Victoria Shannon, One Internet, many copyright laws, News.com, November 8, 2004. Excerpt: "Earlier this year, the Australian affiliate of Project Gutenberg posted the 1936 novel Gone with the Wind on its Web site for downloading at no charge. After an e-mail message was sent to the site last week by the law firm representing the estate of the book's author, Margaret Mitchell, the hyperlink to the text turned into a 'Page Not Found' dead end, At issue is the date when Gone with the Wind enters the public domain. In the United States, under an extension of copyright law, Gone with the Wind will not enter the public domain until 2031, 95 years after its original publication. But in Australia, as in a handful of other places, the book was free of copyright restrictions in 1999, 50 years after Mitchell's death. The case is one more example of the Internet's inherent lack of respect for national borders or, from another view, the world's lack of reckoning for the international nature of the Internet." (Thanks to Charles W. Bailey, Jr.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/09/2004 09:52:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
