On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 11:19 AM, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 5:52 PM, dmccunney <dennis.mccun...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> What we now face is a situation where work might *never* lapse into >> the public domain. >> >> The US is currently Life + 70 years. > > Totally logical, you pinko commie swine! (extreme sarcasm)
If you say so. >> Canada is still Life + 50, and the Project Gutenberg Canada site is >> leading the fight to keep it that way. > > Are you sure? I thought it was 60. I vaguely remember hearing that > _The Little Prince_ was public domain in Canada (but not U.S.). I *am* sure. Go to the Project Gutenberg Canada site I linked to in another post and look for yourself. (The Little Prince is available there in electronic form.) > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Prince#Extension_of_copyrights_in_France > > Okay, this makes no sense, but who said it had to? ;-) I honestly > have no idea of their rationale behind this. Perhaps these kinds of > rules are meant to benefit the copyright holder's children?? Correct. It doesn't make sense. As an example, Margaret Mitchell's classic novel "Gone With the Wind", has long since lapsed into the public domain, and can be found on the Project Gutenberg Australia site. You won't find a free electronic copy in the US. The Mitchell Estate takes legal action if it sees one. It doesn't have a legal leg to stand on, but no one inclined to offer a free electronic copy has the time or money to defend the effort in court, so no one tries. >> There are people making a good case it's time to simply abolish >> copyrights, as they largely no longer serve the original intended >> purpose. > > Well, when the copyright holder is nowhere to be found, or it's proven > that you can't legally buy xyz anymore, then what good is > (effectively) throwing it away unused? Especially for software, which > ages faster (and thus loses value) worse than any other kind of work. No good at all. An acquaintance posed a question on a list I'm on a while back. He was an Orthodox Jew with an interest in Jewish mysticism. There was a book on an aspect of the topic that was passed in photocopied version from hand to hand because you simply couldn't *find* the original. He had a copy of the original, and wanted to reissue it. The problem was rights. The author was long dead. The small publishing house that originally issued it was long defunct. He wanted to honor the rights and was perfectly happy to negotiate with the rights holder for the right to issue a new edition, but had no way to find out who actually held the rights. There's a fair amount of stuff in limbo for reasons like that (and more stuff that won't get reissued because the current rights holders have a vastly exaggerated idea of what the rights are worth. No one interested in reissuing the titles will pay what the rights holders ask to do so, and the work stays out of print.) In the case above, the chap asking the question was able to track down the author's grand daughter and was talking to her about a reissue, but I don't know the current status. ______ Dennis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mobile security can be enabling, not merely restricting. Employees who bring their own devices (BYOD) to work are irked by the imposition of MDM restrictions. Mobile Device Manager Plus allows you to control only the apps on BYO-devices by containerizing them, leaving personal data untouched! https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/304595813;131938128;j _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
