Edit: also, these are the sorts of books that don't get lumped into subscriptions and are often missing from digital libraries.
There is already an Australian branch of Project Gutenberg, which hosts some works which (for complex/obscure legal reasons) are still under copyright in the US but now public domain in Australia (e.g. the works of George Orwell). I don’t think there is a New Zealand equivalent, but I’m sure if someone was sufficiently motivated it could happen
IIRC, Gutenberg already does this, limiting access from Germany which has a stricter copyright than the US.
And even if it was blocked, vpn works fine.
Just checked and the AU site lets me access things I shouldn't where I am, so they clearly aren't that concerned.
Tons of works are in the public domain in one country, but not another.
High larious.
A number of countries have copyright restrictions on things of national significance, etc., however, and then there's the concept of domaine public payant.
I can beat that by over 4000 years.
As far as Icelandic copyright law is concerned the copyright on the Diary of Merer[1], written 4500 years ago, will be held by the French Egyptologist Pierre Tallet until 2039.
This is because the copyright protection commerces when the work is made available for sale, loaning out etc. to the public.
If you discover a previously unpublished work that's not protected by copyright you get to enjoy 25 years of copyright protection, i.e. the copyright is assigned to the person who discovered and published the work.
I only have a source in Icelandic, it's article 44 of the copyright act [2].
> Any person who, after the expiry of copyright protection, for the first time lawfully publishes or lawfully communicates to the public a previously unpublished work, shall benefit from a protection equivalent to the economic rights of the author. The term of protection of such rights shall be 25 years from the time when the work was first lawfully published or lawfully communicated to the public.