Re: OT: How to become a mutopia-writer

[Hans Forbrich]

On Monday 22 March 2004 05:42, Thorkil Wolvendans wrote:
> Hi list!
> I was just wondering: what would happen if you publish a work at Mutopia of
> which you think is in the public domain, but there are copyright's you've
> missed (for instance editor copyright's which haven't expired yet). Does
> anyone have an idea what would happen? Would you be summoned to take it
> offline (which sounds fair to me) or would you be immidiatly sued, send to
> jail and sleep in a dark corner of the almighty dungeon where you have to
> eat bread with spiders for evermore (which doesn't really sound fair to
> me).

The answer is: it depends on the person or organization that supposedly owns 
the copyright, as well as the country where the copyright holder files the 
complaint.  

I think the second variation is unlikely.   At least the dark corner part.

I would not be surprised to see some form of monetary compensation required 
for percieved or actual financial loss by the copyright holder.  (In the US, 
just look at the recent lawsuits by the RIAA for downloaded music.)

Project Gutenberg (the book equivalent to Mutopia Project) will not make 
anything available until they have verified it is in the public domain.  I 
suspect the same of Mutopia.

(Life is unfair, but I'm sure they allow butter on the bread, in addition to 
the spiders. <g>)

/Hans