Re: copyright by successors of Barrie J.M.

On Thu, Jul 27, 2000, Jeroen Hellingman <jehe[_at_]kabelfoon.nl>
>
> On Wed, 26 Jul 2000, Jessica R. Friedman <jrfriedman[_at_]earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> > Whether or not the right to receive royalties is perpetual, I believe
> > the work is still in copyright in the UK, and the U.S. attorneys for
> > the Hospital strenuously police uses of the work. (I used to work
> > for that firm.)
>
> Since J.M. Barrie died in 1937, this is one of the works "stolen" from
> the public domain with the copyright extension in 1995 (when it was
> already PD). As it Peter Pan was published before 1922, it should be
> liberated in the U.S. already -- it is available freely from Project
> Gutenberg, including Project Gutenberg mirrors in the UK (these
> mirrors totally seem to ignore the copyright issue, which would be
> futile anyway, as it is just as easy to download texts from the
> original US sites)
>
> This leads me to the question whether people in the US can be held
> liable for copyright infringement in the EU, if they offer works PD
> in the US, but protected in the EU on a web site accessible from the
> EU, or if I, as an EU citizen, while on a holiday in the US, set up
> a web site with such works.

I think the simple answer is that the law of the place were the infringement takes place would control. The fact that the a work is in the public domain in a foreign country seems to me irrelevant.

Jim Brennan
<brennandot[_at_]prodigy.net> Received on Fri Jul 28 2000 - 15:51:09 GMT