Are Gutenberg books illegal to sell in Germany or any non-US countries? I am building an eBook reading service (paid) and I aim to distribute free classics available on Gutenberg Project. (at least for the start) I have gone through all Gutenberg terms which allows me to do almost anything, but Gutenberg being limited to the US, it doesn't say much beyond that. I just came to know that Gutenberg is banned in Germany, because of a lawsuit arising out of the situation that copyright expiry differs between Germany and the US (where Gutenberg is located). My questions are: Does this mean I cannot sell any books in Germany? Are there exceptions? (By selling I do not mean to sell one book for €xx - it is rather unlimited books per month sort of, but it is no different from selling) Is there a central place to know how many years old books could be safe to publish, in every country? Is there another thing that I am completely overlooking (beyond number of years passed since published / author died)? If there is a safer, more copyright-free + generic source than Gutenberg to find such books? If at all infringement occurs, what sort of difficulties could arise for me?
It is not correct to say that &quot;Gutenberg is banned in Germany&quot;. A German court ruled that Project Gutenberg (US) could not provide copies of 18 works to addresses in Germany. PGLF (the foundation that runs Project Gutenberg) decided to block all access from Germany, because similar claims might be made about other works, leading to added legal expense in Germany. PGLF is said to be appealing the German Court's decision. Many works in the PG collection are clearly out of copyright in Germany, under German law. Providing those works would not infringe German copyright. As long as the PG license is complied with (and it is quite permissive) I see no legal problem with such works, but anyone planning to start a business or service reproducing such works would be wise to consult a lawyer with knowledge of copyright law in that person's country. Note that there are PG affiliates in several countries, including Germany and Australia, that operate under their own local copyright rules, and are run separately, and have different collections of works.
Germany may be different, however in the United States this would be considered work-for-hire and the employer would be the rightful owner of the source code. Regardless of jurisdiction, and from a more practical point of view, you are better off not having a copy of the source code. Using it as reference or example in the future could easily turn into (unintentional) copyright infringement. If, in the future, you write code you would like to be able to freely keep and reuse in any project, make sure the owner/employer licenses it using something like the BSD, MIT, or ISC license.
In the United States, making a copy without permission is generally going to be a copyright violation, unless the copying is a fair use. Fair-use defenses look at four questions, and the answers to the questions can tip the scales in favor of or against a finding of fair use: Does your kind of copying affect the market for the original? To what extent can your copy fulfill the demand for the original? What if there were widespread copying of the kind you're considering? The more potential there is for the copies to replace the original, the less likely it is to be fair use. (This is the most important factor in the analysis.) Why did you make the copy? If you made the copy for purposes of news reporting, criticism, or commentary, it's more likely to be fair use. If you made a copy just so you could emjoy the work again whenever you felt like it, that may still be fair use, but it is somewhat less likely. If you made a copy just so you could sell it for profit, that's almost certainly not fair use. How much did you copy? Did you copy the whole thing, or did you copy only as much as you needed to achieve your purpose under Question 2? If you copy &quot;too much&quot; – either in the raw amount or as a fraction of the whole work – it's less likely to be fair use. What did you copy? Highly creative works, such as poems, music, and movies, are at the &quot;core&quot; of copyright principles. A fair use analysis will be more stringent in these cases than when dealing with a copy of a purely factual work, such as a phone book, biography, or list of statistics. Such works are still protected by copyright, but that protection is not as strong. So take all of those and imagine the answer to each on a spectrum. If you see things generally tipping in the direction of fair use, that's a good indication that you're going to be safe. If you see things tipping in the other direction, you may want to reconsider. These questions can be trickier than you might think. If you're dealing with a real situation, you should consult an attorney to get an answer specific to your situation. But what if I don't make any money? This fact tips the scales in your favor, but only on Question 2; you still need to consider the other factors. Whether you make money is less important than whether your copying deprives the copyright owner of the opportunity to make money, but then you have to balance that consideration against the First Amendment principles embedded in fair-use analysis. So if you're ripping Star Wars DVDs to hand them out as Christmas presents, your lack of a profit motive will not save you. But a freelance broadcast journalist who includes short snippets of &quot;Kick Out The Jams&quot; and &quot;Whip It&quot; in a piece on this year's Rock &amp; Roll Hall of Fame nominations would probably be fine, even though she's planning to make some money off her piece.
Under US copyright law, all works are protected by copyright except for US Government works. The concept of "public domain" is not legally well-defined, and is used colloquially to refer to government works, works whose protection has expired, works available to all, and works not copyrightable (such as scientific laws or old software). Under older copyright law, releasing a work without the copyright symbol effectively put the work in the public domain. One can simply say "I dedicate this work to the public domain", and that is typically taken to be enough. CC0 purports to do this (using more words). However, as far as I can tell, author rights under European law are so strong that it is simply impossible. Releasing works into the public law has to be consistent with other aspects of the law. If you grant an perpetual exclusive right to copy and distribute to a publisher, their right does not go away on your death (a right which they would not have with a real public domain work). A problem is that an author who makes such a dedication (a bare license) could revoke the license and reassert their copyright. They could be estopped from making that argument. As property, your heirs would inherit the copyright and could (try to) revoke the license. Presumably the courts would not allow them to pursue ostensive infringers. Nevertheless, your plan is neither trivial nor bullet-proof.
Copyright includes authorization of derivative works such as translations, so you must have permission of the copyright holder to create a translation. You could be sued for creating the unauthorized translation for your friend. If you attempt to further distribute the book, the chances of getting sued increase substantially. That path probably includes your legal obligation to foot the bill for the publisher and distributor having to defend themselves in court, since your contract with the publisher or distributor probably includes an indemnification clause saying that you indemnify them (pay their costs) against damages for your infringement. So your are at risk, and it increases if you do anything to distribute the translation.
There are jurisdictions that do not allow authors to place their work in the public domain, such as Germany. Main reason is the strict monistic approach the German copyright law bases on. Key feature of this approach is the concept that, in principle, the copyright/author’s right itself can neither be transferred to another person nor waived by the author herself. The German author’s right consists of two parts, the moral rights and the exploitation rights. The moral rights are – as a rule – personal rights that are bound to the person of the creator (or, after her death, her legal heirs), i.e. they can neither be transferred nor waived. Since moral and exploitation rights are considered as inseparable parts of the author’s right as a whole (monistic approach) the exploitation rights cannot – in principle – transferred or waived by contract as well. CC0 is supposed to get you as close to the public domain as possible in your legal system. CC0 helps solve this problem by giving creators a way to waive all their copyright and related rights in their works to the fullest extent allowed by law. CC0 is a universal instrument that is not adapted to the laws of any particular legal jurisdiction, similar to many open source software licenses.
In fact, the first recognition of the First Sale doctrine came about precisely because a publisher attempted to do something of the nature of what you suggest. In Bobbs-Merrill Co. vs Straus, the Bobbs-Merrill Corporation attempted to enforce the following restriction, printed on the inside of a book it published: "The price of this book at retail is one dollar net. No dealer is licensed to sell it at a less price, and a sale at a less price will be treated as an infringement of the copyright." They made the mistake of attempting to enforce it against, among others, R.H. Macy and Co., who they then had to take to court - and lost. This established the First Sale Doctrine, which then later (in 1976) was codified (in 17 U.S. Code § 109. Textbooks recently tested another element of this; in the 2013 case, Kirtsaeng v John Wiley and Sons Inc., the Supreme Court held that the First Sale doctrine trumped a notice forbidding selling a book outside of a particular territory or region (Kirtsaeng imported textbooks from Thailand, where they were much cheaper than in the US, and resold them at a profit in the US).
Suppose Publisher printed 10,000 copies under the terms of the contract, and within those two years they sold 7,000 copies (and paid royalties). If you did not receive leftover copies at the end of the 2 years, then either (1) they broke the contract or (2) at the last minute they sold the remainder to some third party. If the latter is the case, they would be obligated to pay royalties on that last sale, and the numbers should add up (assuming you know how many were printed initially). If they failed to pay royalties, or they continued to sell the book, you would need to send your lawyer after them. Another possibility is the lost-email excuse – "We emailed you asking if you wanted the books, and you didn't reply, so we sold them" (disposing of does not necessary mean "destroy"). The burden would be on them to prove that they offered you the remainders and you elected not to purchase (if that is the wording – the contract could have required a specific refusal, not just a failure to respond). Under the contract, Publisher can't just decide to keep printing the book, nor can they continue to distribute it (but a third party could distribute existing copies forever). You would have "legal exposure" i.e. some risk of being sued if you republish, but it might be minimal – definitely get your attorney to advise you on that. Vendors might refuse to sell the republished work if they think it is an unauthorized edition.