4 ms·

It's legal to download The Great Gatsby in most of the world

91 points by gluejar 13y ago

nealabq 13y ago
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 13y ago
  your version is better than mine. But I didn't have a guitar.
  - nealabq 13y ago
    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.
- IbJacked 13y ago
  Nice Alice's Restaurant adaptation :) Funny that my internal voice started sounding like Guthrie several seconds before I got the reference.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- asveikau 13y ago
  > they may think they're both trollin I can understand wanting to avoid the homophobic slur in the original, but trollin'? Bit of a stretch.
Svip 13y ago
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.
- gluejar 13y ago
  The Public Domain Calculator may be of use to you: http://outofcopyright.eu/ http://outofcopyright.eu/ but there were a lot of acronyms I didn't know.
- ernesth 13y ago
  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_length http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_copyright_len...
  - dwild 13y ago
    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?
    - ernesth 13y ago
      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.
kleiba 13y ago
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?
- gluejar 13y ago
  It's pretty clear that you would not be able to legally sell your Kindle with the imported copy- that was discussed in the Kirtsaeng decision, but I'm not sure if importing the copy for your personal use would be technically legal.
- holloway 13y ago
  Legal. No copies were made in a jurisdiction in which it was illegal. Selling it may be another matter though
  - shmageggy 13y ago
    What about giving it away? What about making personal backup copies?
    - bigiain 13y ago
      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.
shmageggy 13y ago
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.
- ma2rten 13y ago
  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.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    In my limited understanding jurisdiction is generally determined based on where the act takes place Which is generally how it has to be. Otherwise the USA could legalize murder, thus allowing US citizens to legally murder New Zealanders in New Zealand with impunity. Naturally an extreme example, but the understanding here is as old as time. "My roof, my rules".
  - shmageggy 13y ago
    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)
brandon_wirtz 13y ago
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.
- mekoka 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.
- btilly 13y ago
  I was going to correct you, spent time going through the Berne Convention to be able to say why you are wrong. Then I read http://www.ip-watch.org/2012/03/15/more-foreigners-find-themselves-targets-of-us-copyright-law/ http://www.ip-watch.org/2012/03/15/more-foreigners-find-them... which let me know that you are right. If the courts can identify some connection between the infringing act and the USA, then you can be sued by the USA. And the kinds of connections that have been deemed sufficient are pretty tenuous. For instance uploading to a website that - entirely unbeknown to you - automatically backs up to a US server suffices for US law to apply to you.
sage_joch 13y ago
This inspired a submission to /r/firstworldanarchists on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/firstworldanarchists/comments/1dzhw4/the_great_gatsby_1925_has_not_yet_entered_the/ http://www.reddit.com/r/firstworldanarchists/comments/1dzhw4...
slygent 13y ago
Heck, it's legal to download "1984" by George Orwell in much of the world, and that was published in 1949.
- kaushikt 13y ago
  haha true that !
- summerdown2 13y ago
  Not in the US from Amazon, though: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...
ajuc 13y ago
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.
kyt 13y ago
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 13y ago
  Does copyright inheritance get taxed like money?
Intermernet 13y ago
Anyone know if it's legal to upload it to the USA? If everyone who wanted it ran a little FTP (or similar) server on their machine, people in Australia could upload it to you, and therefore side-step any laws relating to downloading. Does that work? If so, lets re-write the specs for some protocols to say that what is currently known as a download is actually a "request activated upload"!
kaushikt 13y ago
you really should not be saying 'Dont click on this link'. What do you think people are gonna do ? Evil you !

91 points by gluejar 13y ago

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 13y ago
your version is better than mine. But I didn't have a guitar.
- nealabq 13y ago
  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.
IbJacked 13y ago
Nice Alice's Restaurant adaptation :) Funny that my internal voice started sounding like Guthrie several seconds before I got the reference.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
asveikau 13y ago
> they may think they're both trollin I can understand wanting to avoid the homophobic slur in the original, but trollin'? Bit of a stretch.

Svip 13y ago

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.

gluejar 13y ago
The Public Domain Calculator may be of use to you: http://outofcopyright.eu/ http://outofcopyright.eu/ but there were a lot of acronyms I didn't know.
ernesth 13y ago
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_length http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_copyright_len...
- dwild 13y ago
  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?
  - ernesth 13y ago
    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.

kleiba 13y ago

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?

gluejar 13y ago
It's pretty clear that you would not be able to legally sell your Kindle with the imported copy- that was discussed in the Kirtsaeng decision, but I'm not sure if importing the copy for your personal use would be technically legal.
holloway 13y ago
Legal. No copies were made in a jurisdiction in which it was illegal. Selling it may be another matter though
- shmageggy 13y ago
  What about giving it away? What about making personal backup copies?
  - bigiain 13y ago
    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.

shmageggy 13y ago

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.

ma2rten 13y ago
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.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  In my limited understanding jurisdiction is generally determined based on where the act takes place Which is generally how it has to be. Otherwise the USA could legalize murder, thus allowing US citizens to legally murder New Zealanders in New Zealand with impunity. Naturally an extreme example, but the understanding here is as old as time. "My roof, my rules".
- shmageggy 13y ago
  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)

brandon_wirtz 13y ago

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.

mekoka 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
btilly 13y ago
I was going to correct you, spent time going through the Berne Convention to be able to say why you are wrong. Then I read http://www.ip-watch.org/2012/03/15/more-foreigners-find-themselves-targets-of-us-copyright-law/ http://www.ip-watch.org/2012/03/15/more-foreigners-find-them... which let me know that you are right. If the courts can identify some connection between the infringing act and the USA, then you can be sued by the USA. And the kinds of connections that have been deemed sufficient are pretty tenuous. For instance uploading to a website that - entirely unbeknown to you - automatically backs up to a US server suffices for US law to apply to you.

sage_joch 13y ago

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

slygent 13y ago

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

kaushikt 13y ago
haha true that !
summerdown2 13y ago
Not in the US from Amazon, though: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...

ajuc 13y ago

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.

kyt 13y ago

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 13y ago
Does copyright inheritance get taxed like money?

Intermernet 13y ago

Anyone know if it's legal to upload it to the USA? If everyone who wanted it ran a little FTP (or similar) server on their machine, people in Australia could upload it to you, and therefore side-step any laws relating to downloading. Does that work? If so, lets re-write the specs for some protocols to say that what is currently known as a download is actually a "request activated upload"!

kaushikt 13y ago

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