[mekoka]

It's my understanding that The Great Gatsby is already in the public domain in some countries (Canada, Australia), hence legal to distribute (and obtain for free), if one is subject to their copyright laws. Unless there's something that I missed, the author is not wrong.

[tjmc]

You are correct. Australian copyright law used to be 50 years after the death of the author until the Australia-US free trade agreement a few years back. Now, thanks to our good friends at Disney it's 70 years like the US. However, stuff that had already passed into the public domain (Eg George Orwell) at the time of the agreement stayed public.