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Comment by kragen | Hacker News Reader

Only in the US; Pooh was published in the UK, and there, it doesn't enter the public domain for several more years yet, because the UK sentences copyrighted works to life plus 70 years. Christopher Robin died of old age 25 years ago, never ceasing to hate the books, and his daughter (A.A. Milne's last descendant) died nine years ago, but still you can go to jail if you share your copy of the Pooh books with a friend using a computer.

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Huh, this really surprised me, because Winnie The Pooh shipped for free with Apple Books when that came out, and I thought it was precisely because it was so old. So Apple actually licensed it then?

I haven't seen the contract paperwork, but I assume so.

How do you go to jail if there is no one to sue you?

Winnie-the-Pooh hasn't belonged to the Milne estate for a very long time. Most of the rights rest with Disney. The estate has been involved in a multi-decade legal battle to get the books back, so that they could be released to the public domain.

Source - I'm a Milne.

You can't go to jail in the US or most countries for a civil case (a civil case is what happens if someone sues you), only a criminal case. Since the No Electronic Theft act, even copyright infringement without profit motives can be criminal copyright infringement, and so for example Aaron Swartz was hounded to suicide by state prosecutors even against the apparent will of the copyright holders.

I don't know who owns Milne's copyrights, but given how profitable they are, I am sure they are jealously guarded.

I would be very surprised if the Disney company wouldn't be protective of their adaptations, at the very least. How would that interact with the book and its illustrations entering the public domain?

It's going to be interesting. Most of the copyright infringement going on is clearly of Disney's adaptations; so, for example, when a couple sold me a house in 01999 with a Pooh painting on the wall of the children's room, that was probably criminal copyright infringement of Disney's version, because the painting looked nothing like the illustrations in the books. (And I'm sure she didn't get a license from Disney to do her painting.)

This legal situation is appalling; it makes a mockery of justice and humanity.

> that was probably criminal copyright infringement

sounds more like "Fair Use", unless you imply the painting was made for the purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain. As in: they painted it right before selling and used the image to advertise the house to young couples.

Possibly. The thing about fair use is that you can never really tell. Commercial intent is only one of the four factors. The market-effect factor would also weigh in her favor. The other two factors — the nature of the work and the substantiality of the copying — plausibly weigh against her. Of course I don't think she'll be prosecuted, or I wouldn't think about posting this, but that's partly because she's not a well-known political dissident who the FBI has a pre-existing grudge against.

The Swartz case was more about an overzealous US Attorney looking for scalps than copyright.

It also highlights the ridiculously broad law at the Federal level that essentially allow US Attorneys to function like medieval inquisitors than prosecutors of a democratic state. Copyright happened to be the pretense.

Actually getting jailed for copyright infringement is quite difficult, but getting sued is quite likely: the copyright is now owned by Disney. Like everything else.

(Weirdly, the UK has a special law granting permanent copyright in Peter Pan, with the royalties going to Great Ormond Street children's hospital. https://www.gosh.org/about-us/peter-pan/copyright/ )

Hopefully it isn't actually quite likely that you will get sued for copyright infringement just for copying some files onto a USB stick. That would involve the use of something like Apple's dystopian surveillance system being used for copyright enforcement, which I think is still two or three years out.

> Actually getting jailed for copyright infringement is quite difficult...

May be actually getting in jail is difficult but a threat of jail in a criminal copyright infringement persecution can be devastating as the tragedy of Aaron Swartz [0] so vividly illustrates [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz

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