Project Gutenberg Volunteers Partial IMSLP Hosting

bbc writes "Project Gutenberg has volunteered to host all it legally can of the IMSLP's catalog. The Canadian provider of free public domain music recently caved to legal threats from an Austrian sheet music seller. On the Book People mailing list, Project Gutenberg's founder Michael Hart wrote: 'Project Gutenberg has volunteered to keep as much of the IMSL Project online as is legally possible, including a few of the items that were demanded to be withdrawn, as well as, when legal, to provide a backup of the entire site, for when the legalities have finally been worked out.'"

Re:I was waiting for this...

[Anonymous Coward]

(http://www.christopherculver.com/)
  I am not defending them, since I think copyright is a silly idea and a peculiar recent Western European innovation that most of the world rightly rejects, but let's have some perspective here.

>>> So it's extremely amusing that your website has a copyright notice on it. ;^)

john

Re:WOW this is nuts

[Richard_J_N]

De facto, permissions on the net are the logical OR of the permissions in the various jurisdictions. I.e, if activity X is permitted anywhere, it is permitted everywhere. (This is just another way to say that the internet treats censorship as damage, and routes around it).

This is quite clearly a good thing, and the Right thing. However, some legal jurisdictions haven't caught up with the modern world yet.

Re:What in the?

[Kadin2048]

If the US would respect an extradition request from Iran for whatever content is being distributed, I would imagine the American comapany would comply (although not happily).

I'm not sure why you think so. I don't think many U.S. judges would bother to enforce a judgment from an Iranian court against a U.S. company that was doing business in the United States, simply because someone in Iran could get on the internet and access their stuff online, and in doing so, violate Iranian laws.

The enforcement of foreign judgments in the U.S. is governed by "Uniform Foreign Money-Judgments Recognition Act, 13 U.L.A. 149 (1986)", which I don't have time to read through at the moment, but Wikipedia claims that non-recognition of judgments can be based on any of:

# Lack of conclusiveness: if the judgment was rendered under a system which does not provide impartial tribunals or procedures compatible with the requirements of due process of law.
# The foreign court did not have personal jurisdiction over the defendant.
# The foreign court did not have jurisdiction over the subject matter;
# The defendant in the proceedings in the foreign court did not receive notice of the proceedings in sufficient time to enable him to defend;
# The judgment was obtained by fraud;
# The cause of action on which the judgment is based is repugnant to the public policy of the state where enforcement is sought;

The lack of jurisdiction and repugnance to public policy would be the big ones (mostly the former), I think. Actual extradition of a person has much stricter requirements, and I doubt you could get a U.S. citizen extradited to Iran on any grounds.