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Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

922 points by jwildeboer 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
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weinzierl 9y ago
> PGLAF complied with the Court's order on February 28, 2018 by blocking all access to www.gutenberg.org and sub-pages to all of Germany. I can access www.gutenberg.org and sub-pages just fine from Germany. So the block doesn't seem to be active at the moment. > Q: Why didn't Project Gutenberg simply remove the items? > A: The is no reason to remove them. The 18 eBooks are all in the public domain in the US, and have been for many years. Copyright status in another country is not relevant to the legitimate ability of Project Gutenberg -- or anyone/anything in the US -- to make any use of these books. But why then even block access from Germany? If the stance is that "Copyright status in another country is not relevant to the legitimate ability of Project Gutenberg -- or anyone/anything in the US -- to make any use of these books.", what is the rationale for the blocking. There is also the German Projekt Gutenberg (http://projekt.gutenberg.de/ http://projekt.gutenberg.de/) which is promoted by Spiegel Online (one of the most widely read German-language news websites [1]) even under their own domain as http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/ http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/. I don't know what kind of relationship the German Projekt Gutenberg has with PGLAF. The German Projekt Gutenberg is accessible for me from Germany right now, but apparently has blocked the controversial books. For example the page that lists Heinrich Mann's works says about the book "Der Untertan": "Exists in Projekt Gutenberg-DE, but is blocked until 31.12.2020" {"Im Projekt Gutenberg-DE vorhanden (gesperrt bis 31.12.2020)"} [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegel_Online https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegel_Online [2] http://projekt.gutenberg.de/autor/heinrich-mann-1637 http://projekt.gutenberg.de/autor/heinrich-mann-1637
- deleted 9y ago
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- ballenf 9y ago
  The link addresses just that: > The decision to acceed to the German Court's order to make items inaccessible from Germany is intended to be a temporary appeasement, while the appeal occurs - this is because the German appeal Court will likely look disfavorably on PGLAF if it shows contempt for the German Court.
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    Well, no crap sherlock I don't see why Project Gutenberg thinks it isn't subject to German law. And yes, it sucks and it is against the spirit of the internet. But it's either them being sued or ISPs being ordered to block the website.
    - freeflight 9y ago
      > But it's either them being sued or ISPs being ordered to block the website. Sued by whom? Afaik gutenberg.org is registered in California, no German jurisdiction, the cease&desist orders usually used to shut something like this down don't apply here. Same deal with ISPs: Afaik there's no legal framework to support anything like that, it's for exactly that reason why law firms like Waldorf and Frommer uses cease&desist letters to pretty much blackmail people into stopping the "distribution", it's all based on civil action.
      - Xylakant 9y ago
        > Afaik there's no legal framework to support anything like that, You might be careful with that assertion. As recently as Feb. 1st 2018 (so a month ago), Vodafone was compelled to block access to kinox.to in a preliminary injunction (1). The EUGH decided in 2014 that blocking pages is at least an option (2). This is contradictory to the EU e-commerce regulations, so the legality is somewhat murky at the moment, but it’s not definitely off the table. (1) https://netzpolitik.org/2018/netzsperren-vodafone-muss-kinox-to-blockieren-und-kundendaten-speichern/ https://netzpolitik.org/2018/netzsperren-vodafone-muss-kinox... (2) Telekabel Wien vs. Constantin Film http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=149924&pageIndex=0&doclang=de&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=515352 http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...
- ryanackley 9y ago
  He explains this further down. To paraphrase, he doesn't want to endanger his appeal by flaunting the German court order
jwtadvice 9y ago
Seems punitive to me, rather than 'fair'. US copyright law has no jurisdiction the same as German copyright law, other than by coincidence of geography/volunteer base. I think Project Gutenberg is doing the best thing it can for itself. I associate the project with doing the best thing it can for people. In general, we're going to run into increasing numbers of cases like this.
tehlike 9y ago
I made a tiny donation just now.
dsacco 9y ago
Can someone in Germany confirm this block is actually in place? In any case, if anyone in Germany would like to access Project Gutenberg, I maintain a full, daily updated mirror here: https://mirrors.sorengard.com/gutenberg https://mirrors.sorengard.com/gutenberg. I also support FTP and Rsync if you’d like to download that way. No donations are asked for, but it would be helpful if more people hosted mirrors for precisely this reason :). Unfortunately this mirror doesn’t have the search capabilities of the Project Gutenberg homepage, but it at least has all the files. Now I’m actually curious about what is going to happen with Project Gutenberg mirrors. In general, many mirror admins (such as myself) join a project’s mirror mailing list and don’t necessarily pay attention to the right announcements to learn about this kind of legal minutia. That presents something of a logistics problem all around. Putting aside ethics, it’s likely that many/most downstream mirrors simply won’t block German traffic. Project Gutenberg can stop redirecting German traffic to those mirrors on the fly, but they can’t stop the mirrors from being available unless they start banning mirrors (and mirror syncing traffic) that don’t enforce similar blocks...this seems logistically untenable. It would be cool if we could get a lawyer to chime in about Project Gutenberg’s liability with respect to forcing other mirrors to comply. For example, I’m making my own mirror available to Germany. Is Project Gutenberg complicit in a meaningful sense, if they allow me to continue mirroring?
- tehlike 9y ago
  Can anything be made using ipfs?
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - deleted 9y ago
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  - mirimir 9y ago
    Certainly, given that each ebook could be a static hash. But you'd need to revise index pages periodically. And I'm not sure how search could be implemented. Except through Google, which does index pages from https://ipfs.io/ipfs/ https://ipfs.io/ipfs/ . However, I gather that IPFS respects take-down requests, so you might need to use another gateway.
zorked 9y ago
The explanation is at least slightly dishonest (hopefully not intentionally) in claiming that jurisdiction was established due to content being available in German, which makes it sound like a whacko court claiming to own a language. Reading the decision one learns that some of the volunteers involved in running PG and posting these materials were residents of Germany.
- thesimon 9y ago
  >Reading the decision one learns that some of the volunteers involved in running PG and posting these materials were residents of Germany. It is only mentioned in the plaintiff's complaint though, not in the reasoning by the court.
- lowry 9y ago
  Definitely intentionally. Shame on Project Gutenberg and their lawyers.
- freeflight 9y ago
  This is kinda the same tactic that was used by YouTube to block videos in Germany, blocking them with a message about to the GEMA issue. It might be slightly dishonest, but it's at least pointing the user in the direction of the actual culprit. Imho this is a valid approach because it creates awareness for a problem that the vast majority of people are never really aware of.
- KenoFischer 9y ago
  I thought so too reading the first couple of pages of the decision, but in the judicial conclusion section, the jurisdictional issue is squarely resolved on the "targets German users" issue, which the court bases on 1) Partial translation of the website 2) The availability of German language works 3) The "anyone anywhere" language on the website 4) A disclaimer that people should check their local laws (implying in the opinion of the court that they knew non-US persons were accessing their material and intentionally targeting their offering to such people). So yeah, while the language issue is only part of the judicial reasoning, is is indeed mentioned three times in the judicial conclusions. The court does not however appear to adopt plaintiff's theory on jurisdiction because some of the volunteers were German. As such, I'm inclined to think that while the focus on the language issue is perhaps a bit overstated in their statement, it is definitely grounded in the opinion of the court. As an aside though, I'm not convinced the court spent too much time considering the jurisdictional arguments here, which I think are probably the most important part of this case. Most of the analysis is concerned with whether the publisher plausibly alleged they own the copyright. I assume that is because that is usually the primary point of contention in copyright cases.
cheschire 9y ago
I hope frivolous lawsuits such as this further inspire non profits to take their hosting to decentralized providers such as zeronet and ipfs. There’s almost no need to host these projects centrally anymore, and it seems to only invite attacks such as this one.
- shaki-dora 9y ago
  It’s not frivolous, almost by definition, if you win a lawsuit. You can disagree with this court’s judgement on all sorts of issues, but Germany isn’t usually known to be a banana republic with corrupt and/or completely incompetent judges.
deleted 9y ago
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freech 9y ago
> mainly because the www.gutenberg.org site has some content in the German language. That's an extraordinary theory of international law. By that logic Austria and Namibia also have jurisdiction.
- thesimon 9y ago
  It's false though. The court says German law applies because German users can access the site. German language is only briefly mentioned, but not the argument of the court.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    How do you think so? From the court order: "Hierfür spricht, dass die Webseite teilweise in Deutsch gehalten ist, dass auf der Seite Werke in deutscher Sprache angeboten werden [...]" And there are even more arguments by the prosecutor which go beyond "accessible from Germany".
- Moru 9y ago
  In Sweden you have to follow swedish law if you target your business towards swedes. If you use swedish language, sell directly to swedes and so on. I'm sure Germany has something similar.
  - zanny 9y ago
    Swedish is a bit more rare in International linguistics, but German is not. There is an entire population in the American mideast that learn and speak German as just an example of a very far off population of non-German speakers of the language. Even without speakers, Gutenberg hosting these books does not mean they are targeting Germans. I can put any of these texts through Google translate and read them myself despite my only experience with German being one class in high school.
    - detuur 9y ago
      I can't think of a single US-specific website that has a German language option for German-speaking Midwesterners. There probably exist some, but their German language option will be very clearly described for this purpose when this is the motivation. There's a difference between theoretical plausible deniability, and practical plausible deniability. This excuse falls in the first category, accompanied by other colourful excuses like "I didn't steal that, someone must've slipped it into my pocket and I didn't notice". Theoretically possible, but ultimately implausible and completely dismissible unless you've got proof to back it up. This sort of "remote jurisdiction" is necessary. Otherwise the only recourse to criminal foreign sites targeting your country will be to endlessly try to block it, while blocks are cheap and easy to evade. The GDPR rests on the same principle of remote jurisdiction. If your website targets EU citizens, you have to abide by EU privacy rules.
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userbinator 9y ago
The Plaintiff is S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH Are they related to Springer Verlag and/or that other German publishing group whose main objective was to take collections of Wikipedia articles, verbatim, and turn them into books?
- easychris 9y ago
  They belong to the Holtzbrinck Group [1]. They also operate a VC [2] and own or are invested in a lot of startups. [1] https://www.holtzbrinck.com/ https://www.holtzbrinck.com/ [2] http://www.hvventures.com/ http://www.hvventures.com/
- Xylakant 9y ago
  Which is, btw., entirely covered by the license as long as you allow redistribution and have proper attribution. Wikipedia is mostly covered by CC-BY-SA.
- imurray 9y ago
  "Verlag" is just the German word for publishing house.
blt 9y ago
Is this Verlag related to the academic publisher / rent seeker, Springer Verlag?
- thesimon 9y ago
  Partially, the parent company is part of the SpringerNature joint venture.
- greenyoda 9y ago
  "Verlag" just means "publishing company" in German.[1] There are probably many publishers in Germany that have that word in their name. [1] https://translate.google.com/#de/en/Verlag https://translate.google.com/#de/en/Verlag
- pgeorgi 9y ago
  Verlag means "publisher", it's not part of a name. (There are two publishers going by "Springer" though, you were referring to J. Springer, not A. Springer)
nshoo 9y ago
This might be helpful. When I got randomly blocked for 24 hours (in the US), recently, some of the mirrors still worked. You can find them here: https://www.gutenberg.org/MIRRORS.ALL https://www.gutenberg.org/MIRRORS.ALL I’d be interested to see if they work in this case.
- deleted 9y ago
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jaakl 9y ago
> PGLAF is entirely in the US PGLAF has awesome mission, but that base assumption is not really correct. With publishing content in Germany (or whatever country) over Internet (or otherwise) they have crossed physical and legal borders. You must obey local laws everywhere and US laws are legal in their soil only. The attitude that US laws are something globally applicable and Internet is something above local laws is naive and total blockage “revenge” is just plain childish.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Perhaps if that’s the only action they ever take. In the short term, it’s possible it’s the only action they can safely take, if they want some time to analyze the situation.
- quasarj 9y ago
  Wooah careful there buddy, using the word "revenge" is not legal in my jurisdiction, and you just published it here by placing it on the internet!
  - coldtea 9y ago
    You mock what the parent said, but yet, if something isn't legal in the USA, most would find it OK to be cut.
    - jaakl 9y ago
      I dont say that such interpretation of international law over web content is practical, reasonable, etc, but it is as it is. Better be aware of this if you publish anything not trivial, otherwise your US (for example) lawyers will be happy to work on your hopeless case.
- stale2002 9y ago
  > total blockage “revenge” is just plain childish. It seems like it is working to get them publicity. If germany doesn't like that they are now being blocked, then they should change their laws. It is their website, so too bad for germany. Protesting ridiculous copywrite laws is perfectly reasonable.
akerro 9y ago
That's quite ironic, Gutenberg was German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gutenberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gutenberg
- cheschire 9y ago
  And he was from Mainz, which is only a 30 minute drive from where this court case was tried.
larkeith 9y ago
The crux of the argument seems to be whether German copyright applies to US websites served to German users; Project Gutenberg's view and the Court's view are below. Project Gutenberg: Q: So the court thinks that the presence of content in German means that courts in Germany have jurisdiction, regardless of the fact that PGLAF is entirely in the US? A: Yes, that was the original basis of the claim for jurisdiction, which the Court accepted in their judgement. Since then, there some more recent decisions in the European Court of Justice, and other German courts, that support this theory based on a Web site being accessible from a country. Those other cases involve companies that actually operate (for-profit) in Europe, and cases between two European countries (i.e. part of the EU). They are not consistent with prior laws and cases, even in Europe, and also not consistent with provisions of the Berne Convention and other international law. In addition, PGLAF has pointed out that Germany is widely spoken in the US (the third-most common second language), and also is widely taught in schools and colleges. PGLAF has no actual presence or activity in Germany. Court Decision: Reasons for the decision The action is admissible and well founded. 1. The action is admissible. In particular, the District Court of Frankfurt am Main has international and local jurisdiction pursuant to § 32 ZPO (German Rules of Civil Procedure). According to § 32 ZPO, the court of the district where an unlawful act was committed has jurisdiction for suits brought against such acts. Unlawful acts within the meaning of § 32 ZPO also include copyright infringements. Along with local jurisdiction, this provision also governs the international jurisdiction of German courts. An unlawful act within the meaning of § 32 ZPO is deemed to have been committed both at the place where the offense was committed and at the place where the offense had its effect, so jurisdiction optionally applies to the place where the infringement was committed or where the legally protected interest was affected. A conclusive claim of facts substantiating an unlawful act committed within the judicial district is enough to establish jurisdiction. § 32 ZPO also covers claims for injunctive relief. Accordingto§32ZPO,ifacopyrightorrelatedpropertyrightisallegedlyinfringedby making the protected property publicly accessible via a website, the place where the unlawful act was committed isGermanyiftheassertedrightsareprotectedinGermanyand if the website is (also) publicly accessible in Germany. However, intended availability of the web presence in Germany (among other countries) is not a requirement (Federal Court of Justice, GRUR 2016, 1048, marginal number 18 - An Evening with Marlene Dietrich; cf. Regional Court of Hamburg, Judgment dated 06/19/2015 - 308 0 161/13, BeckRS 2015, 18942; Regional Court of Hamburg, Judgment dated 06/17/2016 - 308 0 161/13, BeckRS 2016, 12262). These requirements are met in this case, as the works in dispute which are protected in Germany are indisputably also available in Germany. Also, the plaintiff has convincingly argued that the availability has led to downloads in Germany. Apart from that, the first defendant’s website is also intended to target German users. This is supported by the fact that the website is partially in German, that the site offers German- language works, and that the first defendant explicitly strives to make the works available globally (“anyone anywhere”). This is not contradicted by the disclaimer in the first defendant’s website stating that users must verify if they are entitled to download the works in their respective countries. Rather, this disclaimer indicates that the defendants are aware that their website is also visited by users from other countries than the United States.
curiousfab 9y ago
PG did exactly the right thing here. By only blocking these 18 books, nobody would have taken much notice of this. By blocking all German users from the site, they will get a lot of media attention, and S. Fischer Verlag will get a lot of bad press. Whether or not they will move from their position is questionable, but it will hurt them. Just sent a small donation to PG. Making an effort not to buy books from that publishing house ever again, and telling all my friends about it.
- teamhappy 9y ago
  > Making an effort not to buy books from that publishing house ever again, and telling all my friends about it. Good luck with that. S. Fischer is owned by Holtzbrinck. They own Macmillan, Springer Nature and a bunch of other publishing houses. Here's a list of their subsidiaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holtzbrinck_Publishing_Group#Subsidiaries_and_imprints https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holtzbrinck_Publishing_Group#S...
  - scythe 9y ago
    Is it so uncommon for big companies to evaluate the performance of various divisions independently? If Holtzbrinck recognizes that S. Fischer's activities have caused that subsidiary to start losing money, they will probably modify their opinion. Why would they want to subsidize a losing bet using the profits from other divisions? The fact that two companies are owned by the same holding group does not really mean they are the "same" company, any more than two companies which are majority owned by the same private investors are the same company.
    - mcguire 9y ago
      I would guess most of us outside Germany have no real contact with S. Fischer, but considerable dealings with Holtzbrinck's other subsidiaries.
    - teamhappy 9y ago
      S. Fischer isn't just a independent subsidiary. The company is run by Monika Schoeller (born Monika von Holtzbrinck). She and her brother own large parts of Holtzbrinck and she's listed as a partner and member of the supervisory board on Holtzbrinck's website. (Her brother, Stefan von Holtzbrinck, is the CEO.) > Why would they want to subsidize a losing bet using the profits from other divisions? Because owning S. Fischer, Rowohlt and Droemer Knaur means owning a large chunk of the german book market.
CO-VAX 9y ago
I just donated $100 to PGLAF because they are fighting the good fight. Their donation page [0] includes "Think of this as a contribution to your grandchildren." However in this instance I think of it as a contribution against publishers (ab)using the justice system much like so-called patent trolls. > Q: The plaintiff is S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH. Is that the international conglomerate? > A: Yes, it is part of a family of companies all under single ownership and control or majority stakeholdership, from Germany, reaching around the world. S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH is a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg Holtzbrinck GmbH. Internationally it is known in the US and elsewhere as Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC. Readers in the US know this as Macmillan, which is one of the largest publishers in the US by revenue, and owns many familiar imprints. US readers might also recall that Macmillan was one of four companies accused by the US Dept. of Justice in 2012 of price fixing. The companies eventually settled the antitrust claims, including by giving credits to customers who had overpaid for eBooks. [0] https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Project_Gutenberg_Needs_Your_Donation https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Project_Gutenberg_N...
- MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
  I hope you don't mind that I take this opportunity to tell about he GFF, because it is very much related. If you are European and care about freedom rights, there is now an equivalent to the EFF/ACLU, called the "Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte" (short GFF), which translates to "Society For Freedom Rights". They are mostly lawyers fighting strategic court battles in one of the cheapest country to do so, which in Europe happens to be Germany. This is a cost-effective way to further the cause of human and freedom rights. If you are upset about * excessive surveillance * anti-whistleblower laws * laws against freedom of information then consider joining, they need your support to do what they do: https://freiheitsrechte.org/join/ https://freiheitsrechte.org/join/ Disclaimer: I'm not involved with the GFF except as a paying member.
  - nabla9 9y ago
    European Digital Rights EDRi is the closest equivalent to the EFF in Europe. EDRi is an association of civil and human rights organizations from across Europe. It has existed since 2002. https://edri.org/ https://edri.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Digital_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Digital_Rights https://edri.org/members/ https://edri.org/members/ (EFF from USA is also a member) GFF is more German centered organization. I don't know how it relates to other German organizations like https://digitalcourage.de/ https://digitalcourage.de/ and https://digitalegesellschaft.de/ https://digitalegesellschaft.de/
panarky 9y ago
> The Court in Germany has promoted a theory that it has jurisdiction, mainly because the www.gutenberg.org site has some content in the German language. Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg was a German citizen, certainly any site that takes his name submits to German laws!
vortico 9y ago
I am completely confused by how this court order even works. I am assuming that PGLAF is owned and operated in the US. "PGLAF has no actual presence or activity in Germany". I suppose the Berne Convention allows US police to honor international court orders for copyright violation, but what's to stop a country from making a ridiculous law that extends the copyright length to 2100 years, creating court orders for the 1 billion people who own a Bible or other old text without paying license fees, and collecting all the money in the world?
- jaakl 9y ago
  Isn’t publishing content over web to the public “activity in this country”? I think it is. The magical Internet allows actions in other countries without physical presence.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >what's to stop a country from making a ridiculous law that extends the copyright length to 2100 years, creating court orders for the 1 billion people who own a Bible or other old text without paying license fees, and collecting all the money in the world? So, similarly of how nothing stopped the BS Copyright Term Extension Act itself -- and firms are policing and collecting money all around the world based on it?
- Xylakant 9y ago
  > law that extends the copyright length to 2100 years, creating court orders for the 1 billion people who own a Bible or other old text without paying license fees, and collecting all the money in the world? Generally speaking: Nothing. Practically speaking: Impossibility to enforce unless you’re a major power. Look how american laws often get enforced world wide while North Korean law doesn’t practically matter.
  - swimfar 9y ago
    This is a sincere question. What American laws are enforced outside the US?
icebraining 9y ago
In the US, copyright protection is based on the number of years since publication. PG should be careful about misinforming people. This statement is only true for books created before '78. Since then, in the US, copyright protection is also some years after the death of the author, except works for hire.
- chippy 9y ago
  It literally says this: "in the US, copyright protection for works published prior to 1978 is based on the number of years since publication. " Did they edit the page since you posted your comment 18 hours ago?
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Yes, as I copy-pasted. The footer also says it was updated today.
buserror 9y ago
Donated too. I haven't have a fantastic use of the project until now, but I do appreciate the effort, and the will to resist the bullies.
s3nnyy 9y ago
> "Because the German Court has overstepped its jurisdiction, and allowed the world's largest publishing group to bully Project Gutenberg for these 18 books, there is every reason to think that this will keep happening" Why do German courts think they can overstep jurisdictions?
- thenaturalist 9y ago
  See, they think they don't. From the court document: > The action is admissible. In particular, the District Court of Frankfurt am Main has international and local jurisdiction pursuant to § 32 ZPO (German Rules of Civil Procedure). According to § 32 ZPO, the court of the district where an unlawful act was committed has jurisdiction for suits brought against such acts. Unlawful acts within the meaning of § 32 ZPO also include copyright infringements. Along with local jurisdiction, this provision also governs the international jurisdiction of German courts. An unlawful act within the meaning of § 32 ZPO is deemed to have been committed both at the place where the offense was committed and at the place where the offense had its effect, so jurisdiction optionally applies to the place where the infringement was committed or where the legally protected interest was affected. A conclusive claim of facts substantiating an unlawful act committed within the judicial district is enough to establish jurisdiction. § 32 ZPO also covers claims for injunctive relief. According to § 32 ZPO, if a copyright or related property right is allegedly infringed by making the protected property publicly accessible via a website, the place where the unlawful act was committed is Germany if the asserted rights are protected in Germany and if the website is (also) publicly accessible in Germany. However, intended availability of the web presence in Germany (among other countries) is not a requirement (...). This - to me - is quite a funny piece of jurisdiction and probably one of the reasons why international mediation processes do exist.
  - LocalH 9y ago
    Yet the plaintiff in this case rejected international mediation. They're hell bent on keeping this case in German court.
Findus23 9y ago
That’s odd. I always thought it was „life + 70 years“ in the whole EU. (According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright_lengths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright...) Here in Austria the law regarding copyright is pretty similar to Germany so it’s really interesting why no one has sued before.
- Mindwipe 9y ago
  Well, "always" since about 1996 depending on the country, but yes, it is. I am curious about what Project Gutenberg would do if this judgement was replicated in every country in the EU, which feels plausible.
astrodev 9y ago
> "It also seeks punitive damages and fines." But there is no such thing as punitive damages under German law?
- thesimon 9y ago
  They also claim >Pay Court costs, assessed at 50% of total costs. This is estimated to be at least 50,000 Euros, but is not yet assessed. which seems false. The court set the amount involved in this case to 100k€, which would incurr about 3k€ in court costs and around 5k€ for each sides lawyers. 50k€ of costs would only occur if they would fight this through to the surpreme court. They don't seem to want this though. Regarding the punitive damages: You are correct, the court awarded them damages, no punitive damages, no fines.
- pgeorgi 9y ago
  The pglaf document isn't the most accurate in general (eg. claiming that Germany has "life + 75" terms, while correctly calculating life + 70 right in the next sentence; or discussing that the 56 years rule will end in the US in 2034, since books published after 1978 are subject to life + 70 as well - I guess Gutenberg won't be able to publish a single new book between 2034 and 2048), so I guess the claims made were only about damages (even if pglaf might consider them "punitive") and fines.
Tomte 9y ago
"The legal guidance PGLAF received is that US law requires that such proceedings would have taken place in the US" Cute. Who cares about what US law may require?
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  Considering how much US patent law has been enforced abroad: most governments. I do hope that these proceedings are forced to take place in the US, because that would set a precedent, however insignificant, that copyright does not apply in other countries.
  - Tomte 9y ago
    I hope that countries other than America still get to have their own court system. I certainly don't want America to have final say over everything in the world.
    - gpshead 9y ago
      Neither do most US citizens.
    - LocalH 9y ago
      And I certainly don't want other countries having any say over what happens within US borders. It happens, but it doesn't make it right.
- greenyoda 9y ago
  The company that's suing them operates in the US, so it would be subject to US law. From the article: "Q: Why did this all take place in the German Court system, rather than the US - where Plaintiff does business as Macmillan, and PGLAF is based? A: The legal guidance PGLAF received is that US law requires that such proceedings would have taken place in the US, and in fact any attempts at enforcement of the judgement would need to occur in the US Court system. PGLAF already informed Plaintiff and the German Court that the US Court system is the appropriate venue for Plaintiff's concerns. Plaintiff declined." And, as noted in the article, the German courts would also be bound by international copyright treaties to which Germany is a party.
Findus23 9y ago
I’m really for open access to old books, but for playing devils advocate I can see the courts point: International websites have to respect local laws. After all those are the only ones I can directly influence (by voting, etc.) If we’d start to ignore this (even if it is in my advantage in this case), this means I have no influence any more on how companies are allowed to interact with me (which shouldn’t be the case in a democratic state) It’s a hard decision as the internet is global and I don’t have a real solution, but I don’t think taking US (or any other) law as „the valid law on the Internet“ is helpful.
- antoncohen 9y ago
  > International websites have to respect local laws. No way. If I, a US citizen, publish a website hosted in the US that is critical of the Turkish president, should a Turkish court be able to compel me to take it down or block access from Turkey? What if I'm Israeli and I publish open source software, source and binary hosted in Israel, that is against US hacking laws. Should a US court be able to order an Israeli to stop doing something that is legal in Israel? (Both of these are hypothetical, I don't know if there are such laws.) If I have no business in a country (or pseudo country like EU) they should have no jurisdiction over me. I shouldn't have to comply with every crazy authoritarian, free speech suppressing, restricted use country in the world. If countries want to prosecute their own citizens for visiting my site, consuming my content, or using my software, that is their business. Now if I do business in that country... that is different, then they might have some legal jurisdiction over me.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    Another example: If you're in a country where child pornography is legal, should all other countries just accept it? If you're in a country where doxxing is legal, should the victims not be able to do anything against it?
    - Pinckney 9y ago
      Other countries can try to block that content, or they can try to punish their own residents for viewing it. Why would residents of the permissive country comply with a foreign court order?
konschubert 9y ago
It seemed that putting up a website these days means one either has to obey all laws of all counties of the world at the same time. Or one has to restrict access to those counties where one follows the law, creating a fragmented web. This is only going to get worse as the world keeps dialing back on globalization.
deleted 9y ago
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cerebellum 9y ago
The plaintiff is S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH. S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH is part of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group since 1963 [0]. Macmillan Publishers Ltd is wholly owned by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group since 1999 [1] Basically a sister company of Macmillan which may (or may not) be hit with the negative publicity fallout in the more than 70 countries it operates in... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._Fischer_Verlag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._Fischer_Verlag [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macmillan_Publishers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macmillan_Publishers
driverdan 9y ago
What would be the consequence of not complying? Would they just require German ISPs to filter the site? Could they enforce a judgement on a US company?
2ion 9y ago
Fabulous :S The second time in 6 months German courts violated the public interest and ruled in favour of vested corporate intrests with an affect on me: * In late 2017, a useless commercial weather forecast outlet (aggregating its data itself from national institutations!) sued the German National Weather service into having to take down its free weather app from the Apple and Goole app stores (development and operations funded with tax payer money!) and charge a fee for it. Somehow the judges got convinced that the Service unduly competed with a third-rate commercial information service. * In early 2018, the courts lock out the public from a vast aggregate of literature in the public domain. I'm sure I'll have a fresh item to continue the list soon.
- Xylakant 9y ago
  > In early 2018, the courts lock out the public from a vast aggregate of literature in the public domain. The court decided that 18 titles should not be available. Locking you out completely was project Gutenberg’s decision. I don’t support either court decision, but let’s still keep the facts straight.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    For two reasons - other publishers were poking around about doing the same thing (minimize risk of it happening again with other titles), and to keep on the good side of the court (to ease appeals). Can't say I blame them for either reason.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      Also, it was a great rebuke to S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH.
      - Xylakant 9y ago
        At the cost of harming all german users. The Fischer Verlag honestly couldn’t care less - they probably like the outcome. Now even books that they wouldn’t have a legal recourse against are no longer available and must be bought. What an unexpected bonus!
DubiousPusher 9y ago
Somewhat ironic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gutenberg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gutenberg
lifeisstillgood 9y ago
tl;dr Project gutenberg is a USA entity, and in the USA copyright ends x years after publication. In Germany (and UK and many other EU countries) it's x years after authors death. A Troll Law Firm sued under German copyright and seems to have won the first round. So this is Brexit for me. We in the UK think we are going to "take back control", but the nature of globalisation just means more and more situations like this. and there are only three ways it goes - race to the top best regulations are adopted globally. Everyone but the best is a rule taker - race to the bottom just awful - confusoploy bad - where you go to gutenberg to get shakespeare's othello and have to sign 19'waivers saying you are not in a dozen jurisdictions that claim copyright still exists Personally I think confusoploy is our likely destiny. sadly
qwerty456127 9y ago
This is adorable. I wish other sites like YouTube, GitHub, Wikipedia etc would also refuse to remove something or block something in particular for particular country.
- lucb1e 9y ago
  (1) This is not adorable. (2) I feel this is similar to "first they came for the socialists"[1] idea: your country could be next to be blocked access from Github, Youtube or Wikipedia. It's a ridiculous idea that everyone should do this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
  - qwerty456127 9y ago
    I would absolutely prefer my country to try blocking access to Github, Youtube or Wikipedia rather than Github/Youtube/Wikipedia to block particular content for it on its demand. In fact I would bypass the block anyway so it doesn't really matter practically but it matters a lot from the political point of view. The governments/institutions demanding web sites to prevent their citizens from accessing particular content are modern day legal terrorists and tyrants and nobody should ever agree to negotiate such things with them nor volunteer to participate in oppressing their citizens.
discordianfish 9y ago
Btw, Waldorf Frommer is specialized in these questionable law suites. They built an business around sueing people for torrenting things.
ipsum2 9y ago
It's great irony that Johannes Gutenberg, the person who the project is named after, was German.
solarkraft 9y ago
Interesting that it's still available to me. Uncomfortable situation over all, but an understandable decision.
ajmurmann 9y ago
I'm not sure I follow why people are upset with the publishing company that's sueing. They do own the copyright. One can disagree with the law and think it should be changed (I strongly believe that) but that's up to lawmakers to do. It would be irresponsible for the publisher to ignore that their ownership is being ignored.
- gpshead 9y ago
  Nobody likes an asshole, even a responsible one.
  - ajmurmann 9y ago
    So in order not to be "an asshole" German published should just limit themselves to copyright defined by US? I'm sure Disney wouldn't be happy either if their movies that are still under copyright in the US were to be published for everyone to download on a server in some country that had shorter copyright than US. They'd try to sue as well.
    - mdpopescu 9y ago
      Your argument is "there are other assholes". While true, that still doesn't make them likeable. ["Likable"? Never saw that spelling before.]
      - ajmurmann 9y ago
        That's not my argument. My argument or rather question is "Why do we get upset if someone in another country enforces their longer copyright period while we don't get upset every time American companies enforce theirs?" In my perception copyright periods are all insanely long.
        mdpopescu 9y ago
        Oh, absolutely agreed with that. I'm against Imaginary Property anyway. And I do get upset every time American companies enforce their copyrights :)
quickthrower2 9y ago
I have a contrary opinion to most others here. PG should take steps to honour the copyright laws of other countries. My reasoning is this: Say hypothetically I started "Project Open" in a country with zero copyright protections. Then by that country's laws, I can list Amazons entire kindle catalog, buy all their books and scan them, and make it open access. And by the PG argument, ignore the laws of other countries that demand copyright protection for those books, until I get sued. At which point I block the site for the countries based on IP address (as if proxies and VPNs and people who travel don't exist) If someone did that, they'd probably be characterised as a pirate site and shut down by the FBI.
- mcguire 9y ago
  PG is honoring the laws of the US and, by extension, any country that had an appropriate treaty with the US. Which includes Germany.
  - quickthrower2 9y ago
    That's OK if PG is only accessible in the US.
- stordoff 9y ago
  Two counterpoints: * The subset of things that are legal in all jurisdictions is probably rather small. Let's say hypothetically that a country bans the distribution of all works in English - should PG comply with that as well? * Why should I have to care about laws beyond my jurisdiction when setting up a service? That seems like a tremendous burden. > they'd probably be characterised as a pirate site and shut down by the FBI. That's a likely outcome, but if Project Open is operating lawfully in its own country, on what grounds should the FBI be able to claim jurisdiction? Unilaterally applying laws over foreign persons in foreign territories feels like an overstep.
  - Mindwipe 9y ago
    > Let's say hypothetically that a country bans the distribution of all works in English - should PG comply with that as well? If there's an international treaty (or indeed several) backing it up? Probably. Unlikely that there would be though.
ufo 9y ago
Does anyone know why the books involved in the lawsuit are in the public domain in the US but not in Germany?
- soneil 9y ago
  That's in the article. In the US, the copyright term (for the relevant period) was the date they were published plus n years. In (most of) Europe, it's the life of the author plus n years. So for a book published 50 years before the author died, the term expires in the US long before it does in (most of) Europe. (This has since changed in the US, but did not apply retroactively. So published+n still applies to works published before the change to life+n)
trothamel 9y ago
I am not a lawyer, but... I hope and suspect that the US courts would refuse to enforce the judgement against Project Gutenberg. A little bit of research shows that for a foreign judgement to be enforced, a country would need to have personal jurisdiction over the defendant. That doesn't seem to be the case here, at least under the US law that would apply if the judgement was being enforced. Given all the overreach of European governments over the past few years (VATMOSS, GDPR, and now this), I suspect the time is ripe for something like the SPEECH act, a law clarifies that when a US citizen makes something available on the US, that does does not subject them to the law of a non-US country - and that allows the US citizen to claim court costs if someone tries to register a judgement against them.
- Mindwipe 9y ago
  > I suspect the time is ripe for something like the SPEECH act, a law clarifies that when a US citizen makes something available on the US, that does does not subject them to the law of a non-US country - and that allows the US citizen to claim court costs if someone tries to register a judgement against them. The US would have to pull out of all international copyright treaties and the WTO for this to happen, so it's not going to happen.
krylon 9y ago
I am in Germany, and I just opened Moby Dick on Project Gutenberg. I do have native IPv6, though, someone already pointed out that the block only affects IPv4.
zombieprocesses 9y ago
Seems like every major part of the internet is under attack by the media, the courts, governments and the elite. Every day, it's another major part of the internet having to defend itself.
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shmerl 9y ago
70 years for copyright (no matter from what point) is a ridiculous length to begin with.
- Freak_NL 9y ago
  It is even more painful when you realize that all of the 18 books mentioned were published in or before 1920. Most of these books are over a century old. I would expect that between the extremes of copyright abolishment and the current system of 'life + 70 years', most people would agree that some amount of protection is fair, but I seriously doubt that a majority feels that anything over 30 years since publication is necessary, much less considered fair. I wonder if that was ever researched in recent years. Not that it matters; global copyright laws are permantently frozen because amending them is a costly matter requiring global coordination, and there is little political will to tackle this (or even consider it a problem). Any attempt to lower the extend of copyright (in any jurisdiction) will be met by a wall of well-paid lawyers and lobbyists pay-rolled by all the major content owners.
- lucb1e 9y ago
  I think the lifetime of the author is not ridiculous: I made something, so I get to be the owner. That I live to be 100 years old and wrote it when I was 25 years old... I don't think that's completely unreasonable. I can also imagine that if Joe wrote something amazing, expects to feed his family with that for a few years, and dies in a car crash the next day, the poor wife or kids might enjoy some of the royalties for a few years (like 5-10 years). When written for a company, the span should be much shorter: like with patents, one can expect them to think of a new story after a while. So I agree that death+70 is ridiculous, but 70 by itself, so long as it's not past the author's death (unless s/he dies within 5-10 years after creating the work)... I think that's not completely crazy.
Myrmornis 9y ago
> The is no reason to remove them. The 18 eBooks are all in the public domain in the US, and have been for many years. Copyright status in another country is not relevant to the legitimate ability of Project Gutenberg -- or anyone/anything in the US -- to make any use of these books. Suppose a country X existed which doesn't honor US copyrights at all. By symmetry, it seems that Project Gutenberg would approve of a website hosted entirely in country X, offering full texts of all publications by US authors, up to the present day, for download by anyone in the world, including in the US. I do realize that PG is under no obligation to have an opinion on any such hypothetical circumstance. But nevertheless, that seems to be the implication. Are they really so anarchic? Or do they just think US copyright laws are more important than everyone else's?
- mcguire 9y ago
  For many years, X was China. I have no information about whether PG approved of that or not. PG follows the laws of the country in which it is based.
MikeGale 9y ago
If you want to take action, like boycott, these rent seekers. Here's a list of associated publishers: S. Fischer Verlag O.W. Barth Wolfgang Krüger Argon Verlag (de) Scherz Verlag (de) Fretz & Wasmuth Rowohlt Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch Verlagsgruppe Droemer Knaur Die Zeit Macmillan Farrar, Straus and Giroux Faber & Faber Henry Holt and Company Holt Paperbacks Metropolitan Books Times Books Owl Books Palgrave Macmillan Picador Roaring Brook Press Neal Porter Books First Second Books St. Martin's Press Tom Doherty Associates Tor Books Forge Books Bedford, Freeman and Worth Publishing Group W.H. Freeman Bedford-St. Martin's Worth Publishers Hayden-McNeil Nature Publishing Group Scientific American Audio Renaissance Renaissance Media Macmillan Publishers Palgrave Macmillan Pan Macmillan Macmillan Pan Books Picador Macmillan Children's Books Campbell Books Priddy Books Boxtree Sidgwick & Jackson Nature Publishing Group Macmillan Education
- orivej 9y ago
  This list is not entirely accurate: Faber & Faber is not associated with Holtzbrinck.
  - germanier 9y ago
    The UK publisher is not but they sold the US company with that name (their former subsidiary) to Holtzbrinck.
madez 9y ago
To put things into perspective, the plaintiffs lawyers, Waldorf Frommer, are known for shady tactics. They have built an industry of putting immense pressure on private people. They don't shy away from lawsuits because they are cheap for them and menacing for the people. They don't always win, but under the line it is a very profitable business for them; they employ about 60 lawyers. The public broadcast made documentaries about their cease-and-desist-industry against private people. Even the German Bundestag changed multiple times the law to stop that madness, but it took many years because the christian party opposed effective changes. Now, even though the law has changed on the 13th October 2017, they continue to pressure people into paying. Some courts are heavily in favour of them, most notably the Amtsgericht München. This makes the situation even worse for people who cannot afford to appeal a judgement even though they are convinced they are not guilty, because the financial risk is too high. I would not be surprised if the judgement in this case gets overthrown in a higher court. The defendants german lawyers, WILDE BEUGER SOLMECKE, are known for legal defense against Waldorf Frommer. Personally, I don't trust them completely because they offer an all-inclusive legal defense package that is conveniently priced at 2/3 of the value Waldorf Frommer asks for. This industry is a huge employment scheme for lawyers.
- xvilka 9y ago
  Publishing the name of the company will not really help to fight them. Every company is a team of people behind, so listing names of those people can have a better effect instead.
  - cyphunk 9y ago
    Could you expand on why you think the name of the company is not important here?
    - xvilka 9y ago
      Companies are indifferent to the bad image, especially those not presented on the stocks market. People are more sensitive.
- 9y ago
tunichtgut 9y ago
These copyright laws are such a joke! Typical of nowadays germany. Nothing is working anymore, except you run an army of lawyers and "cash-into" the local government. Its such a joke, rly.
psergeant 9y ago
> So the court thinks that the presence of content in German means that courts in Germany have jurisdiction, regardless of the fact that PGLAF is entirely in the US? I suspect that if the Brits started claiming jurisdiction — well, _everywhere_ - on this basis, then that would raise eyebrows
- Mindwipe 9y ago
  There are some limitations on it nowadays, but they do and used to a LOT more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism
mirimir 9y ago
So why don't they have a Tor onion link? I mean, Facebook does, for dog's sake!
neya 9y ago
> Because the German Court has overstepped its jurisdiction, and allowed the world's largest publishing group to bully Project Gutenberg for these 18 books, there is every reason to think that this will keep happening. There are thousands of eBooks in the Project Gutenberg collection that could be subject to similar over-reaching and illigitimate actions. > PGLAF's legal advisors disagree with all claims that there must be any blocking, or removal, or anything associated - censorship, fines/fees, disclaimers, etc. - for items that are in the public domain in the US. Period. I find this situation very similar to GDPR. I'd probably be down-voted for saying this (probably the demographic), but I will do the same thing to all of my online services and websites - I will block access to anyone based in EU leaving them a simple note to sort out their GDPR rules with their governments. My company is based in the states, I DO NOT have an obligation to follow your bullshit compliance requirements because you feel like it and over-step your jurisdiction. I will continue to follow the laws of where my company is incorporated under, but not every government in the world. So, fuck you and your tiny little data collection notice, I already have terms and conditions in place specifically for this purpose on my website and if you don't take an effort to read them, I am not simply going to modify my site code to make it easy for your lazy ass to display a notice on my data collection policies. /end rant
- TobiasBales 9y ago
  Does this apply to DMCA notices etc if a company is not based in the US too then?
- klokoman 9y ago
  I am from the EU and I appreciate you
xtrapolate 9y ago
Blocking the whole country is an interesting move, mostly because it has the potential to generate a much greater public outcry than simply masking away the few specific books in question, putting a greater public pressure to reevaluate the entire legal constructs surrounding these issues. It's a display of standing for your principles without compromise.
dirkt 9y ago
Can someone explain to me why project Gutenberg has decided to block the COMPLETE site for German IPs instead of just blocking the books in question? Is this just a dick move to enrage people and get attention? And they could have blocked just the pages with the books in question directly after receiving the copyright violation notification...
- cyphunk 9y ago
  this is discussed here in the comments extensively. The best answer is that they block Germany because they expect if they complied by only blocking certain books they would have to deal with many more requests in the future. They also decided to take this chance to make a statement to encourage a public debate.
Grue3 9y ago
Now this is how you deal with government censorship. Take note, Github, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter et. al.
gnud 9y ago
IMSLP should follow suit, instead of taking any chances, until German courts come to their senses about jurisdiction. (For those who don't know, IMSLP hosts a lot of sheet music scans that are out of copyright in canada, and not in the EU).
originalsimba 9y ago
those pesky germans at it again..
Zorlag 9y ago
So what? Even my Dad knows how to use a VPN.
rhn_mk1 9y ago
Unfortunately, the donation page https://www.gutenberg.org/donate https://www.gutenberg.org/donate is also blocked in Germany :(
znpy 9y ago
I wonder if it works the other way around, in general: - country A has different copyright laws than country B. - A copyright holder from country A asks an organization in country B to take off some content based on country A's copyright laws. - The organization in country B decides not to take off the content, as it is perfectly fine under country B copyright laws, and block whole country A access. So here are some questions: - Might this case set a precedent? - Some of those weird, small and autonomous one-island countries can come up with some very relaxed copyright laws and start distribute content "legally" ?
- stestagg 9y ago
  That's where power relationships come into play. If the small Island country tries to play that game, they find that much needed international trade with other bigger countries starts to dry up, and fast. Hosting public-domain content for free doesn't really produce much revenue, so for a country to sacrifice so much lost trade/needed supplies for no economic benefit doesn't really work in the long term.
- darklajid 9y ago
  I wonder if, given their broad reply, that project shouldn't just block everyone BUT the US, since they decided that US law is the only that applies to them. Now, I don't like these laws one bit, but I also really don't like this (over)reaction. If your legal counsel argues that you should block a country to avoid being sued for different laws, shouldn't the same counsel point out that this is likely for most of the world? Or is Germany the oddball here and the majority of the world doesn't have CP laws, or doesn't care or .. have laws that are literally one to one compatible with the US ones?
  - cyphar 9y ago
    Most countries are signatories to the WIPO treaty that enshrines a global "standard" on copyright laws. However, each individual country's legislation is different -- though generally most countries have similar or looser copyright laws than America (since America was the source of the current insane variant of copyright we are experiencing, rather than the previously-sane British copyright system defined by the Statute of Anne). However, Europe has some really strange copyright directives that go even further than the US. For instance, architecture is copyrightable, and so taking and distributing photos of the outside of a building is not technically allowed without permission from the owner. So taking tourist photos within an EU country and posting them online could be seen as copyright infringement. Of course, this is just a general guideline, if you actually want to do business you need to ask lawyers familiar with the laws of all the countries you wish to do business with (though this is prohibitively expensive for volunteer efforts, which explains why they didn't do it).
cdjk 9y ago
What would have happened if PGLAF had just ignored the lawsuit? Since they have no presence in Germany what could the German courts have done to them?
nearmuse 9y ago
What are the precedents?
otempomores 9y ago
Im wondering.. If you train a neural net on a famous writter and apply that net to a copyrighted work.. does copyright still apply.
hmd_imputer 9y ago
another Neuland in Germany
Hop_Gracer 9y ago
Here in Germany I can access the home page but not any actual books.
gluejar 9y ago
German users, please do not access or clone the following github repositories: “Der Untertan,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Der-Untertan_38126 https://github.com/GITenberg/Der-Untertan_38126 “Die Ehrgeizige,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Die-Ehrgeizige_43335 https://github.com/GITenberg/Die-Ehrgeizige_43335 “Professor Unrat oder Das Ende eines Tyrannen,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Professor-Unrat-oder-Das-Ende-eines-Tyrannen_35264 https://github.com/GITenberg/Professor-Unrat-oder-Das-Ende-e... “Der Vater,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Der-Vater_33329 https://github.com/GITenberg/Der-Vater_33329 “Flöten und Dolche,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Fl-ten-und-Dolche--Novellen_31218 https://github.com/GITenberg/Fl-ten-und-Dolche--Novellen_312... “Flaubert und die Herkunft des modernen Romans,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Flaubert-und-die-Herkunft-des-modernen-Romans_33328 https://github.com/GITenberg/Flaubert-und-die-Herkunft-des-m... “Buddenbrooks,” https://github.com/GITenberg/BuddenbrooksVerfall-einer-Familie_34811 https://github.com/GITenberg/BuddenbrooksVerfall-einer-Famil... “Der Tod in Venedig,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Der-Tod-in-Venedig_12108 https://github.com/GITenberg/Der-Tod-in-Venedig_12108 “Der kleine Herr Friedemann,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Der-kleine-Herr-FriedemannNovellen_36766 https://github.com/GITenberg/Der-kleine-Herr-FriedemannNovel... “Tristan,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Tristan_13810 https://github.com/GITenberg/Tristan_13810 “Gladius Dei,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Gladius-Dei--Schwere-Stunde_12053 https://github.com/GITenberg/Gladius-Dei--Schwere-Stunde_120... “Schwere Stunde,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Gladius-Dei--Schwere-Stunde_12053 https://github.com/GITenberg/Gladius-Dei--Schwere-Stunde_120... “Königliche Hoheit,” https://github.com/GITenberg/K-nigliche-HoheitRoman_35328 https://github.com/GITenberg/K-nigliche-HoheitRoman_35328 “Tonio Kröger,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Tonio-Kr-ger_23313 https://github.com/GITenberg/Tonio-Kr-ger_23313 “Die Ermordung einer Butterblume und andere Erzählungen,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Die-Ermordung-einer-Butterblume-und-andere-Erz-hlungen_31660 https://github.com/GITenberg/Die-Ermordung-einer-Butterblume... “Die drei Sprünge des Wang-lun,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Die-drei-Spr-nge-des-Wang-lunChinesischer-Roman_43987 https://github.com/GITenberg/Die-drei-Spr-nge-des-Wang-lunCh... “Die Lobensteiner reisen nach Böhmen,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Die-Lobensteiner-reisen-nach-B-hmenZw-lf-Novellen-und-Geschichten_36779 https://github.com/GITenberg/Die-Lobensteiner-reisen-nach-B-... “Wallenstein,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Wallenstein.-I.--of-2-_43931 https://github.com/GITenberg/Wallenstein.-I.--of-2-_43931 “Wallenstein,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Wallenstein.-II.--of-2-_43932 https://github.com/GITenberg/Wallenstein.-II.--of-2-_43932
stakhanov 9y ago
I would second the motion that copyright laws are a f*ing joke. But given that laws are the way they are, there isn't clearly a good guy and a bad guy in this story. I really don't think it's wrong for German courts to intervene when German laws are broken in the way that a U.S.-based party facilitates a German-based party (who reads copyrighted material without paying for it) infringing on the rights of another German-based party (who authored or otherwise acquired rights in the material). I think it's wrong for the U.S. to be a "safe haven" for people whose attitude towards the rest of the world is "screw you and your laws." That's exactly Google's legal strategy with privacy laws: They make sure everything they do when they violate E.U. privacy laws somehow comes under U.S. jurisdiction, which says something to the effect of "...well U.S.-based persons have a right to privacy, but, as for the rest of the world, dear Google, you hereby have permission to do whatever you want". (At least that's my non-expert understanding of U.S. privacy laws. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). I'm a huge fan of PGLAF and the work it's doing, but I'm sorry to say that, in blocking all of Germany for everything, I do see a little bit of a reflection of this "screw the rest of the world" notion. Of course I do recognize that it's probably not borne out of pure bad attitude, but rather limited resources. When they clear works to be published, their clearance process is probably based only on U.S.-laws, and then they put it up globally. The solution would have to be to clear the rights on a matrix where every work needs to be looked at from the point of view of every jurisdiction, and access-controlled accordingly. Obviously that's a resource-intensive task, and I totally respect that PGLAF says they don't have the resources for that. So really, what this is probably driving towards, is that every jurisdiction needs its own Project Gutenberg, with access restricted to that jurisdiction, and clearing rights according to its own laws. If a German legal expert reading this is interested in taking on such a task, please do get in touch. I'm up for the role of being the techie in this operation.
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922 points by jwildeboer 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

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> PGLAF complied with the Court's order on February 28, 2018 by blocking all access to www.gutenberg.org and sub-pages to all of Germany. I can access www.gutenberg.org and sub-pages just fine from Germany. So the block doesn't seem to be active at the moment. > Q: Why didn't Project Gutenberg simply remove the items? > A: The is no reason to remove them. The 18 eBooks are all in the public domain in the US, and have been for many years. Copyright status in another country is not relevant to the legitimate ability of Project Gutenberg -- or anyone/anything in the US -- to make any use of these books. But why then even block access from Germany? If the stance is that "Copyright status in another country is not relevant to the legitimate ability of Project Gutenberg -- or anyone/anything in the US -- to make any use of these books.", what is the rationale for the blocking. There is also the German Projekt Gutenberg (http://projekt.gutenberg.de/ http://projekt.gutenberg.de/) which is promoted by Spiegel Online (one of the most widely read German-language news websites [1]) even under their own domain as http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/ http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/. I don't know what kind of relationship the German Projekt Gutenberg has with PGLAF. The German Projekt Gutenberg is accessible for me from Germany right now, but apparently has blocked the controversial books. For example the page that lists Heinrich Mann's works says about the book "Der Untertan": "Exists in Projekt Gutenberg-DE, but is blocked until 31.12.2020" {"Im Projekt Gutenberg-DE vorhanden (gesperrt bis 31.12.2020)"} [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegel_Online https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegel_Online [2] http://projekt.gutenberg.de/autor/heinrich-mann-1637 http://projekt.gutenberg.de/autor/heinrich-mann-1637

deleted 9y ago
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ballenf 9y ago
The link addresses just that: > The decision to acceed to the German Court's order to make items inaccessible from Germany is intended to be a temporary appeasement, while the appeal occurs - this is because the German appeal Court will likely look disfavorably on PGLAF if it shows contempt for the German Court.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  Well, no crap sherlock I don't see why Project Gutenberg thinks it isn't subject to German law. And yes, it sucks and it is against the spirit of the internet. But it's either them being sued or ISPs being ordered to block the website.
  - freeflight 9y ago
    > But it's either them being sued or ISPs being ordered to block the website. Sued by whom? Afaik gutenberg.org is registered in California, no German jurisdiction, the cease&desist orders usually used to shut something like this down don't apply here. Same deal with ISPs: Afaik there's no legal framework to support anything like that, it's for exactly that reason why law firms like Waldorf and Frommer uses cease&desist letters to pretty much blackmail people into stopping the "distribution", it's all based on civil action.
    - Xylakant 9y ago
      > Afaik there's no legal framework to support anything like that, You might be careful with that assertion. As recently as Feb. 1st 2018 (so a month ago), Vodafone was compelled to block access to kinox.to in a preliminary injunction (1). The EUGH decided in 2014 that blocking pages is at least an option (2). This is contradictory to the EU e-commerce regulations, so the legality is somewhat murky at the moment, but it’s not definitely off the table. (1) https://netzpolitik.org/2018/netzsperren-vodafone-muss-kinox-to-blockieren-und-kundendaten-speichern/ https://netzpolitik.org/2018/netzsperren-vodafone-muss-kinox... (2) Telekabel Wien vs. Constantin Film http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=149924&pageIndex=0&doclang=de&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=515352 http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...
ryanackley 9y ago
He explains this further down. To paraphrase, he doesn't want to endanger his appeal by flaunting the German court order

jwtadvice 9y ago

Seems punitive to me, rather than 'fair'. US copyright law has no jurisdiction the same as German copyright law, other than by coincidence of geography/volunteer base. I think Project Gutenberg is doing the best thing it can for itself. I associate the project with doing the best thing it can for people. In general, we're going to run into increasing numbers of cases like this.

tehlike 9y ago

I made a tiny donation just now.

dsacco 9y ago

Can someone in Germany confirm this block is actually in place? In any case, if anyone in Germany would like to access Project Gutenberg, I maintain a full, daily updated mirror here: https://mirrors.sorengard.com/gutenberg https://mirrors.sorengard.com/gutenberg. I also support FTP and Rsync if you’d like to download that way. No donations are asked for, but it would be helpful if more people hosted mirrors for precisely this reason :). Unfortunately this mirror doesn’t have the search capabilities of the Project Gutenberg homepage, but it at least has all the files. Now I’m actually curious about what is going to happen with Project Gutenberg mirrors. In general, many mirror admins (such as myself) join a project’s mirror mailing list and don’t necessarily pay attention to the right announcements to learn about this kind of legal minutia. That presents something of a logistics problem all around. Putting aside ethics, it’s likely that many/most downstream mirrors simply won’t block German traffic. Project Gutenberg can stop redirecting German traffic to those mirrors on the fly, but they can’t stop the mirrors from being available unless they start banning mirrors (and mirror syncing traffic) that don’t enforce similar blocks...this seems logistically untenable. It would be cool if we could get a lawyer to chime in about Project Gutenberg’s liability with respect to forcing other mirrors to comply. For example, I’m making my own mirror available to Germany. Is Project Gutenberg complicit in a meaningful sense, if they allow me to continue mirroring?

tehlike 9y ago
Can anything be made using ipfs?
- deleted 9y ago
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- deleted 9y ago
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- mirimir 9y ago
  Certainly, given that each ebook could be a static hash. But you'd need to revise index pages periodically. And I'm not sure how search could be implemented. Except through Google, which does index pages from https://ipfs.io/ipfs/ https://ipfs.io/ipfs/ . However, I gather that IPFS respects take-down requests, so you might need to use another gateway.

zorked 9y ago

The explanation is at least slightly dishonest (hopefully not intentionally) in claiming that jurisdiction was established due to content being available in German, which makes it sound like a whacko court claiming to own a language. Reading the decision one learns that some of the volunteers involved in running PG and posting these materials were residents of Germany.

thesimon 9y ago
>Reading the decision one learns that some of the volunteers involved in running PG and posting these materials were residents of Germany. It is only mentioned in the plaintiff's complaint though, not in the reasoning by the court.
lowry 9y ago
Definitely intentionally. Shame on Project Gutenberg and their lawyers.
freeflight 9y ago
This is kinda the same tactic that was used by YouTube to block videos in Germany, blocking them with a message about to the GEMA issue. It might be slightly dishonest, but it's at least pointing the user in the direction of the actual culprit. Imho this is a valid approach because it creates awareness for a problem that the vast majority of people are never really aware of.
KenoFischer 9y ago
I thought so too reading the first couple of pages of the decision, but in the judicial conclusion section, the jurisdictional issue is squarely resolved on the "targets German users" issue, which the court bases on 1) Partial translation of the website 2) The availability of German language works 3) The "anyone anywhere" language on the website 4) A disclaimer that people should check their local laws (implying in the opinion of the court that they knew non-US persons were accessing their material and intentionally targeting their offering to such people). So yeah, while the language issue is only part of the judicial reasoning, is is indeed mentioned three times in the judicial conclusions. The court does not however appear to adopt plaintiff's theory on jurisdiction because some of the volunteers were German. As such, I'm inclined to think that while the focus on the language issue is perhaps a bit overstated in their statement, it is definitely grounded in the opinion of the court. As an aside though, I'm not convinced the court spent too much time considering the jurisdictional arguments here, which I think are probably the most important part of this case. Most of the analysis is concerned with whether the publisher plausibly alleged they own the copyright. I assume that is because that is usually the primary point of contention in copyright cases.

cheschire 9y ago

I hope frivolous lawsuits such as this further inspire non profits to take their hosting to decentralized providers such as zeronet and ipfs. There’s almost no need to host these projects centrally anymore, and it seems to only invite attacks such as this one.

shaki-dora 9y ago
It’s not frivolous, almost by definition, if you win a lawsuit. You can disagree with this court’s judgement on all sorts of issues, but Germany isn’t usually known to be a banana republic with corrupt and/or completely incompetent judges.

deleted 9y ago

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freech 9y ago

> mainly because the www.gutenberg.org site has some content in the German language. That's an extraordinary theory of international law. By that logic Austria and Namibia also have jurisdiction.

thesimon 9y ago
It's false though. The court says German law applies because German users can access the site. German language is only briefly mentioned, but not the argument of the court.
- jhasse 9y ago
  How do you think so? From the court order: "Hierfür spricht, dass die Webseite teilweise in Deutsch gehalten ist, dass auf der Seite Werke in deutscher Sprache angeboten werden [...]" And there are even more arguments by the prosecutor which go beyond "accessible from Germany".
Moru 9y ago
In Sweden you have to follow swedish law if you target your business towards swedes. If you use swedish language, sell directly to swedes and so on. I'm sure Germany has something similar.
- zanny 9y ago
  Swedish is a bit more rare in International linguistics, but German is not. There is an entire population in the American mideast that learn and speak German as just an example of a very far off population of non-German speakers of the language. Even without speakers, Gutenberg hosting these books does not mean they are targeting Germans. I can put any of these texts through Google translate and read them myself despite my only experience with German being one class in high school.
  - detuur 9y ago
    I can't think of a single US-specific website that has a German language option for German-speaking Midwesterners. There probably exist some, but their German language option will be very clearly described for this purpose when this is the motivation. There's a difference between theoretical plausible deniability, and practical plausible deniability. This excuse falls in the first category, accompanied by other colourful excuses like "I didn't steal that, someone must've slipped it into my pocket and I didn't notice". Theoretically possible, but ultimately implausible and completely dismissible unless you've got proof to back it up. This sort of "remote jurisdiction" is necessary. Otherwise the only recourse to criminal foreign sites targeting your country will be to endlessly try to block it, while blocks are cheap and easy to evade. The GDPR rests on the same principle of remote jurisdiction. If your website targets EU citizens, you have to abide by EU privacy rules.

deleted 9y ago

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userbinator 9y ago

The Plaintiff is S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH Are they related to Springer Verlag and/or that other German publishing group whose main objective was to take collections of Wikipedia articles, verbatim, and turn them into books?

easychris 9y ago
They belong to the Holtzbrinck Group [1]. They also operate a VC [2] and own or are invested in a lot of startups. [1] https://www.holtzbrinck.com/ https://www.holtzbrinck.com/ [2] http://www.hvventures.com/ http://www.hvventures.com/
Xylakant 9y ago
Which is, btw., entirely covered by the license as long as you allow redistribution and have proper attribution. Wikipedia is mostly covered by CC-BY-SA.
imurray 9y ago
"Verlag" is just the German word for publishing house.

blt 9y ago

Is this Verlag related to the academic publisher / rent seeker, Springer Verlag?

thesimon 9y ago
Partially, the parent company is part of the SpringerNature joint venture.
greenyoda 9y ago
"Verlag" just means "publishing company" in German.[1] There are probably many publishers in Germany that have that word in their name. [1] https://translate.google.com/#de/en/Verlag https://translate.google.com/#de/en/Verlag
pgeorgi 9y ago
Verlag means "publisher", it's not part of a name. (There are two publishers going by "Springer" though, you were referring to J. Springer, not A. Springer)

nshoo 9y ago

This might be helpful. When I got randomly blocked for 24 hours (in the US), recently, some of the mirrors still worked. You can find them here: https://www.gutenberg.org/MIRRORS.ALL https://www.gutenberg.org/MIRRORS.ALL I’d be interested to see if they work in this case.

deleted 9y ago
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jaakl 9y ago

> PGLAF is entirely in the US PGLAF has awesome mission, but that base assumption is not really correct. With publishing content in Germany (or whatever country) over Internet (or otherwise) they have crossed physical and legal borders. You must obey local laws everywhere and US laws are legal in their soil only. The attitude that US laws are something globally applicable and Internet is something above local laws is naive and total blockage “revenge” is just plain childish.

tyingq 9y ago
Perhaps if that’s the only action they ever take. In the short term, it’s possible it’s the only action they can safely take, if they want some time to analyze the situation.
quasarj 9y ago
Wooah careful there buddy, using the word "revenge" is not legal in my jurisdiction, and you just published it here by placing it on the internet!
- coldtea 9y ago
  You mock what the parent said, but yet, if something isn't legal in the USA, most would find it OK to be cut.
  - jaakl 9y ago
    I dont say that such interpretation of international law over web content is practical, reasonable, etc, but it is as it is. Better be aware of this if you publish anything not trivial, otherwise your US (for example) lawyers will be happy to work on your hopeless case.
stale2002 9y ago
> total blockage “revenge” is just plain childish. It seems like it is working to get them publicity. If germany doesn't like that they are now being blocked, then they should change their laws. It is their website, so too bad for germany. Protesting ridiculous copywrite laws is perfectly reasonable.

akerro 9y ago

That's quite ironic, Gutenberg was German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gutenberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gutenberg

cheschire 9y ago
And he was from Mainz, which is only a 30 minute drive from where this court case was tried.

larkeith 9y ago

The crux of the argument seems to be whether German copyright applies to US websites served to German users; Project Gutenberg's view and the Court's view are below. Project Gutenberg: Q: So the court thinks that the presence of content in German means that courts in Germany have jurisdiction, regardless of the fact that PGLAF is entirely in the US? A: Yes, that was the original basis of the claim for jurisdiction, which the Court accepted in their judgement. Since then, there some more recent decisions in the European Court of Justice, and other German courts, that support this theory based on a Web site being accessible from a country. Those other cases involve companies that actually operate (for-profit) in Europe, and cases between two European countries (i.e. part of the EU). They are not consistent with prior laws and cases, even in Europe, and also not consistent with provisions of the Berne Convention and other international law. In addition, PGLAF has pointed out that Germany is widely spoken in the US (the third-most common second language), and also is widely taught in schools and colleges. PGLAF has no actual presence or activity in Germany. Court Decision: Reasons for the decision The action is admissible and well founded. 1. The action is admissible. In particular, the District Court of Frankfurt am Main has international and local jurisdiction pursuant to § 32 ZPO (German Rules of Civil Procedure). According to § 32 ZPO, the court of the district where an unlawful act was committed has jurisdiction for suits brought against such acts. Unlawful acts within the meaning of § 32 ZPO also include copyright infringements. Along with local jurisdiction, this provision also governs the international jurisdiction of German courts. An unlawful act within the meaning of § 32 ZPO is deemed to have been committed both at the place where the offense was committed and at the place where the offense had its effect, so jurisdiction optionally applies to the place where the infringement was committed or where the legally protected interest was affected. A conclusive claim of facts substantiating an unlawful act committed within the judicial district is enough to establish jurisdiction. § 32 ZPO also covers claims for injunctive relief. Accordingto§32ZPO,ifacopyrightorrelatedpropertyrightisallegedlyinfringedby making the protected property publicly accessible via a website, the place where the unlawful act was committed isGermanyiftheassertedrightsareprotectedinGermanyand if the website is (also) publicly accessible in Germany. However, intended availability of the web presence in Germany (among other countries) is not a requirement (Federal Court of Justice, GRUR 2016, 1048, marginal number 18 - An Evening with Marlene Dietrich; cf. Regional Court of Hamburg, Judgment dated 06/19/2015 - 308 0 161/13, BeckRS 2015, 18942; Regional Court of Hamburg, Judgment dated 06/17/2016 - 308 0 161/13, BeckRS 2016, 12262). These requirements are met in this case, as the works in dispute which are protected in Germany are indisputably also available in Germany. Also, the plaintiff has convincingly argued that the availability has led to downloads in Germany. Apart from that, the first defendant’s website is also intended to target German users. This is supported by the fact that the website is partially in German, that the site offers German- language works, and that the first defendant explicitly strives to make the works available globally (“anyone anywhere”). This is not contradicted by the disclaimer in the first defendant’s website stating that users must verify if they are entitled to download the works in their respective countries. Rather, this disclaimer indicates that the defendants are aware that their website is also visited by users from other countries than the United States.

curiousfab 9y ago

PG did exactly the right thing here. By only blocking these 18 books, nobody would have taken much notice of this. By blocking all German users from the site, they will get a lot of media attention, and S. Fischer Verlag will get a lot of bad press. Whether or not they will move from their position is questionable, but it will hurt them. Just sent a small donation to PG. Making an effort not to buy books from that publishing house ever again, and telling all my friends about it.

teamhappy 9y ago
> Making an effort not to buy books from that publishing house ever again, and telling all my friends about it. Good luck with that. S. Fischer is owned by Holtzbrinck. They own Macmillan, Springer Nature and a bunch of other publishing houses. Here's a list of their subsidiaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holtzbrinck_Publishing_Group#Subsidiaries_and_imprints https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holtzbrinck_Publishing_Group#S...
- scythe 9y ago
  Is it so uncommon for big companies to evaluate the performance of various divisions independently? If Holtzbrinck recognizes that S. Fischer's activities have caused that subsidiary to start losing money, they will probably modify their opinion. Why would they want to subsidize a losing bet using the profits from other divisions? The fact that two companies are owned by the same holding group does not really mean they are the "same" company, any more than two companies which are majority owned by the same private investors are the same company.
  - mcguire 9y ago
    I would guess most of us outside Germany have no real contact with S. Fischer, but considerable dealings with Holtzbrinck's other subsidiaries.
  - teamhappy 9y ago
    S. Fischer isn't just a independent subsidiary. The company is run by Monika Schoeller (born Monika von Holtzbrinck). She and her brother own large parts of Holtzbrinck and she's listed as a partner and member of the supervisory board on Holtzbrinck's website. (Her brother, Stefan von Holtzbrinck, is the CEO.) > Why would they want to subsidize a losing bet using the profits from other divisions? Because owning S. Fischer, Rowohlt and Droemer Knaur means owning a large chunk of the german book market.

CO-VAX 9y ago

I just donated $100 to PGLAF because they are fighting the good fight. Their donation page [0] includes "Think of this as a contribution to your grandchildren." However in this instance I think of it as a contribution against publishers (ab)using the justice system much like so-called patent trolls. > Q: The plaintiff is S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH. Is that the international conglomerate? > A: Yes, it is part of a family of companies all under single ownership and control or majority stakeholdership, from Germany, reaching around the world. S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH is a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg Holtzbrinck GmbH. Internationally it is known in the US and elsewhere as Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC. Readers in the US know this as Macmillan, which is one of the largest publishers in the US by revenue, and owns many familiar imprints. US readers might also recall that Macmillan was one of four companies accused by the US Dept. of Justice in 2012 of price fixing. The companies eventually settled the antitrust claims, including by giving credits to customers who had overpaid for eBooks. [0] https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Project_Gutenberg_Needs_Your_Donation https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Project_Gutenberg_N...

MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
I hope you don't mind that I take this opportunity to tell about he GFF, because it is very much related. If you are European and care about freedom rights, there is now an equivalent to the EFF/ACLU, called the "Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte" (short GFF), which translates to "Society For Freedom Rights". They are mostly lawyers fighting strategic court battles in one of the cheapest country to do so, which in Europe happens to be Germany. This is a cost-effective way to further the cause of human and freedom rights. If you are upset about * excessive surveillance * anti-whistleblower laws * laws against freedom of information then consider joining, they need your support to do what they do: https://freiheitsrechte.org/join/ https://freiheitsrechte.org/join/ Disclaimer: I'm not involved with the GFF except as a paying member.
- nabla9 9y ago
  European Digital Rights EDRi is the closest equivalent to the EFF in Europe. EDRi is an association of civil and human rights organizations from across Europe. It has existed since 2002. https://edri.org/ https://edri.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Digital_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Digital_Rights https://edri.org/members/ https://edri.org/members/ (EFF from USA is also a member) GFF is more German centered organization. I don't know how it relates to other German organizations like https://digitalcourage.de/ https://digitalcourage.de/ and https://digitalegesellschaft.de/ https://digitalegesellschaft.de/

panarky 9y ago

> The Court in Germany has promoted a theory that it has jurisdiction, mainly because the www.gutenberg.org site has some content in the German language. Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg was a German citizen, certainly any site that takes his name submits to German laws!

vortico 9y ago

I am completely confused by how this court order even works. I am assuming that PGLAF is owned and operated in the US. "PGLAF has no actual presence or activity in Germany". I suppose the Berne Convention allows US police to honor international court orders for copyright violation, but what's to stop a country from making a ridiculous law that extends the copyright length to 2100 years, creating court orders for the 1 billion people who own a Bible or other old text without paying license fees, and collecting all the money in the world?

jaakl 9y ago
Isn’t publishing content over web to the public “activity in this country”? I think it is. The magical Internet allows actions in other countries without physical presence.
coldtea 9y ago
>what's to stop a country from making a ridiculous law that extends the copyright length to 2100 years, creating court orders for the 1 billion people who own a Bible or other old text without paying license fees, and collecting all the money in the world? So, similarly of how nothing stopped the BS Copyright Term Extension Act itself -- and firms are policing and collecting money all around the world based on it?
Xylakant 9y ago
> law that extends the copyright length to 2100 years, creating court orders for the 1 billion people who own a Bible or other old text without paying license fees, and collecting all the money in the world? Generally speaking: Nothing. Practically speaking: Impossibility to enforce unless you’re a major power. Look how american laws often get enforced world wide while North Korean law doesn’t practically matter.
- swimfar 9y ago
  This is a sincere question. What American laws are enforced outside the US?

icebraining 9y ago

In the US, copyright protection is based on the number of years since publication. PG should be careful about misinforming people. This statement is only true for books created before '78. Since then, in the US, copyright protection is also some years after the death of the author, except works for hire.

chippy 9y ago
It literally says this: "in the US, copyright protection for works published prior to 1978 is based on the number of years since publication. " Did they edit the page since you posted your comment 18 hours ago?
- icebraining 9y ago
  Yes, as I copy-pasted. The footer also says it was updated today.

buserror 9y ago

Donated too. I haven't have a fantastic use of the project until now, but I do appreciate the effort, and the will to resist the bullies.

s3nnyy 9y ago

> "Because the German Court has overstepped its jurisdiction, and allowed the world's largest publishing group to bully Project Gutenberg for these 18 books, there is every reason to think that this will keep happening" Why do German courts think they can overstep jurisdictions?

thenaturalist 9y ago
See, they think they don't. From the court document: > The action is admissible. In particular, the District Court of Frankfurt am Main has international and local jurisdiction pursuant to § 32 ZPO (German Rules of Civil Procedure). According to § 32 ZPO, the court of the district where an unlawful act was committed has jurisdiction for suits brought against such acts. Unlawful acts within the meaning of § 32 ZPO also include copyright infringements. Along with local jurisdiction, this provision also governs the international jurisdiction of German courts. An unlawful act within the meaning of § 32 ZPO is deemed to have been committed both at the place where the offense was committed and at the place where the offense had its effect, so jurisdiction optionally applies to the place where the infringement was committed or where the legally protected interest was affected. A conclusive claim of facts substantiating an unlawful act committed within the judicial district is enough to establish jurisdiction. § 32 ZPO also covers claims for injunctive relief. According to § 32 ZPO, if a copyright or related property right is allegedly infringed by making the protected property publicly accessible via a website, the place where the unlawful act was committed is Germany if the asserted rights are protected in Germany and if the website is (also) publicly accessible in Germany. However, intended availability of the web presence in Germany (among other countries) is not a requirement (...). This - to me - is quite a funny piece of jurisdiction and probably one of the reasons why international mediation processes do exist.
- LocalH 9y ago
  Yet the plaintiff in this case rejected international mediation. They're hell bent on keeping this case in German court.

Findus23 9y ago

That’s odd. I always thought it was „life + 70 years“ in the whole EU. (According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright_lengths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright...) Here in Austria the law regarding copyright is pretty similar to Germany so it’s really interesting why no one has sued before.

Mindwipe 9y ago
Well, "always" since about 1996 depending on the country, but yes, it is. I am curious about what Project Gutenberg would do if this judgement was replicated in every country in the EU, which feels plausible.

astrodev 9y ago

> "It also seeks punitive damages and fines." But there is no such thing as punitive damages under German law?

thesimon 9y ago
They also claim >Pay Court costs, assessed at 50% of total costs. This is estimated to be at least 50,000 Euros, but is not yet assessed. which seems false. The court set the amount involved in this case to 100k€, which would incurr about 3k€ in court costs and around 5k€ for each sides lawyers. 50k€ of costs would only occur if they would fight this through to the surpreme court. They don't seem to want this though. Regarding the punitive damages: You are correct, the court awarded them damages, no punitive damages, no fines.
pgeorgi 9y ago
The pglaf document isn't the most accurate in general (eg. claiming that Germany has "life + 75" terms, while correctly calculating life + 70 right in the next sentence; or discussing that the 56 years rule will end in the US in 2034, since books published after 1978 are subject to life + 70 as well - I guess Gutenberg won't be able to publish a single new book between 2034 and 2048), so I guess the claims made were only about damages (even if pglaf might consider them "punitive") and fines.

Tomte 9y ago

"The legal guidance PGLAF received is that US law requires that such proceedings would have taken place in the US" Cute. Who cares about what US law may require?

thomastjeffery 9y ago
Considering how much US patent law has been enforced abroad: most governments. I do hope that these proceedings are forced to take place in the US, because that would set a precedent, however insignificant, that copyright does not apply in other countries.
- Tomte 9y ago
  I hope that countries other than America still get to have their own court system. I certainly don't want America to have final say over everything in the world.
  - gpshead 9y ago
    Neither do most US citizens.
  - LocalH 9y ago
    And I certainly don't want other countries having any say over what happens within US borders. It happens, but it doesn't make it right.
greenyoda 9y ago
The company that's suing them operates in the US, so it would be subject to US law. From the article: "Q: Why did this all take place in the German Court system, rather than the US - where Plaintiff does business as Macmillan, and PGLAF is based? A: The legal guidance PGLAF received is that US law requires that such proceedings would have taken place in the US, and in fact any attempts at enforcement of the judgement would need to occur in the US Court system. PGLAF already informed Plaintiff and the German Court that the US Court system is the appropriate venue for Plaintiff's concerns. Plaintiff declined." And, as noted in the article, the German courts would also be bound by international copyright treaties to which Germany is a party.

Findus23 9y ago

I’m really for open access to old books, but for playing devils advocate I can see the courts point: International websites have to respect local laws. After all those are the only ones I can directly influence (by voting, etc.) If we’d start to ignore this (even if it is in my advantage in this case), this means I have no influence any more on how companies are allowed to interact with me (which shouldn’t be the case in a democratic state) It’s a hard decision as the internet is global and I don’t have a real solution, but I don’t think taking US (or any other) law as „the valid law on the Internet“ is helpful.

antoncohen 9y ago
> International websites have to respect local laws. No way. If I, a US citizen, publish a website hosted in the US that is critical of the Turkish president, should a Turkish court be able to compel me to take it down or block access from Turkey? What if I'm Israeli and I publish open source software, source and binary hosted in Israel, that is against US hacking laws. Should a US court be able to order an Israeli to stop doing something that is legal in Israel? (Both of these are hypothetical, I don't know if there are such laws.) If I have no business in a country (or pseudo country like EU) they should have no jurisdiction over me. I shouldn't have to comply with every crazy authoritarian, free speech suppressing, restricted use country in the world. If countries want to prosecute their own citizens for visiting my site, consuming my content, or using my software, that is their business. Now if I do business in that country... that is different, then they might have some legal jurisdiction over me.
- jhasse 9y ago
  Another example: If you're in a country where child pornography is legal, should all other countries just accept it? If you're in a country where doxxing is legal, should the victims not be able to do anything against it?
  - Pinckney 9y ago
    Other countries can try to block that content, or they can try to punish their own residents for viewing it. Why would residents of the permissive country comply with a foreign court order?

konschubert 9y ago

It seemed that putting up a website these days means one either has to obey all laws of all counties of the world at the same time. Or one has to restrict access to those counties where one follows the law, creating a fragmented web. This is only going to get worse as the world keeps dialing back on globalization.

deleted 9y ago

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cerebellum 9y ago

The plaintiff is S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH. S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH is part of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group since 1963 [0]. Macmillan Publishers Ltd is wholly owned by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group since 1999 [1] Basically a sister company of Macmillan which may (or may not) be hit with the negative publicity fallout in the more than 70 countries it operates in... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._Fischer_Verlag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._Fischer_Verlag [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macmillan_Publishers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macmillan_Publishers

driverdan 9y ago

What would be the consequence of not complying? Would they just require German ISPs to filter the site? Could they enforce a judgement on a US company?

2ion 9y ago

Fabulous :S The second time in 6 months German courts violated the public interest and ruled in favour of vested corporate intrests with an affect on me: * In late 2017, a useless commercial weather forecast outlet (aggregating its data itself from national institutations!) sued the German National Weather service into having to take down its free weather app from the Apple and Goole app stores (development and operations funded with tax payer money!) and charge a fee for it. Somehow the judges got convinced that the Service unduly competed with a third-rate commercial information service. * In early 2018, the courts lock out the public from a vast aggregate of literature in the public domain. I'm sure I'll have a fresh item to continue the list soon.

Xylakant 9y ago
> In early 2018, the courts lock out the public from a vast aggregate of literature in the public domain. The court decided that 18 titles should not be available. Locking you out completely was project Gutenberg’s decision. I don’t support either court decision, but let’s still keep the facts straight.
- falcolas 9y ago
  For two reasons - other publishers were poking around about doing the same thing (minimize risk of it happening again with other titles), and to keep on the good side of the court (to ease appeals). Can't say I blame them for either reason.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Also, it was a great rebuke to S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH.
    - Xylakant 9y ago
      At the cost of harming all german users. The Fischer Verlag honestly couldn’t care less - they probably like the outcome. Now even books that they wouldn’t have a legal recourse against are no longer available and must be bought. What an unexpected bonus!

DubiousPusher 9y ago

Somewhat ironic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gutenberg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gutenberg

lifeisstillgood 9y ago

tl;dr Project gutenberg is a USA entity, and in the USA copyright ends x years after publication. In Germany (and UK and many other EU countries) it's x years after authors death. A Troll Law Firm sued under German copyright and seems to have won the first round. So this is Brexit for me. We in the UK think we are going to "take back control", but the nature of globalisation just means more and more situations like this. and there are only three ways it goes - race to the top best regulations are adopted globally. Everyone but the best is a rule taker - race to the bottom just awful - confusoploy bad - where you go to gutenberg to get shakespeare's othello and have to sign 19'waivers saying you are not in a dozen jurisdictions that claim copyright still exists Personally I think confusoploy is our likely destiny. sadly

qwerty456127 9y ago

This is adorable. I wish other sites like YouTube, GitHub, Wikipedia etc would also refuse to remove something or block something in particular for particular country.

lucb1e 9y ago
(1) This is not adorable. (2) I feel this is similar to "first they came for the socialists"[1] idea: your country could be next to be blocked access from Github, Youtube or Wikipedia. It's a ridiculous idea that everyone should do this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
- qwerty456127 9y ago
  I would absolutely prefer my country to try blocking access to Github, Youtube or Wikipedia rather than Github/Youtube/Wikipedia to block particular content for it on its demand. In fact I would bypass the block anyway so it doesn't really matter practically but it matters a lot from the political point of view. The governments/institutions demanding web sites to prevent their citizens from accessing particular content are modern day legal terrorists and tyrants and nobody should ever agree to negotiate such things with them nor volunteer to participate in oppressing their citizens.

discordianfish 9y ago

Btw, Waldorf Frommer is specialized in these questionable law suites. They built an business around sueing people for torrenting things.

ipsum2 9y ago

It's great irony that Johannes Gutenberg, the person who the project is named after, was German.

solarkraft 9y ago

Interesting that it's still available to me. Uncomfortable situation over all, but an understandable decision.

ajmurmann 9y ago

I'm not sure I follow why people are upset with the publishing company that's sueing. They do own the copyright. One can disagree with the law and think it should be changed (I strongly believe that) but that's up to lawmakers to do. It would be irresponsible for the publisher to ignore that their ownership is being ignored.

gpshead 9y ago
Nobody likes an asshole, even a responsible one.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  So in order not to be "an asshole" German published should just limit themselves to copyright defined by US? I'm sure Disney wouldn't be happy either if their movies that are still under copyright in the US were to be published for everyone to download on a server in some country that had shorter copyright than US. They'd try to sue as well.
  - mdpopescu 9y ago
    Your argument is "there are other assholes". While true, that still doesn't make them likeable. ["Likable"? Never saw that spelling before.]
    - ajmurmann 9y ago
      That's not my argument. My argument or rather question is "Why do we get upset if someone in another country enforces their longer copyright period while we don't get upset every time American companies enforce theirs?" In my perception copyright periods are all insanely long.
      - mdpopescu 9y ago
        Oh, absolutely agreed with that. I'm against Imaginary Property anyway. And I do get upset every time American companies enforce their copyrights :)

quickthrower2 9y ago

I have a contrary opinion to most others here. PG should take steps to honour the copyright laws of other countries. My reasoning is this: Say hypothetically I started "Project Open" in a country with zero copyright protections. Then by that country's laws, I can list Amazons entire kindle catalog, buy all their books and scan them, and make it open access. And by the PG argument, ignore the laws of other countries that demand copyright protection for those books, until I get sued. At which point I block the site for the countries based on IP address (as if proxies and VPNs and people who travel don't exist) If someone did that, they'd probably be characterised as a pirate site and shut down by the FBI.

mcguire 9y ago
PG is honoring the laws of the US and, by extension, any country that had an appropriate treaty with the US. Which includes Germany.
- quickthrower2 9y ago
  That's OK if PG is only accessible in the US.
stordoff 9y ago
Two counterpoints: * The subset of things that are legal in all jurisdictions is probably rather small. Let's say hypothetically that a country bans the distribution of all works in English - should PG comply with that as well? * Why should I have to care about laws beyond my jurisdiction when setting up a service? That seems like a tremendous burden. > they'd probably be characterised as a pirate site and shut down by the FBI. That's a likely outcome, but if Project Open is operating lawfully in its own country, on what grounds should the FBI be able to claim jurisdiction? Unilaterally applying laws over foreign persons in foreign territories feels like an overstep.
- Mindwipe 9y ago
  > Let's say hypothetically that a country bans the distribution of all works in English - should PG comply with that as well? If there's an international treaty (or indeed several) backing it up? Probably. Unlikely that there would be though.

ufo 9y ago

Does anyone know why the books involved in the lawsuit are in the public domain in the US but not in Germany?

soneil 9y ago
That's in the article. In the US, the copyright term (for the relevant period) was the date they were published plus n years. In (most of) Europe, it's the life of the author plus n years. So for a book published 50 years before the author died, the term expires in the US long before it does in (most of) Europe. (This has since changed in the US, but did not apply retroactively. So published+n still applies to works published before the change to life+n)

trothamel 9y ago

I am not a lawyer, but... I hope and suspect that the US courts would refuse to enforce the judgement against Project Gutenberg. A little bit of research shows that for a foreign judgement to be enforced, a country would need to have personal jurisdiction over the defendant. That doesn't seem to be the case here, at least under the US law that would apply if the judgement was being enforced. Given all the overreach of European governments over the past few years (VATMOSS, GDPR, and now this), I suspect the time is ripe for something like the SPEECH act, a law clarifies that when a US citizen makes something available on the US, that does does not subject them to the law of a non-US country - and that allows the US citizen to claim court costs if someone tries to register a judgement against them.

Mindwipe 9y ago
> I suspect the time is ripe for something like the SPEECH act, a law clarifies that when a US citizen makes something available on the US, that does does not subject them to the law of a non-US country - and that allows the US citizen to claim court costs if someone tries to register a judgement against them. The US would have to pull out of all international copyright treaties and the WTO for this to happen, so it's not going to happen.

krylon 9y ago

I am in Germany, and I just opened Moby Dick on Project Gutenberg. I do have native IPv6, though, someone already pointed out that the block only affects IPv4.

zombieprocesses 9y ago

Seems like every major part of the internet is under attack by the media, the courts, governments and the elite. Every day, it's another major part of the internet having to defend itself.

deleted 9y ago

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shmerl 9y ago

70 years for copyright (no matter from what point) is a ridiculous length to begin with.

Freak_NL 9y ago
It is even more painful when you realize that all of the 18 books mentioned were published in or before 1920. Most of these books are over a century old. I would expect that between the extremes of copyright abolishment and the current system of 'life + 70 years', most people would agree that some amount of protection is fair, but I seriously doubt that a majority feels that anything over 30 years since publication is necessary, much less considered fair. I wonder if that was ever researched in recent years. Not that it matters; global copyright laws are permantently frozen because amending them is a costly matter requiring global coordination, and there is little political will to tackle this (or even consider it a problem). Any attempt to lower the extend of copyright (in any jurisdiction) will be met by a wall of well-paid lawyers and lobbyists pay-rolled by all the major content owners.
lucb1e 9y ago
I think the lifetime of the author is not ridiculous: I made something, so I get to be the owner. That I live to be 100 years old and wrote it when I was 25 years old... I don't think that's completely unreasonable. I can also imagine that if Joe wrote something amazing, expects to feed his family with that for a few years, and dies in a car crash the next day, the poor wife or kids might enjoy some of the royalties for a few years (like 5-10 years). When written for a company, the span should be much shorter: like with patents, one can expect them to think of a new story after a while. So I agree that death+70 is ridiculous, but 70 by itself, so long as it's not past the author's death (unless s/he dies within 5-10 years after creating the work)... I think that's not completely crazy.

Myrmornis 9y ago

> The is no reason to remove them. The 18 eBooks are all in the public domain in the US, and have been for many years. Copyright status in another country is not relevant to the legitimate ability of Project Gutenberg -- or anyone/anything in the US -- to make any use of these books. Suppose a country X existed which doesn't honor US copyrights at all. By symmetry, it seems that Project Gutenberg would approve of a website hosted entirely in country X, offering full texts of all publications by US authors, up to the present day, for download by anyone in the world, including in the US. I do realize that PG is under no obligation to have an opinion on any such hypothetical circumstance. But nevertheless, that seems to be the implication. Are they really so anarchic? Or do they just think US copyright laws are more important than everyone else's?

mcguire 9y ago
For many years, X was China. I have no information about whether PG approved of that or not. PG follows the laws of the country in which it is based.

MikeGale 9y ago

If you want to take action, like boycott, these rent seekers. Here's a list of associated publishers: S. Fischer Verlag O.W. Barth Wolfgang Krüger Argon Verlag (de) Scherz Verlag (de) Fretz & Wasmuth Rowohlt Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch Verlagsgruppe Droemer Knaur Die Zeit Macmillan Farrar, Straus and Giroux Faber & Faber Henry Holt and Company Holt Paperbacks Metropolitan Books Times Books Owl Books Palgrave Macmillan Picador Roaring Brook Press Neal Porter Books First Second Books St. Martin's Press Tom Doherty Associates Tor Books Forge Books Bedford, Freeman and Worth Publishing Group W.H. Freeman Bedford-St. Martin's Worth Publishers Hayden-McNeil Nature Publishing Group Scientific American Audio Renaissance Renaissance Media Macmillan Publishers Palgrave Macmillan Pan Macmillan Macmillan Pan Books Picador Macmillan Children's Books Campbell Books Priddy Books Boxtree Sidgwick & Jackson Nature Publishing Group Macmillan Education

orivej 9y ago
This list is not entirely accurate: Faber & Faber is not associated with Holtzbrinck.
- germanier 9y ago
  The UK publisher is not but they sold the US company with that name (their former subsidiary) to Holtzbrinck.

madez 9y ago

To put things into perspective, the plaintiffs lawyers, Waldorf Frommer, are known for shady tactics. They have built an industry of putting immense pressure on private people. They don't shy away from lawsuits because they are cheap for them and menacing for the people. They don't always win, but under the line it is a very profitable business for them; they employ about 60 lawyers. The public broadcast made documentaries about their cease-and-desist-industry against private people. Even the German Bundestag changed multiple times the law to stop that madness, but it took many years because the christian party opposed effective changes. Now, even though the law has changed on the 13th October 2017, they continue to pressure people into paying. Some courts are heavily in favour of them, most notably the Amtsgericht München. This makes the situation even worse for people who cannot afford to appeal a judgement even though they are convinced they are not guilty, because the financial risk is too high. I would not be surprised if the judgement in this case gets overthrown in a higher court. The defendants german lawyers, WILDE BEUGER SOLMECKE, are known for legal defense against Waldorf Frommer. Personally, I don't trust them completely because they offer an all-inclusive legal defense package that is conveniently priced at 2/3 of the value Waldorf Frommer asks for. This industry is a huge employment scheme for lawyers.

xvilka 9y ago
Publishing the name of the company will not really help to fight them. Every company is a team of people behind, so listing names of those people can have a better effect instead.
- cyphunk 9y ago
  Could you expand on why you think the name of the company is not important here?
  - xvilka 9y ago
    Companies are indifferent to the bad image, especially those not presented on the stocks market. People are more sensitive.
9y ago

tunichtgut 9y ago

These copyright laws are such a joke! Typical of nowadays germany. Nothing is working anymore, except you run an army of lawyers and "cash-into" the local government. Its such a joke, rly.

psergeant 9y ago

> So the court thinks that the presence of content in German means that courts in Germany have jurisdiction, regardless of the fact that PGLAF is entirely in the US? I suspect that if the Brits started claiming jurisdiction — well, _everywhere_ - on this basis, then that would raise eyebrows

Mindwipe 9y ago
There are some limitations on it nowadays, but they do and used to a LOT more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism

mirimir 9y ago

So why don't they have a Tor onion link? I mean, Facebook does, for dog's sake!

neya 9y ago

> Because the German Court has overstepped its jurisdiction, and allowed the world's largest publishing group to bully Project Gutenberg for these 18 books, there is every reason to think that this will keep happening. There are thousands of eBooks in the Project Gutenberg collection that could be subject to similar over-reaching and illigitimate actions. > PGLAF's legal advisors disagree with all claims that there must be any blocking, or removal, or anything associated - censorship, fines/fees, disclaimers, etc. - for items that are in the public domain in the US. Period. I find this situation very similar to GDPR. I'd probably be down-voted for saying this (probably the demographic), but I will do the same thing to all of my online services and websites - I will block access to anyone based in EU leaving them a simple note to sort out their GDPR rules with their governments. My company is based in the states, I DO NOT have an obligation to follow your bullshit compliance requirements because you feel like it and over-step your jurisdiction. I will continue to follow the laws of where my company is incorporated under, but not every government in the world. So, fuck you and your tiny little data collection notice, I already have terms and conditions in place specifically for this purpose on my website and if you don't take an effort to read them, I am not simply going to modify my site code to make it easy for your lazy ass to display a notice on my data collection policies. /end rant

TobiasBales 9y ago
Does this apply to DMCA notices etc if a company is not based in the US too then?
klokoman 9y ago
I am from the EU and I appreciate you

xtrapolate 9y ago

Blocking the whole country is an interesting move, mostly because it has the potential to generate a much greater public outcry than simply masking away the few specific books in question, putting a greater public pressure to reevaluate the entire legal constructs surrounding these issues. It's a display of standing for your principles without compromise.

dirkt 9y ago

Can someone explain to me why project Gutenberg has decided to block the COMPLETE site for German IPs instead of just blocking the books in question? Is this just a dick move to enrage people and get attention? And they could have blocked just the pages with the books in question directly after receiving the copyright violation notification...

cyphunk 9y ago
this is discussed here in the comments extensively. The best answer is that they block Germany because they expect if they complied by only blocking certain books they would have to deal with many more requests in the future. They also decided to take this chance to make a statement to encourage a public debate.

Grue3 9y ago

Now this is how you deal with government censorship. Take note, Github, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter et. al.

gnud 9y ago

IMSLP should follow suit, instead of taking any chances, until German courts come to their senses about jurisdiction. (For those who don't know, IMSLP hosts a lot of sheet music scans that are out of copyright in canada, and not in the EU).

originalsimba 9y ago

those pesky germans at it again..

Zorlag 9y ago

So what? Even my Dad knows how to use a VPN.

rhn_mk1 9y ago

Unfortunately, the donation page https://www.gutenberg.org/donate https://www.gutenberg.org/donate is also blocked in Germany :(

znpy 9y ago

I wonder if it works the other way around, in general: - country A has different copyright laws than country B. - A copyright holder from country A asks an organization in country B to take off some content based on country A's copyright laws. - The organization in country B decides not to take off the content, as it is perfectly fine under country B copyright laws, and block whole country A access. So here are some questions: - Might this case set a precedent? - Some of those weird, small and autonomous one-island countries can come up with some very relaxed copyright laws and start distribute content "legally" ?

stestagg 9y ago
That's where power relationships come into play. If the small Island country tries to play that game, they find that much needed international trade with other bigger countries starts to dry up, and fast. Hosting public-domain content for free doesn't really produce much revenue, so for a country to sacrifice so much lost trade/needed supplies for no economic benefit doesn't really work in the long term.
darklajid 9y ago
I wonder if, given their broad reply, that project shouldn't just block everyone BUT the US, since they decided that US law is the only that applies to them. Now, I don't like these laws one bit, but I also really don't like this (over)reaction. If your legal counsel argues that you should block a country to avoid being sued for different laws, shouldn't the same counsel point out that this is likely for most of the world? Or is Germany the oddball here and the majority of the world doesn't have CP laws, or doesn't care or .. have laws that are literally one to one compatible with the US ones?
- cyphar 9y ago
  Most countries are signatories to the WIPO treaty that enshrines a global "standard" on copyright laws. However, each individual country's legislation is different -- though generally most countries have similar or looser copyright laws than America (since America was the source of the current insane variant of copyright we are experiencing, rather than the previously-sane British copyright system defined by the Statute of Anne). However, Europe has some really strange copyright directives that go even further than the US. For instance, architecture is copyrightable, and so taking and distributing photos of the outside of a building is not technically allowed without permission from the owner. So taking tourist photos within an EU country and posting them online could be seen as copyright infringement. Of course, this is just a general guideline, if you actually want to do business you need to ask lawyers familiar with the laws of all the countries you wish to do business with (though this is prohibitively expensive for volunteer efforts, which explains why they didn't do it).

cdjk 9y ago

What would have happened if PGLAF had just ignored the lawsuit? Since they have no presence in Germany what could the German courts have done to them?

nearmuse 9y ago

What are the precedents?

otempomores 9y ago

Im wondering.. If you train a neural net on a famous writter and apply that net to a copyrighted work.. does copyright still apply.

hmd_imputer 9y ago

another Neuland in Germany

Hop_Gracer 9y ago

Here in Germany I can access the home page but not any actual books.

gluejar 9y ago

German users, please do not access or clone the following github repositories: “Der Untertan,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Der-Untertan_38126 https://github.com/GITenberg/Der-Untertan_38126 “Die Ehrgeizige,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Die-Ehrgeizige_43335 https://github.com/GITenberg/Die-Ehrgeizige_43335 “Professor Unrat oder Das Ende eines Tyrannen,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Professor-Unrat-oder-Das-Ende-eines-Tyrannen_35264 https://github.com/GITenberg/Professor-Unrat-oder-Das-Ende-e... “Der Vater,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Der-Vater_33329 https://github.com/GITenberg/Der-Vater_33329 “Flöten und Dolche,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Fl-ten-und-Dolche--Novellen_31218 https://github.com/GITenberg/Fl-ten-und-Dolche--Novellen_312... “Flaubert und die Herkunft des modernen Romans,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Flaubert-und-die-Herkunft-des-modernen-Romans_33328 https://github.com/GITenberg/Flaubert-und-die-Herkunft-des-m... “Buddenbrooks,” https://github.com/GITenberg/BuddenbrooksVerfall-einer-Familie_34811 https://github.com/GITenberg/BuddenbrooksVerfall-einer-Famil... “Der Tod in Venedig,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Der-Tod-in-Venedig_12108 https://github.com/GITenberg/Der-Tod-in-Venedig_12108 “Der kleine Herr Friedemann,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Der-kleine-Herr-FriedemannNovellen_36766 https://github.com/GITenberg/Der-kleine-Herr-FriedemannNovel... “Tristan,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Tristan_13810 https://github.com/GITenberg/Tristan_13810 “Gladius Dei,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Gladius-Dei--Schwere-Stunde_12053 https://github.com/GITenberg/Gladius-Dei--Schwere-Stunde_120... “Schwere Stunde,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Gladius-Dei--Schwere-Stunde_12053 https://github.com/GITenberg/Gladius-Dei--Schwere-Stunde_120... “Königliche Hoheit,” https://github.com/GITenberg/K-nigliche-HoheitRoman_35328 https://github.com/GITenberg/K-nigliche-HoheitRoman_35328 “Tonio Kröger,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Tonio-Kr-ger_23313 https://github.com/GITenberg/Tonio-Kr-ger_23313 “Die Ermordung einer Butterblume und andere Erzählungen,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Die-Ermordung-einer-Butterblume-und-andere-Erz-hlungen_31660 https://github.com/GITenberg/Die-Ermordung-einer-Butterblume... “Die drei Sprünge des Wang-lun,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Die-drei-Spr-nge-des-Wang-lunChinesischer-Roman_43987 https://github.com/GITenberg/Die-drei-Spr-nge-des-Wang-lunCh... “Die Lobensteiner reisen nach Böhmen,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Die-Lobensteiner-reisen-nach-B-hmenZw-lf-Novellen-und-Geschichten_36779 https://github.com/GITenberg/Die-Lobensteiner-reisen-nach-B-... “Wallenstein,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Wallenstein.-I.--of-2-_43931 https://github.com/GITenberg/Wallenstein.-I.--of-2-_43931 “Wallenstein,” https://github.com/GITenberg/Wallenstein.-II.--of-2-_43932 https://github.com/GITenberg/Wallenstein.-II.--of-2-_43932

stakhanov 9y ago

I would second the motion that copyright laws are a f*ing joke. But given that laws are the way they are, there isn't clearly a good guy and a bad guy in this story. I really don't think it's wrong for German courts to intervene when German laws are broken in the way that a U.S.-based party facilitates a German-based party (who reads copyrighted material without paying for it) infringing on the rights of another German-based party (who authored or otherwise acquired rights in the material). I think it's wrong for the U.S. to be a "safe haven" for people whose attitude towards the rest of the world is "screw you and your laws." That's exactly Google's legal strategy with privacy laws: They make sure everything they do when they violate E.U. privacy laws somehow comes under U.S. jurisdiction, which says something to the effect of "...well U.S.-based persons have a right to privacy, but, as for the rest of the world, dear Google, you hereby have permission to do whatever you want". (At least that's my non-expert understanding of U.S. privacy laws. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). I'm a huge fan of PGLAF and the work it's doing, but I'm sorry to say that, in blocking all of Germany for everything, I do see a little bit of a reflection of this "screw the rest of the world" notion. Of course I do recognize that it's probably not borne out of pure bad attitude, but rather limited resources. When they clear works to be published, their clearance process is probably based only on U.S.-laws, and then they put it up globally. The solution would have to be to clear the rights on a matrix where every work needs to be looked at from the point of view of every jurisdiction, and access-controlled accordingly. Obviously that's a resource-intensive task, and I totally respect that PGLAF says they don't have the resources for that. So really, what this is probably driving towards, is that every jurisdiction needs its own Project Gutenberg, with access restricted to that jurisdiction, and clearing rights according to its own laws. If a German legal expert reading this is interested in taking on such a task, please do get in touch. I'm up for the role of being the techie in this operation.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]