers seems like it should not lie on them, but on the readers themselves, just like it's on the individual not to abuse any service that clearly and repeatedly spells out the rules, and not on the service to hedge itself about to the point where it begins to hobble its intended purpose, on the assumption that everyone is a potential abuser just waiting for their chance.

Unless it wants to do things that way.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Google Books lists scans of books from the 19th century as copyrighted because of this. Not new books with any material added -- their own scans of old books.

Google do this to try to claim ownership of the scans and scare other people off from using them. While the US rulings that exist say that they do not have any copyright in those images, there has not been a definitive federal ruling, and it is possible they could get a ruling in their favour.
In the meantime, PGDP view Google scans as a legitimate source on the basis that Google's copyright claim is invalid.

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by Ken Irving

You can't steal something from the public domain, period; nor by doing what was described above can you convert a public domain to your exclusive commercial use, period. What you can do is take a public domain work, stick it in a book, and copyright whatever is copyrightable in your particular edition. For example, if a publisher decides Great Expectations would look perfect if all the a's were changed to x's and published it that way, then maybe someone doing the same could be sued for infringement. More to the point if you do what Barnes and Nobles did with their Classics series, which is to add commentary, footnotes, you can't simply copy one of their editions, because the commentary and notes and the nice cover are copyrightable. But that does not in any way remove the original work from the public domain.

Agreed. But the fact that the books is really in public domain is irrelevant, what matters is that it's not available as public domain book because of copyfraud.

Originally Posted by Ken Irving

Anyone who is running a business on that basis might scam a few people into thinking that they actually own public domain works, but if they try to get infringement money from someone it will backfire, and they will be the ones in legal trouble.

That's not how they think. They won't try to get infringement money. They say those are their copyrighted works only to get Google Books, and possible other sites offering public-domain material for download to disallow access to it. This way they have less competition. It doesn't matter if it's legal or not, if the net effect will be that they're the only source of those books in the world.

It's analogous to how piracy works:
- Many people violate copyright and download pirate books ( = publishers committing copyfraud claim many books as their own)
- The cost of process of suing them all and proving they committed illegal acts is prohibitive ( = the process of determining if each of the many books is really a public domain one, and not copyrighted is prohibitive)
- The net effect is that many people have illegally obtained books and aren't afraid of legal repercussions ( = the publisher is the sole source of the copyfrauded books, and is also apparently not afraid of legal repercussions)

I hope the process of determining that some publishing company actively hinders the availability of public domain books could be performed on company basis, ie. by looking at all the books it claims to have at the same time, and not having to consider each books separately, and that Google Books will figure out a way to detect and defeat those attempts. In piracy's case, each downloader really has nothing to do with each other so suing them can't be streamlined.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

...there's the additional consideration that PG Australia also hosts works by authors dead long enough that they would be PD in countries with longer copyright spans as well (etc)

To be clear, I definitely support PD releases where appropriate.

That said, I don't think the technical problems are all that difficult:
• Use IP geolocation software to automatically determine the likely location of the downloader, and block specified nations.
• Only apply it when the rights holder complains.

http://www.ipligence.com/ for example offers IP geolocation info, with updates, for as low as $40/year. Obviously there's more to it than installing an app on a web server or two, but it's hardly like they will need to spend hundreds of hours per week blocking IP's.

Originally Posted by ATDrake

An international ebookstore like Kobo has incentive to work that way.... A non-profit volunteer organization like Gutenberg doesn't.

A distributor is a distributor, period. In terms of copyright they have the same obligations.

PG will have fewer resources at their disposal, but the same responsibilities.

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Also, I find that their notices are fairly prominent, across all the Project Gutenbergs.... [I]t's on the individual not to abuse any service that clearly and repeatedly spells out the rules, and not on the service to hedge itself about to the point where it begins to hobble its intended purpose, on the assumption that everyone is a potential abuser just waiting for their chance.

In the US, you need to be 18 to buy cigarettes and 21 to buy alcohol. It is the responsibility of both the buyer and the seller to avoid selling smokes and beer to a 16 year old.

The idea that PG has absolutely no responsibility in this matter, and are incapable of doing anything at all to address it, just doesn't wash.

Originally Posted by ATDrake

they do respond when copyright holders contact them with legitimate complaints.

OK, but this is a legit complaint. Gone With the Wind is not PD in the US and many other nations, so it should not be distributed in those countries on a PD basis.

Again I don't think they should pull the ebook altogether, but they should make a good-faith effort to honor international copyright laws while still distributing it as PD where applicable.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

The idea that PG has absolutely no responsibility in this matter, and are incapable of doing anything at all to address it, just doesn't wash.

Are you suggesting that every site which offers public domain books for download should be required to have a detailed knowledge of what is and is not in the public domain in every country in the world?

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

Agreed. But the fact that the books is really in public domain is irrelevant, what matters is that it's not available as public domain book because of copyfraud.

Incorrect.

Google unquestionably has the right to scan PD books and charge you to access them.

They do not have the right to say that "because we scanned these books, we now have the copyright." Nor are they making any such claim. They aren't sending PG a takedown order simply because Google scanned The Cantebury Tales and PG also has a copy on their site -- nor would any such attempts survive even the most cursory court challenge.

In fact, Google has been rampantly infringing existing copyrights -- and getting called on it. In its scanning project, Google has scanned numerous books that have both PD and copyrighted material (e.g. an introductory essay). In distributing the scans, Google is in fact infringing on those copyrights as they have not received permission to scan and distribute it. There is a massive dispute over this, involving the Author's Guild, Federal prosecutors, and numerous authors.

All this "copyfraud" talk is essentially bogus, and demonstrates an ignorance of relevant recent events, especially regarding the Google Books settlement and resulting dispute.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Google unquestionably has the right to scan PD books and charge you to access them.

They do not have the right to say that "because we scanned these books, we now have the copyright." Nor are they making any such claim.

They do claim a copyright in the scanned images.
Which is probably bogus, but there is no federally settled law on the subject, and who wants to take Google to court? Especially as they might win, which would have wide ramifications.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

In the US, you need to be 18 to buy cigarettes and 21 to buy alcohol. It is the responsibility of both the buyer and the seller to avoid selling smokes and beer to a 16 year old.

In the Netherlands you have to be 16 to buy alcohol if it is under 15% ABV, and at 18 you can drink anything. Are you saying that if an 18 year old American orders online alcoholic beverages from the Netherlands it is the theoretical distributor's duty to refuse the order?

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Are you suggesting that every site which offers public domain books for download should be required to have a detailed knowledge of what is and is not in the public domain in every country in the world?

I'd say that any site that distributes PD books is responsible for what they distribute.

I'd also say that they pretty much have all the data they need. (See below.)

Keep in mind that I do view these entities as providing a valuable public service, and they should be supported. I also recognize that because of the variations in copyright terms, it is an extremely difficult task to manage, and that in at least some cases the rights holders will be strict and/or unpleasant.

However, this does NOT absolve PD distributors of their legal responsibilities. A charity that provides medical care, for example, is still obligated to obey the laws in the jurisdictions where it performs its works.

In terms of tracking: The sites already have databases that include the author's name and the publication date. I presume they already have the date of the author's death in their database, since that information often shows up on the website. So, you add one table with "country" and "copyright length," set up the queries, feed that into an IP geolocator on the web server, and Bob's Yer Uncle.

Implementing this would not be easy or free, nor would it be bullet-proof -- nor should my brief conceptual sketch be viewed as an attempt to downplay the various difficulties. But it can definitely be done, and once it's set up, it doesn't require any more supervision or maintenance than anything else in their databases.

At a minimum, a site should try to respond to a notification of a conflict.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

In terms of tracking: The sites already have databases that include the author's name and the publication date. I presume they already have the date of the author's death in their database, since that information often shows up on the website. So, you add one table with "country" and "copyright length," set up the queries, feed that into an IP geolocator on the web server, and Bob's Yer Uncle.

Unfortunately it is most assuredly not that simple.

Two specific examples:

In the UK, the book "Peter Pan" has a perpetual copyright, with all proceeds from it going to St Ormand's Street Childrens' Hospital.

In France, anyone who served in the first or second world wars enjoys a longer copyright term than those who did not.

It's this kind of thing - and every country probably has such examples - that makes it a very, very complex situation.