Book People Archive

Re: Copyright extension

(A slightly revised version of a note I sent to Michael and Joseph.)

Michael Hart writes:
> As you may be aware, I have recently been encouraging the startup of
> Project Gutenberg "life +50" sites. . .which may possibly have been
> part of the cause of this discussion.

Speaking from an ethical standpoint, not just a legal one, I
think such sites are best set up and run by people who are actually
in life+50 countries, with the aim of benefiting folks in those
countries.  (Otherwise, it could end up being no more than
an export haven for people in countries with longer terms to
skirt copyright laws.)  I've been wondering for a while whether
folks in Canada or Australia, say, would set up some good
general-purpose English-language book sites, but I'd feel less
comfortable with one set up in, say, Nepal, since that would
clearly be for export (few people in Nepal either speaking
English or having a Net connection).

As some of you know, our family's Canadian-American (Mary's Canadian,
I'm American, and our son is both).  We currently live in the US,
but since we have family and friends in Canada and spend some time there,
I do have some interest in having good on-line book resources for
readers in that country.  If we ever move to Canada, or spend more
time there than just visits and vacations, I'd be tempted to set up an
archive myself.  But for now, I'll leave that work to the Canadians
out there.

(There are a number of Canadian etext archives.  The larger ones I know
 of are specialized for a particular subject-- and some of them, like
 Rod Hay's economics archive at McMaster, have grown to be very impressive
 collections! In some other cases, the maintainers have unfortunately relied
 on US copyright law instead of Canadian law, so some of the books they've
 scanned don't get listed here unless a US mirror or other site also
 serves them.)

Because I think that people in the countries in question should be
running the show, I haven't been pushing the creation of such sites
from here.  (But I'll occasionally note, when appropriate, that books
that people ask about could go on-line in life+50 countries if anyone
there was interested and wanted to do the work.)  There are a number
of people in those countries on the list, and if any of them want to
set up an etext archive in their country, I'm happy to help them with any
questions they might have that I can answer.  Ultimately, though, it's
their project, not mine.

I also keep a list of pointers to information on copyright in various
countries at

   http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/okbooks.html

which interested folks may want to look at to find out about
conditions in their own countries.

John