
It's legal to download The Great Gatsby in most of the world - gluejar
http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2013/05/its-legal-to-download-great-gatsby.html
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nealabq
You know, if one person, just one person clicks on that link, they may think
he's really sick and they won't arrest him. And if two people, two people do
it, in harmony, they may think they're both trollin and they won't hassle
either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people
clickin on the link. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you
imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day clickin, downloadin, and
readin. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.

And that's what it is , the Aussie download anti-massacre movement, and all
you got to do to join is sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar.

~~~
gluejar
your version is better than mine. But I didn't have a guitar.

~~~
nealabq
Your blog post is better than any comment of mine. And I stole your idea. And
I haven't rehabilitated myself. I ain't moral enough to post on HN.

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shmageggy
These laws seem so arcane in a modern, globalized world. I'm assuming that
one's jurisdiction is determined by citizenship? Or is it geographical
location? If I'm a US citizen visiting Canada, can I legally download it
there? What if I've lived there for years, or my whole life? What if I'm a
hold a dual citizenship? What if I'm Canadian and visiting the US? If I
legally download it in Canada, can I bring it across the border? What if I use
a backup service that has servers in the US? What if it's a Canadian company
that is managing them? What if the servers are in Canada but it's a US
corporation that manages them? What if I'm a dual citizen who is physically
straddling the border? What if I copy the file onto a flash drive that's taped
to a boomerang and hurl it across the border before it comes back?

You know you have shitty laws when you can apply a reductio ad absurdum.

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ma2rten
In my limited understanding jurisdiction is generally determined based on
where the act takes place. So if a US citizen kills another US citizen in New
Zealand, New Zealand has jurisdiction.

In this case we are talking about the act of copying a document. So if you
download a book in Canada from a Canadian server Canadian copyright applies.
Imo, that is regardless of where that book was written or if you later take
that copy over the border or not.

However, I also think this is just a "rule of thumb" and can be overwritten by
any country as it pleases, e.g. US tax law applies to all income of US citizen
around the world, subject only to international treaties.

~~~
shmageggy
Ok interesting. So if this interpretation is correct, what happens if I'm in
the US, but I log into a Canadian server and download the document remotely?
I've initiated the act of copying in the US but the bits never enter the US
(Or do they? What if the IP route goes through US internet backbones? And what
if they get cached somewhere along the way, in the US? Is the ISP infringing?)

If that's ok, what if I then view the Canadian server's downloaded document on
my local machine without explicitly downloading it (via remote desktop or even
cat'ing a text file in an SSH session). I've not explicitly copied anything,
but the very act of interacting with it remotely necessarily copies it to
local memory.

What about the reverse situation, where a Canadian downloads Gatsby while
logged into a US server?

(Note I'm not trying to heckle you or demean your answer. I actually very much
appreciate the info, but I'm just trying to point out that even simple notions
such as "copying a document" aren't necessarily coherent in a modern, digital
context)

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tobiasu
Laws are not rules written in a programming language. Exploiting logic errors
and corner cases does not work the same way. Don't make this mistake.

Whether a court will let your clever workaround pass or not is up to them. If
what you do is not in their interest (or there are other forces present, like
the government or lobbyists), you may find that the law is _very_ flexible in
its application.

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brandon_wirtz
The author doesn't understand copyright. There is a difference between Legal,
and beyond prosecution.

You as an individual living in a far off land (Australia) can't be prosecuted
in Australia for copying a copy you legally obtained in the US. There is no
extradition that will allow for the US to come get you in Australia. So if you
copied, and you never visited the US you would be Safe from prosecution. You
would not be legal. (There is a difference)

If you were Amazon. You have locations in the US and Australia. You are an
international entity. You can not distribute Gatsby in Australia, because you
are violating the copyright of the country of the original copyright, and you
have presence in that country.

So the author's headline is wrong. You aren't "Legal" you are just beyond
prosecution.

This isn't to say that I think Gatsby shouldn't be public domain... Just that
the author is wrong.

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mekoka
It's my understanding that The Great Gatsby is already in the public domain in
some countries (Canada, Australia), hence _legal_ to distribute (and obtain
for free), if one is subject to their copyright laws. Unless there's something
that I missed, the author is not wrong.

~~~
tjmc
You are correct. Australian copyright law used to be 50 years after the death
of the author until the Australia-US free trade agreement a few years back.
Now, thanks to our good friends at Disney it's 70 years like the US. However,
stuff that had already passed into the public domain (Eg George Orwell) at the
time of the agreement stayed public.

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Svip
I think he fails to answer whether it is legal to download it in say... my
country, Denmark. And I am not even sure, but I think it might be.

Still, going through every copyright jurisdiction might be a bit over the top.
But reminding ourselves that it is possible in Australia and Canada are a bit
of a few choices. Oh and; his third option doesn't really seem to be much
value to me either; I know which jurisdiction I am subject to, just not its
exact rules.

~~~
ernesth
The Great Gatsby is in the public domain in all countries but 7: the USA,
Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Samoa, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, and Ivory
Coast.

All countries except the USA apply a law that states that books enter the
public domain a given number of years after the death of the author. In
Europe, it is 70 years, in Canada 50, in Mexico 100. See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_copyright_len...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_copyright_length)

~~~
dwild
Is-it that simple? Chronicle of Narnia is from C.S. Lewis and he died the 22
November 1963, which mean that it will be legal to download it in Canada after
November 22? J. R. R. Tolkien died 10 years later, which mean that we should
be able to download Lord of the ring legally in 10 years?

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ernesth
In fact, you will have to wait until the first of january following the 50th
anniversary of the death of the authors for the book to get into the public
domain (that's what the "until year end" means), but yes it is that simple.

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kleiba
What if I fly to Australia, download the Great Gatsby there, put it on my
Kindle and fly back to the states -- is it legal to bring my copy into the
country?

~~~
holloway
Legal. No copies were made in a jurisdiction in which it was illegal. Selling
it may be another matter though

~~~
shmageggy
What about giving it away? What about making personal backup copies?

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bigiain
I'm in Australia, and I downloaded it this morning.

What if I put my copy in Dropbox so I can read it on my phone/iPad? What's the
legal status of the copy Dropbox have?

Dropbox say they encrypt my data when they store it on Amazon, what's the
legal status of the encrypted copy on Amazon, and who'd be held responsible
for that if it happens in a different jurisdiction to me and my original copy?
What if Dropbox already has a copy and uses de-dupe to not bother storing my
copy? What if I try-but-don't-end-up-uploading-thanks-to-dedup my legal-in-
Australia copy from my laptop, then download a copy-of-something-I-never-
uploaded to my iPad? What if that happened via WiFi sync instead of
downloading the files from Dropbox/Amazon? Are the hashes of the files somehow
"THE PROPERTY" of the author of the book they identify?

What If I'd dropped the Gatsby .mobi file into my BoxCryptor(EncFS) folder
inside my Dropbox folder? Without my key, it's just random data that happens
to be called "TheGreatGatsby.mobi". What if I'd saved in in a PGPDisk image
stored in Dropbox - then it's just random data without even a questionable
filename - it;s mathematically no different to /dev/random, somebody's
encrypted pron collection, or wikileaks upcoming nations-state-embarrassing-
drop.

What if I travel through the US with encrypted copies of Gatsby but don't
decrypt them while I'm there? What if I "delete" any copies from devices I
travel to the US with, but my OS leaves all the data on my disk and just
removed the filesystem pointers? What if I did a dd bit-for-bit copy of that
disk-with-deleted-but-still-recoverable copyright-in-the-US data? What if
someone else who never knew the disk contained possibly-recoverable copyright
encumbered data bit-for-bit copied the disk?

If the answers to the above depend on some status or location of the passwords
or decryption keys, what are the further implications of that - does storing
my keys/passwords in Dropbox put them and the encrypted data the protect into
some particular jurisdiction? What if I store my 1Password encrypted password
file on Dropbox? Does having my head cross the border into the US with the
passwords/key inside it make a difference? Does it matter whether I'm carrying
a device or memorycard/stick with the encrypted potentially copyrighted data
on it, or does have the encryption key in my head to data stored "in the
cloud" somehow matter?

Copyright law, at least as it's developed/evolved since Gutenberg, really
wasn't written with the capabilities and edgecases of modern technology in
mind. Judges are called upon to interpret century-old artistic-expression-as-
a-physical-object copyright laws to modern sync and cache enabled technology
much of which is considered obsolete withing half a decade - and they don't
always have sane/sensible interpretations available to them. They've got an
army of oblivious/self-entitled Game Of Thrones torrenting kiddies on one
side, and an army of Prenda Law style vexatious litigants on the other.

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kyt
What is the difference between inheriting money and inheriting copyrighted
works? One is a lump sum payment and the other is an annuity. They're viewed
vastly differently, but they're essentially both just winning the lottery.

~~~
lmm
Does copyright inheritance get taxed like money?

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sage_joch
This inspired a submission to /r/firstworldanarchists on Reddit:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/firstworldanarchists/comments/1dzhw4...](http://www.reddit.com/r/firstworldanarchists/comments/1dzhw4/the_great_gatsby_1925_has_not_yet_entered_the/)

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ajuc
In my country it's legal to download ANYTHING. It's only illegal to share and
distribute copyrighted data. So if you torrent you can be persecuted because
it's P2P and you distribute it, but if you download it without sharing you're
OK.

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slygent
Heck, it's legal to download "1984" by George Orwell in much of the world, and
that was published in 1949.

~~~
summerdown2
Not in the US from Amazon, though:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html?_r=0)

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kaushikt
you really should not be saying 'Dont click on this link'. What do you think
people are gonna do ? Evil you !

