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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 al

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?
    - jhasse 9y ago
      > Other countries can try to block that content Opens the door for censorship. > they can try to punish their own residents for viewing it. Impossible without more surveillance > Why would residents of the permissive country comply with a foreign court order? Let's say you want to travel to the country at some point in the future.
    - detuur 9y ago
      > try to block Excellent phrasing. They can try. And they'll fail. Blocking is trivially easy to avoid and circumvent. As long as there's no jurisdiction, a country can't take any action against a criminal site, it can only take steps to protect its population from harmful outside influence, which is by blocking. The offenders remain free and often unidentified. But when there is jurisdiction, a country can take offensive action. It gives legal ground to investigate the involved persons, it gives permission to hack the website, it gives permission to hijack it and replace it by honeypots. It gives the weapons to not just temporarily silence criminals, but to destroy their enterprise and bring them to justice. Remote jurisdiction is the base of modern countermeasures against websites and servers involved in drugs, child pornography, terrorism, and human trafficking. Without it, the only logical way to protect your population is to erect deep-scanning firewalls and abolishing free traffic across national networks, much like China and Iran are doing.
      - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
        > But when there is jurisdiction, a country can take offensive action. That isn't what jurisdiction means. You're describing the digital equivalent of covert operations in a foreign country. > Without it, the only logical way to protect your population is to erect deep-scanning firewalls and abolishing free traffic across national networks, much like China and Iran are doing. It would work perfectly well to publish free open source scanning software and allow your citizens to voluntarily use it if they want to be "protected" from such things. Unless your citizens are the perpetrators rather than the victims, but in that case you haven't got a jurisdictional problem.
  - freech 9y ago
    > If you're in a country where child pornography is legal, should all other countries just accept it? Yes. > If you're in a country where doxxing is legal, should the victims not be able to do anything against it? No.
  - balp 9y ago
    > If you're in a country where child pornography is legal, should all other countries just accept it? No, they could try to convince the country to change it laws. Maybe if they think the issue is important enough blockade the country. Maybe even with help of other countries that have the same idea about the problem. But they can't prosecute a citizen of that country for doing anything legal in that country. It's possible to try to change the other countries laws using diplomacy.
  - klibertp 9y ago
    Yes and yes. Other countries can ban their citizens from accessing the child porn. They cannot ban a citizen of another country from hosting said porn if it's legal there. This is obvious. Whether it's about porn, dissident political opinions or my cooking blog makes no difference. Repeat after me: your country has no right to order citizens of other countries who live outside of your country to do anything. And vice versa, of course. On a more personal note, here - a bit east from you - there was a time when your government could order people around, and it did. We don't want to repeat that, which is what you're calling for. There's a lot of blood behind some countries becoming independent. Show some respect for that. That some countries could use their independence to allow child porn is unfortunate. I still won't support invading them over it. You need to realize that you're arguing for just that - infringing their independence - just without the tanks entering the picture (for now). Honestly, stop that. There are still people alive who remember the last time your folks did that. At the very least, let those people die out before doing it again.
    - jhasse 9y ago
      > They cannot ban a citizen of another country from hosting said porn if it's legal there. That's not what's happening though, gutenberg.org was only ordered to make the 18 books not accessible from German IPs. No one talked about a hosting ban.
      - klibertp 9y ago
        The rule is: you can't, in any way, compel citizens of other countries living outside your country to do anything. You really shouldn't even try, unless it's with the cooperation with the other country (just fill a lawsuit there!). If you do try, it's a straight path to extraordinary renditions, drone strikes, assassinations and other such joyous things. I'm not saying that it has to lead to this, but it could, it did in the past, and we've instituted a rule to prevent that. Please, honor the rules we've all agreed upon! Now, back to the issue in question. If you put a site on the Internet, you're by default giving access to it to everyone - you need to put some effort into it to make filtering traffic possible. It doesn't matter how much effort is needed - just that you have to do something. This court order tries to compel PG to do that "something". It doesn't matter, at all, how many books are involved. It doesn't matter that it's "just for German IPs". It doesn't matter how easy it is to implement. What's important is that the court tries to compel citizens of another country to do something. No matter how small it is, it's simply wrong. It shouldn't happen! The court could force ISPs in its country to filter traffic so that you can't access those books. It could make filtering these books to be hardcoded in home routers and public access points. It could, for all I care, ban the Internet in its entirety - inside your country. It cannot, and should not even try, to force PG to do anything. Now, there are exceptions to everything, established precedents, international agreements - I'm not a lawyer, I don't know if there's a legal argument which would allow the interference in other country affairs in this case. What I'm saying is that such interference, as a rule, is not allowed, supporting it should be viewed with suspicion and every argument presented should be very carefully scrutinized and verified. Again, as a rule, you don't force foreigners who never set foot on your soil to do anything. Infringing on another country sovereignty is simply a no-go (unless you have a lot of nukes, apparently, but I digress). Why is it hard to understand?
- gowld 9y ago
  If you have Turkish users, you ARE doing business in Turkey. That's obvious.
  - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
    If you operate a bookstore in New York City, you are doing business in the US and not Turkey. That is true even if someone from Turkey comes into your bookstore, buys one of your books and takes it home with them to Turkey. Why should the internet be any different?
- Mindwipe 9y ago
  Well bad news. The world doesn't and has never worked in the way you want it to. Countries generally find enforcing their laws against entities with nothing inside their borders at all a bit more hassle than it's worth, but it has never, ever been the case that they can't.
greenyoda 9y ago
> "International websites have to respect local laws." German companies operating in the US need to respect US law. As the article noted: "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." Also, German courts need to respect international law and treaties. As the article noted: "Alternatively, international treaties - notably the Berne Convention and related treaties - provide mediation processes through the World Intellectual Property Organization. PGLAF offered to undergo this mediation process, and Plaintiff declined. International treaties explicitly and unambiguously support PGLAF's legal guidance as described above: that the copyright status in one country is not impacted or enforceable or otherwise relevant in other countries. Plaintiff managed to find a German Court, and some precedents from Germany (and, after the lawsuit was filed, from the EU), which were willing to flaunt international treaties by developing a theory that PGLAF is under jurisdiction of the German Court system."
- Mindwipe 9y ago
  I have to be blunt here, whomever is giving PGLAF legal advice here almost certainly did not advise that last paragraph, because there is abundant precedent that it's incorrect. In addition, EU copyright harmonisation means that the publisher would succeed in this case in every country in the EU (or just getting the judgement from the German court carried up to the European court). Will PGLAF block the entire EU when that happens?
  - _Microft 9y ago
    The reaction of blocking access to all of Project Gutenberg only for german users and not for european user strongly suggests rather a kneejerk reaction/retaliation than an abundance of caution on their part.
chki 9y ago
Yes, I absolutely agree with you there. Copyright across international borders is really complex but the only important factor can't be the country of origin. (This would obviously create copyright paradises and is generally unpractical) If you publish a German book on a site with parts of it written in German either you will get problems with German copyright or the person downloading the content. Both solutions are problematic but only the former can be effective so this is what courts will decide in those cases. BTW I'm currently studying law in Germany and this is a lower local court and there will be a new trial at the Oberlandesgericht. Because of the importance of the case it would also be quite possible that a federal court will take a look at it in the end, so this is far from over.
- mcguire 9y ago
  What is a "German book"? A book in German? A book "owned" by a German? Are you comfortable having United States laws apply to you because you are using a "United States web site" in English? (Actually, the latter doesn't matter; the US doesn't have an official language.)
robjwells 9y ago
> for playing devils advocate I can see the courts point: International websites have to respect local laws I think this is an untenable position as it would mean that any website, published from any country, hosted on servers in any country, would have to abide by the laws of the world’s 193 countries. Project Gutenberg’s argument is that they are only a US concern — everyone involved officially is in the US, and the site is hosted in the US. This is distinct from, say, a company explicitly providing a service to customers in a particular country (cf GDPR). And, to counter your point with an extreme example, it would mean that no-one is ever able to criticise the Thai monarch on any website in the world lest they be jailed under Thailand’s lèse majesté laws. It’s one thing to say that an in-country website respect that country’s laws, it’s another entirely to say that any website hosted anywhere in the world must respect that country’s laws.
- Findus23 9y ago
  I agree with you. Following every law is neither practical and in the case of censorship even counterproductive. I just wanted to point out that the reaction of the court isn’t as entirely pointless as it may seem on first thought.
  - robjwells 9y ago
    > I just wanted to point out that the reaction of the court isn’t as entirely pointless as it may seem on first thought. And I think you’re right to do so! Honestly, regarding the whole case, I think the court has erred in accepting the publisher’s argument that Project Gutenberg is a valid target for a lawsuit in Germany. If the publisher wants the books removed it should sue in the US, if it wants to prevent access from Germany it should seek another local remedy.
    - madhadron 9y ago
      They have no legal basis for the books being removed in the US, since they are in the public domain there. If they can't make German law stick, they have no recourse.
gambiting 9y ago
If your website breaks moral decency laws in Saudi Arabia, and a court there orders you to close your website, would you comply? Look at it from another perspective - if a German court has a problem with German citizens breaking German law in Germany, it should perhaps pursue those citizens and judge them. A US website can't(and shouldn't) be breaking any German laws by existing in US - maybe you could make an argument that German people accessing the website from Germany are breaking German law, but that's not what the court is saying. The court is saying that because project Gutenberg hosts books in German, then Germany has the right to judge them - which is obviously bollocks, you can speak German or write in German without having anything to do with Germany, a country cannot own a language.
- jhasse 9y ago
  > If your website breaks moral decency laws in Saudi Arabia, and a court there orders you to close your website, would you comply? Strawman, because we aren't talking about closing a website, but just blocking access from one country. Regarding your example: Yes, I would comply and block access from Saudi Arabia to my website.
  - gambiting 9y ago
    But....why? In a certain way, it's just some random court from a country you've never been to ordering you to do something. Why would you comply. There are ways foreign entities and governments can pursue an American company through the American legal system - the plaintiff decided not to do that here and decided to go through the German system instead. Which is all fine and dandy, but I still don't understand why an American company with no legal presence in Germany should obey rulings of the German court.
    - jhasse 9y ago
      > But....why? In a certain way, it's just some random court from a country you've never been to ordering you to do something. Why would you comply. In the beginning (like it was in this case with gutenberg.org), it isn't a court order, but just an email, asking me if I could respect their local laws. Books becoming public domain example: In Germany it's 75 years after the author's death, in the US some amount of years after the publication. Who am I to judge which approach is "right"? Btw: We're suffering quite a lot here in Germany because of software patents in the US. > Which is all fine and dandy, but I still don't understand why an American company with no legal presence in Germany should obey rulings of the German court. Don't you consider a website in German, accessible from Germany, which looks totally legal for most Germans as some kind of legal presence in Germany?
crx087 9y ago
> I can see the courts point: International websites have to respect local laws No, they don’t, and shouldn’t. I’m free to offend the sensibilities of China, disgrace the Ayatollah, and violate a wide variety of other “local laws” from the comfort of my home or workplace. If those places don’t like it, they’re also free to censor content until such time that their populace won’t tolerate it any longer.
- barrkel 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carruthers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carruthers
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - LoSboccacc 9y ago
    But they had to wait for him to enter US soil
    - slavak 9y ago
      Not only that, but his company was taking bets from US citizens, which is a much stronger argument for presence in a territory than simply "your website is accessible to our citizens."
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
simonh 9y ago
What is it that distinguishes a web site from an international web site? Do you feel that laws on web site content passed in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran or Vietnam should apply to web sites created or operated by you or posts made by you on line? Would you expect yourself and other global posters and journalists to be bound, for example, by Thailand’s Lese Majeste laws on criticism or comment related to their king?
- jhasse 9y ago
  gutenberg.org has a link to view it in German on the front page. I guess if you provide several translations and use a top level domain like .org, you are more likely an international web site than an English-only .us web site.
  - Zak 9y ago
    All websites that are not intentionally blocked from specific regions by the website operator, a government or internet service providers are available everywhere in the world. English is the world's most spoken language. In effect, most websites are international websites. That doesn't make them subject to the laws of every country. Most legal systems do not accept the standard the German court used and require a more significant physical, legal or economic connection to a country before a website may be subject to its laws.
    - jhasse 9y ago
      That's why the reasoning of the court went beyond "It's an international website".
      - Zak 9y ago
        But it did not use reasoning that courts in most other parts of the world accept, including the US coults it would have to ask to enforce its judgement in the absence of voluntary compliance. PGLAF appears to be complying because it wants to win an appeal in German court, which might be compromised by ignoring the ruling of a lower German court. If PGLAF decided to ignore the ruling, there would likely be no consequences.
incompatible 9y ago
Generally speaking, no, you only have to follow the laws of the county where you are resident. I don't know why Project Gutenberg is taking any notice of the court case at all, although it probably should warn its contributors not to work on projects that aren't yet public domain in their own countries, to avoid any risk of legal action. In this case the legal situation seems clear. The case is about several books written by Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann and Alfred Döblin, who died less than 70 years ago, and all their works are still in copyright in Germany. However, copyright law in the US is more complex, and their works published before 1923 are public domain there. Project Gutenberg has every right to publish these works from a web server located in the United States. If Germany doesn't like it, it can order that Gutenberg's website be blocked, like is already done with sites like The Pirate Bay in many countries, and with many other sites in restrictive countries like China.
- mcguire 9y ago
  The court decision in question, in part, says, "The defendants are ordered, on penalty of an administrative fine of up to EUR 250,000.00 or, alternatively, imprisonment of up to 6 months, for each case of non- compliance, said imprisonment to be imposed on the second defendant, to cease and desist from making the following works publicly available or letting them be made publicly available, namely:..." The court has not ordered the site blocked, but the texts in question taken down.
  - incompatible 9y ago
    Sure, but if the defendants don't have any interests in Germany, how would the claim be enforced?
Bizarro 9y ago
International websites have to respect local laws I keep on seeing this type of political agenda comments parroted around HN lately, when everybody knows it's not true. It's not a german website and absolutely does not have to respect German law.
mcguire 9y ago
There is an established treaty for handling this particular issue. The court in question has decided not to follow that treaty.
- tom_mellior 9y ago
  Could you be more specific?
  - mcguire 9y ago
    The Berne Convention specifies minimum copyright provisions (equivalent to current US and German practice, IIUC), requires other countries to protect works as strongly as their own, and describes how to resolve conflicts (WIPA).
adrianN 9y ago
Only if you really don't like the idea of the Internet should you advocate for that kind of thing. If every website would have to comply with every country's laws this would immediately lead to almost complete segregation of the Internet. Why should anybody take the risks of making their websites internationally available? It's hard enough to ensure that your website complies with your own country's laws. It's impossible to do that for every country. If a country doesn't like what a website provides they are free to block it at the border, just like with physical goods.
Buge 9y ago
> International websites have to respect local laws. What does "local laws" mean? Laws local to me and the website I run? Sure. Laws local to someone in the world (aka laws non-local to me)? No I'm not going to obey Chinese laws.
briandear 9y ago
> International websites have to respect local laws No. A website doesn’t really exist unless a person visits it. It’s up to the user to respect local laws. If certain content is illegal somewhere, that’s not the fault of the website. The website isn’t in the country of concern. Why is it there problem? It’s up to the user to choose if they want to break local laws by consuming “illegal” content. If I start a phone sex number in the Cayman Islands and such phone systems are illegal to use in Germany, then why is it my problem? I am not forcing people to call, nor why should I care where a call comes from. The end user is the one violating the law by calling my service. It isn’t like I am broadcasting. Same concept. A website is no different than a phone number.

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?
  - jhasse 9y ago
    > Other countries can try to block that content Opens the door for censorship. > they can try to punish their own residents for viewing it. Impossible without more surveillance > Why would residents of the permissive country comply with a foreign court order? Let's say you want to travel to the country at some point in the future.
  - detuur 9y ago
    > try to block Excellent phrasing. They can try. And they'll fail. Blocking is trivially easy to avoid and circumvent. As long as there's no jurisdiction, a country can't take any action against a criminal site, it can only take steps to protect its population from harmful outside influence, which is by blocking. The offenders remain free and often unidentified. But when there is jurisdiction, a country can take offensive action. It gives legal ground to investigate the involved persons, it gives permission to hack the website, it gives permission to hijack it and replace it by honeypots. It gives the weapons to not just temporarily silence criminals, but to destroy their enterprise and bring them to justice. Remote jurisdiction is the base of modern countermeasures against websites and servers involved in drugs, child pornography, terrorism, and human trafficking. Without it, the only logical way to protect your population is to erect deep-scanning firewalls and abolishing free traffic across national networks, much like China and Iran are doing.
    - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
      > But when there is jurisdiction, a country can take offensive action. That isn't what jurisdiction means. You're describing the digital equivalent of covert operations in a foreign country. > Without it, the only logical way to protect your population is to erect deep-scanning firewalls and abolishing free traffic across national networks, much like China and Iran are doing. It would work perfectly well to publish free open source scanning software and allow your citizens to voluntarily use it if they want to be "protected" from such things. Unless your citizens are the perpetrators rather than the victims, but in that case you haven't got a jurisdictional problem.
- freech 9y ago
  > If you're in a country where child pornography is legal, should all other countries just accept it? Yes. > If you're in a country where doxxing is legal, should the victims not be able to do anything against it? No.
- balp 9y ago
  > If you're in a country where child pornography is legal, should all other countries just accept it? No, they could try to convince the country to change it laws. Maybe if they think the issue is important enough blockade the country. Maybe even with help of other countries that have the same idea about the problem. But they can't prosecute a citizen of that country for doing anything legal in that country. It's possible to try to change the other countries laws using diplomacy.
- klibertp 9y ago
  Yes and yes. Other countries can ban their citizens from accessing the child porn. They cannot ban a citizen of another country from hosting said porn if it's legal there. This is obvious. Whether it's about porn, dissident political opinions or my cooking blog makes no difference. Repeat after me: your country has no right to order citizens of other countries who live outside of your country to do anything. And vice versa, of course. On a more personal note, here - a bit east from you - there was a time when your government could order people around, and it did. We don't want to repeat that, which is what you're calling for. There's a lot of blood behind some countries becoming independent. Show some respect for that. That some countries could use their independence to allow child porn is unfortunate. I still won't support invading them over it. You need to realize that you're arguing for just that - infringing their independence - just without the tanks entering the picture (for now). Honestly, stop that. There are still people alive who remember the last time your folks did that. At the very least, let those people die out before doing it again.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    > They cannot ban a citizen of another country from hosting said porn if it's legal there. That's not what's happening though, gutenberg.org was only ordered to make the 18 books not accessible from German IPs. No one talked about a hosting ban.
    - klibertp 9y ago
      The rule is: you can't, in any way, compel citizens of other countries living outside your country to do anything. You really shouldn't even try, unless it's with the cooperation with the other country (just fill a lawsuit there!). If you do try, it's a straight path to extraordinary renditions, drone strikes, assassinations and other such joyous things. I'm not saying that it has to lead to this, but it could, it did in the past, and we've instituted a rule to prevent that. Please, honor the rules we've all agreed upon! Now, back to the issue in question. If you put a site on the Internet, you're by default giving access to it to everyone - you need to put some effort into it to make filtering traffic possible. It doesn't matter how much effort is needed - just that you have to do something. This court order tries to compel PG to do that "something". It doesn't matter, at all, how many books are involved. It doesn't matter that it's "just for German IPs". It doesn't matter how easy it is to implement. What's important is that the court tries to compel citizens of another country to do something. No matter how small it is, it's simply wrong. It shouldn't happen! The court could force ISPs in its country to filter traffic so that you can't access those books. It could make filtering these books to be hardcoded in home routers and public access points. It could, for all I care, ban the Internet in its entirety - inside your country. It cannot, and should not even try, to force PG to do anything. Now, there are exceptions to everything, established precedents, international agreements - I'm not a lawyer, I don't know if there's a legal argument which would allow the interference in other country affairs in this case. What I'm saying is that such interference, as a rule, is not allowed, supporting it should be viewed with suspicion and every argument presented should be very carefully scrutinized and verified. Again, as a rule, you don't force foreigners who never set foot on your soil to do anything. Infringing on another country sovereignty is simply a no-go (unless you have a lot of nukes, apparently, but I digress). Why is it hard to understand?
gowld 9y ago
If you have Turkish users, you ARE doing business in Turkey. That's obvious.
- AnthonyMouse 9y ago
  If you operate a bookstore in New York City, you are doing business in the US and not Turkey. That is true even if someone from Turkey comes into your bookstore, buys one of your books and takes it home with them to Turkey. Why should the internet be any different?
Mindwipe 9y ago
Well bad news. The world doesn't and has never worked in the way you want it to. Countries generally find enforcing their laws against entities with nothing inside their borders at all a bit more hassle than it's worth, but it has never, ever been the case that they can't.

greenyoda 9y ago

> "International websites have to respect local laws." German companies operating in the US need to respect US law. As the article noted: "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." Also, German courts need to respect international law and treaties. As the article noted: "Alternatively, international treaties - notably the Berne Convention and related treaties - provide mediation processes through the World Intellectual Property Organization. PGLAF offered to undergo this mediation process, and Plaintiff declined. International treaties explicitly and unambiguously support PGLAF's legal guidance as described above: that the copyright status in one country is not impacted or enforceable or otherwise relevant in other countries. Plaintiff managed to find a German Court, and some precedents from Germany (and, after the lawsuit was filed, from the EU), which were willing to flaunt international treaties by developing a theory that PGLAF is under jurisdiction of the German Court system."

Mindwipe 9y ago
I have to be blunt here, whomever is giving PGLAF legal advice here almost certainly did not advise that last paragraph, because there is abundant precedent that it's incorrect. In addition, EU copyright harmonisation means that the publisher would succeed in this case in every country in the EU (or just getting the judgement from the German court carried up to the European court). Will PGLAF block the entire EU when that happens?
- _Microft 9y ago
  The reaction of blocking access to all of Project Gutenberg only for german users and not for european user strongly suggests rather a kneejerk reaction/retaliation than an abundance of caution on their part.

chki 9y ago

Yes, I absolutely agree with you there. Copyright across international borders is really complex but the only important factor can't be the country of origin. (This would obviously create copyright paradises and is generally unpractical) If you publish a German book on a site with parts of it written in German either you will get problems with German copyright or the person downloading the content. Both solutions are problematic but only the former can be effective so this is what courts will decide in those cases. BTW I'm currently studying law in Germany and this is a lower local court and there will be a new trial at the Oberlandesgericht. Because of the importance of the case it would also be quite possible that a federal court will take a look at it in the end, so this is far from over.

mcguire 9y ago
What is a "German book"? A book in German? A book "owned" by a German? Are you comfortable having United States laws apply to you because you are using a "United States web site" in English? (Actually, the latter doesn't matter; the US doesn't have an official language.)

robjwells 9y ago

> for playing devils advocate I can see the courts point: International websites have to respect local laws I think this is an untenable position as it would mean that any website, published from any country, hosted on servers in any country, would have to abide by the laws of the world’s 193 countries. Project Gutenberg’s argument is that they are only a US concern — everyone involved officially is in the US, and the site is hosted in the US. This is distinct from, say, a company explicitly providing a service to customers in a particular country (cf GDPR). And, to counter your point with an extreme example, it would mean that no-one is ever able to criticise the Thai monarch on any website in the world lest they be jailed under Thailand’s lèse majesté laws. It’s one thing to say that an in-country website respect that country’s laws, it’s another entirely to say that any website hosted anywhere in the world must respect that country’s laws.

Findus23 9y ago
I agree with you. Following every law is neither practical and in the case of censorship even counterproductive. I just wanted to point out that the reaction of the court isn’t as entirely pointless as it may seem on first thought.
- robjwells 9y ago
  > I just wanted to point out that the reaction of the court isn’t as entirely pointless as it may seem on first thought. And I think you’re right to do so! Honestly, regarding the whole case, I think the court has erred in accepting the publisher’s argument that Project Gutenberg is a valid target for a lawsuit in Germany. If the publisher wants the books removed it should sue in the US, if it wants to prevent access from Germany it should seek another local remedy.
  - madhadron 9y ago
    They have no legal basis for the books being removed in the US, since they are in the public domain there. If they can't make German law stick, they have no recourse.

gambiting 9y ago

If your website breaks moral decency laws in Saudi Arabia, and a court there orders you to close your website, would you comply? Look at it from another perspective - if a German court has a problem with German citizens breaking German law in Germany, it should perhaps pursue those citizens and judge them. A US website can't(and shouldn't) be breaking any German laws by existing in US - maybe you could make an argument that German people accessing the website from Germany are breaking German law, but that's not what the court is saying. The court is saying that because project Gutenberg hosts books in German, then Germany has the right to judge them - which is obviously bollocks, you can speak German or write in German without having anything to do with Germany, a country cannot own a language.

jhasse 9y ago
> If your website breaks moral decency laws in Saudi Arabia, and a court there orders you to close your website, would you comply? Strawman, because we aren't talking about closing a website, but just blocking access from one country. Regarding your example: Yes, I would comply and block access from Saudi Arabia to my website.
- gambiting 9y ago
  But....why? In a certain way, it's just some random court from a country you've never been to ordering you to do something. Why would you comply. There are ways foreign entities and governments can pursue an American company through the American legal system - the plaintiff decided not to do that here and decided to go through the German system instead. Which is all fine and dandy, but I still don't understand why an American company with no legal presence in Germany should obey rulings of the German court.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    > But....why? In a certain way, it's just some random court from a country you've never been to ordering you to do something. Why would you comply. In the beginning (like it was in this case with gutenberg.org), it isn't a court order, but just an email, asking me if I could respect their local laws. Books becoming public domain example: In Germany it's 75 years after the author's death, in the US some amount of years after the publication. Who am I to judge which approach is "right"? Btw: We're suffering quite a lot here in Germany because of software patents in the US. > Which is all fine and dandy, but I still don't understand why an American company with no legal presence in Germany should obey rulings of the German court. Don't you consider a website in German, accessible from Germany, which looks totally legal for most Germans as some kind of legal presence in Germany?

crx087 9y ago

> I can see the courts point: International websites have to respect local laws No, they don’t, and shouldn’t. I’m free to offend the sensibilities of China, disgrace the Ayatollah, and violate a wide variety of other “local laws” from the comfort of my home or workplace. If those places don’t like it, they’re also free to censor content until such time that their populace won’t tolerate it any longer.

barrkel 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carruthers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carruthers
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- LoSboccacc 9y ago
  But they had to wait for him to enter US soil
  - slavak 9y ago
    Not only that, but his company was taking bets from US citizens, which is a much stronger argument for presence in a territory than simply "your website is accessible to our citizens."

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

simonh 9y ago

What is it that distinguishes a web site from an international web site? Do you feel that laws on web site content passed in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran or Vietnam should apply to web sites created or operated by you or posts made by you on line? Would you expect yourself and other global posters and journalists to be bound, for example, by Thailand’s Lese Majeste laws on criticism or comment related to their king?

jhasse 9y ago
gutenberg.org has a link to view it in German on the front page. I guess if you provide several translations and use a top level domain like .org, you are more likely an international web site than an English-only .us web site.
- Zak 9y ago
  All websites that are not intentionally blocked from specific regions by the website operator, a government or internet service providers are available everywhere in the world. English is the world's most spoken language. In effect, most websites are international websites. That doesn't make them subject to the laws of every country. Most legal systems do not accept the standard the German court used and require a more significant physical, legal or economic connection to a country before a website may be subject to its laws.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    That's why the reasoning of the court went beyond "It's an international website".
    - Zak 9y ago
      But it did not use reasoning that courts in most other parts of the world accept, including the US coults it would have to ask to enforce its judgement in the absence of voluntary compliance. PGLAF appears to be complying because it wants to win an appeal in German court, which might be compromised by ignoring the ruling of a lower German court. If PGLAF decided to ignore the ruling, there would likely be no consequences.

incompatible 9y ago

Generally speaking, no, you only have to follow the laws of the county where you are resident. I don't know why Project Gutenberg is taking any notice of the court case at all, although it probably should warn its contributors not to work on projects that aren't yet public domain in their own countries, to avoid any risk of legal action. In this case the legal situation seems clear. The case is about several books written by Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann and Alfred Döblin, who died less than 70 years ago, and all their works are still in copyright in Germany. However, copyright law in the US is more complex, and their works published before 1923 are public domain there. Project Gutenberg has every right to publish these works from a web server located in the United States. If Germany doesn't like it, it can order that Gutenberg's website be blocked, like is already done with sites like The Pirate Bay in many countries, and with many other sites in restrictive countries like China.

mcguire 9y ago
The court decision in question, in part, says, "The defendants are ordered, on penalty of an administrative fine of up to EUR 250,000.00 or, alternatively, imprisonment of up to 6 months, for each case of non- compliance, said imprisonment to be imposed on the second defendant, to cease and desist from making the following works publicly available or letting them be made publicly available, namely:..." The court has not ordered the site blocked, but the texts in question taken down.
- incompatible 9y ago
  Sure, but if the defendants don't have any interests in Germany, how would the claim be enforced?

Bizarro 9y ago

International websites have to respect local laws I keep on seeing this type of political agenda comments parroted around HN lately, when everybody knows it's not true. It's not a german website and absolutely does not have to respect German law.

mcguire 9y ago

There is an established treaty for handling this particular issue. The court in question has decided not to follow that treaty.

tom_mellior 9y ago
Could you be more specific?
- mcguire 9y ago
  The Berne Convention specifies minimum copyright provisions (equivalent to current US and German practice, IIUC), requires other countries to protect works as strongly as their own, and describes how to resolve conflicts (WIPA).

adrianN 9y ago

Only if you really don't like the idea of the Internet should you advocate for that kind of thing. If every website would have to comply with every country's laws this would immediately lead to almost complete segregation of the Internet. Why should anybody take the risks of making their websites internationally available? It's hard enough to ensure that your website complies with your own country's laws. It's impossible to do that for every country. If a country doesn't like what a website provides they are free to block it at the border, just like with physical goods.

Buge 9y ago

> International websites have to respect local laws. What does "local laws" mean? Laws local to me and the website I run? Sure. Laws local to someone in the world (aka laws non-local to me)? No I'm not going to obey Chinese laws.

briandear 9y ago

> International websites have to respect local laws No. A website doesn’t really exist unless a person visits it. It’s up to the user to respect local laws. If certain content is illegal somewhere, that’s not the fault of the website. The website isn’t in the country of concern. Why is it there problem? It’s up to the user to choose if they want to break local laws by consuming “illegal” content. If I start a phone sex number in the Cayman Islands and such phone systems are illegal to use in Germany, then why is it my problem? I am not forcing people to call, nor why should I care where a call comes from. The end user is the one violating the law by calling my service. It isn’t like I am broadcasting. Same concept. A website is no different than a phone number.