New Leaf Vote for March 2018 • The Book Came First

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Alohamora

Bah! I can't believe my library doesn't have The Old Man and the Sea in any digital format.

Double bah for being pd in Canada, but not the US.

It's at the Internet Archive.

[Alohamora]

Originally Posted by Catlady

It's at the Internet Archive.

Do you know if it's a legal download for the US?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Alohamora

Do you know if it's a legal download for the US?

No, it assuredly is not. Hemingway's work is only in the public domain in countries with a life+50 copyright term.

[Catlady]

Many works that were copyrighted for a 28-year term under earlier U.S. laws are available because their copyright was not renewed. Since the Internet Archive is a legitimate, respectable site, and since this work has been available there for years, I believe it's perfectly legitimate for me download it. I do not believe that it's up to me to investigate further.

Internet Archive also has the Charlton Heston audiobook version available for download--the same one that's on YouTube.

[issybird]

People should be mindful of copyright laws in their location. A link above was changed to a link to the Internet Archive home page and another post advocating ignoring copyright restrictions was deleted.

[Alohamora]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Many works that were copyrighted for a 28-year term under earlier U.S. laws are available because their copyright was not renewed. Since the Internet Archive is a legitimate, respectable site, and since this work has been available there for years, I believe it's perfectly legitimate for me download it. I do not believe that it's up to me to investigate further.

Internet Archive also has the Charlton Heston audiobook version available for download--the same one that's on YouTube.

Thank you.

[CRussel]

To be VERY clear -- I have a copy of The Old Man and the Sea. That copy is out of copyright, and that copy explicitly says "do with it whatever you wish". If anyone is having a hard time obtaining this book, I will most certainly want to give you a copy of my copy.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by CRussel

To be VERY clear -- I have a copy of The Old Man and the Sea. That copy is out of copyright, and that copy explicitly says "do with it whatever you wish". If anyone is having a hard time obtaining this book, I will most certainly want to give you a copy of my copy.

You can legally give a copy of your copy to anyone who lives in a country with a life+50 copyright term, but not to someone in the US, or any country whose copyright term is life+70 or longer.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You can legally give a copy of your copy to anyone who lives in a country with a life+50 copyright term, but not to someone in the US, or any country whose copyright term is life+70 or longer.

I went looking through several online databases to see if the book's copyright had been renewed. I couldn't find any book renewal in or around 1980, which was the end of the 28-year term. Which is not to say that it hasn't been renewed, but how much research do you expect a potential reader to do before downloading a book from a respectable site?

We're not talking about a publisher going out and reissuing the book without due diligence--of course a publisher should check completely. But a potential reader? I'm acting in good faith when I go to the Internet Archive and download a book, just as when I go to a store and buy a physical book--or should I ask the store to prove to me that it has the right to sell the book? And should I check with the book's publisher to make sure it legally obtained the rights to print the book? And with the author, so as to be sure the publisher isn't lying and compensated the author fairly?

No normal person does any of that, or should be expected to. Why is it different for an e-book? As long as we're not talking about some pirate site but a legitimate one, the onus is not on the reader to verify. Or do you want to call the Internet Archive a pirate site?

Project Gutenberg in the U.S. has a few of Margaret Sutton's Judy Bolton books online from the late 1950s. (That was a long-running popular girls' series, if you don't know.) I assume that she and her people forgot to renew copyright, but, naughty me, I snapped up the free downloads without doing a thorough copyright search! I didn't even do a half-assed copyright search--I just happily downloaded the books. Was that wrong? Or was it perfectly legitimate for me to assume that the books were public domain because PG is a legitimate site, just as Internet Archive is.

Bottom line: It's not my job to research the provenance of a book before I can read it.

[CRussel]

@Harry:

Originally Posted by FadedPage.com

These books are public domain in Canada (because we follow the Canadian copyright laws), but if you are in another country, you should satisfy yourself that you are not breaking the copyright laws of your own country by downloading them. You are free to do whatever you like with these books, but we hope that mainly...you will enjoy reading them.

empahsis mine.

I can legally do whatever the heck I want with these books. Full Stop.

What others can or can't do with a book is up to them and the laws that govern them. The laws that govern ME, AS A CANADIAN, are clear and unambiguous. This book is public domain. Not PD maybe. Not PD sorta. Simply PD.

If we need to discuss this in more detail, I suggest that this is not the appropriate thread. Feel free to move it or start it somewhere else.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by CRussel

@Harry:
empahsis mine.

I can legally do whatever the heck I want with these books. Full Stop.

What others can or can't do with a book is up to them and the laws that govern them. The laws that govern ME, AS A CANADIAN, are clear and unambiguous. This book is public domain. Not PD maybe. Not PD sorta. Simply PD.

Yes, of course it is in the public domain in Canada, and you can do whatever you wish with it. If you were to give it to someone in the US, it is the recipient who would be breaching US copyright law in accepting it, not you in giving it. My apologies if I was unclear on this point.

[recc]

I've found the following 2 sites useful in trying to determine if an older book is still under copyright in the US:

Cornell University has a helpful chart of the numerous changes in US copyright terms.

Stanford University has a searchable database of copyright renewals from 1950 to 1992.

In the US, "life plus 70" applies only to books published after 1977. The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1952, and therefore is governed by earlier rules which required renewal after the initial term of 28 years. If no renewal was filed, then the book is in the public domain.

Checking the Stanford database, I found that the copyright was renewed on Hemingway's earlier works such as The Sun Also Rises, but there is no copyright renewal shown for The Old Man and the Sea (other than a study guide and an introduction).

Having checked these two sites, I am quite comfortable downloading a public domain version of this book from fadedpage, and believe that I am not violating US copyright rules. Certainly I may have missed some pertinent information somewhere, but I agree with Catlady that there is a limit to how much due diligence is reasonably expected of those of us who simply want to read a book.

Hope this helps.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by recc

Checking the Stanford database, I found that the copyright was renewed on Hemingway's earlier works such as The Sun Also Rises, but there is no copyright renewal shown for The Old Man and the Sea (other than a study guide and an introduction).

Having checked these two sites, I am quite comfortable downloading a public domain version of this book from fadedpage, and believe that I am not violating US copyright rules. Certainly I may have missed some pertinent information somewhere, but I agree with Catlady that there is a limit to how much due diligence is reasonably expected of those of us who simply want to read a book.

The pertinent information you're missing is the fact that "The Old Man and the Sea" was not originally published as a book, but as a serial in "Life" magazine in 1952, and thus its copyright renewal is not in the Stanford database, which only contains book copyright renewals. The renewal is, however, in the US Copyright Office database:

Type of Work: Serial

Registration Number / Date:
RE0000052130 / 1980-01-22
Renewal registration for: B50000021683 / 1952-08-28

Title: The Old man and the sea. By Ernest Hemingway.

Appears in: Life, Sept. 1, 1952

Copyright Claimant:
Mary Hemingway (W)

Variant title: The Old man and the sea.

Names: Hemingway, Mary
Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961

As you see, the copyright was renewed after 28 years, as required, by Hemingway's widow, Mary. The book is therefore protected by copyright in the US, although it is in the public domain in countries with a "life+50" copyright term.

[Catlady]

And we readers are somehow supposed to know that the book is not a book at all but actually a magazine article, and therefore not in the most accessible database? Even though it is and has been sold as a book for over fifty years? Really?

And are you sure that a magazine copyright covers the material as it appeared in book form? Or was it copyrighted again as a book?

I guess before I download a book I need to hire an intellectual property lawyer--just to be sure that I'm not engaging in some criminal behavior.

I'll repeat: It's not my job to establish the provenance of the book before I read it. But I'm sure the folks at the Internet Archive would be glad of your concern and would look forward to your input about material on their site.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Catlady

And we readers are somehow supposed to know that the book is not a book at all but actually a magazine article, and therefore not in the most accessible database? Even though it is and has been sold as a book for over fifty years? Really?

Nope. Not your job at all. It is, however, the job of the moderating team to check these things when the copyright status of a work has been called into question, and to advise you that this work is not in the US public domain.