Jon Noring writes "Michael Hart's venerable Project Gutenberg, based in the United States, is now being threatened with a lawsuit from the estate of the long-deceased author of 'Gone With The Wind.' The threat is being made because Project Gutenberg of Australia (link not provided) has the digital text version of GWTW on its server (GWTW is Public Domain in Australia), which, according to the estate's lawyers, is downloadable from the United States. Further information, including the copy of the 'take down' letter, and some commentary, is given at TeleRead. It is likely the threat is legally meritless, yet it is troubling, showing how online repositories of public domain works may be impacted by threats from other countries where the works are still covered under copyright."

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/27/038257