11 ms·

Project Gutenberg is no longer fully blocked in Germany

450 points by arlcode 5y ago

They settled their 2015 lawsuit and will only be blocking these specific works. More information and Background: https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html

mistrial9 5y ago
Project Gutenburg was blocked in Germany ? news to me, weird.. especialy considering the torrents and spy action that has happened in the same 25 years, while this token effort protects companies formed in the 1950s.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  Not only in Germany. Also in Italy, as of May 2020 (those hardly definable beasts that carved their way into the state made a bunch of targets associating Project Gutenberg with pirate sites).
- pgeorgi 5y ago
  In this case Project Gutenberg blocked German IP ranges to try to avoid legal issues (and since they wanted to make a point didn't only block the material under debate but their entire site). That overblocking approach seems to be what they changed now in favor of a targeted block of just Thomas Mann's work or whatever it is the German publishers have been complaining about. Why would a torrent site do the same?
thayne 5y ago
> 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 judgment. ummm, what? Imagine if the UK, or US claimed jurisdiction over any website that published content in English.
- nikanj 5y ago
  The US has been happy to claim jurisdiction when- and wherever they damn well please
- germanier 5y ago
  That's only half the story. The court based it on the following facts: * The website was accessible from Germany * The website was partly translated into German * The website offered German-language content * The explicitly offered worldwide service ("anyone anywhere") * There was a disclaimer directed at people not located in the US
  - nybble41 5y ago
    And German-language content can only be directed at German citizens or residents? There are five other countries which have German as their official language, and many more where German is spoken. It's ridiculous that the court would consider this sufficient to grant them jurisdiction. > The website was accessible from Germany That's something Germany could control much more easily on its own by putting firewalls at their borders. There is no reason for the site to go out of its way to block access from Germany, even assuming that they could do so reliably, which they can't. > The explicitly offered worldwide service ("anyone anywhere") Just like most web sites are available to "anyone anywhere". That's how the Internet is meant to work. > There was a disclaimer directed at people not located in the US Which is a very large group of people, most of whom are not in or from Germany. They're seriously complaining that the site reminded people that they need to take their own local laws into account before importing content from elsewhere?
    - germanier 5y ago
      I'm not taking a stance, I just try to represent the argument fairly - whether one actually agrees is another thing. Misrepresenting arguments as the PGLAF does is lazy. According to German legal rules you always have to take an overall view into account, not only to each argument on its own. In this case, whether they intended to also(!) reach German users. Anyway, 2016 the highest German civil court ruled in accordance to precedence from the European Court of Justice that copyright infringement on websites fall under German jurisdiction as long as 1) the website is accessible from Germany without circumventing any blocks 2) it's infringing according to German law. Showing that the website operator actually intends to reach German users is no longer necessary.
musicale 5y ago
Appropriately enough!
NoCanDo 5y ago
Fischer being the cunts they are.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  Scummy corporations are gonna be scummy if the law lets them do it. If it's not Fischer, it's gonna be someone else. This is more of a failure of the legal system which enable such behavior.
MayeulC 5y ago
Better submit an URL and your post as a comment :)
- arlcode 5y ago
  Thanks. I'll keep it in mind for next time :)
heisig 5y ago
This is great news! This is a wonderful project, and the fact that it wasn't accessible from Germany made me profoundly sad and angry. I hope the responsible copyright lawyers have a hard time sleeping because of this and consider changing their line of work. If you are blocking people from reading books in the public domain, it is a good indication that you are one of the bad guys. Even worse, they only blocked people from Germany that didn't know how to use a VPN. German courts really don't get how the internet works.
- ghaff 5y ago
  >Even worse, they only blocked people from Germany that didn't know how to use a VPN. German courts really don't get how the internet works. I wouldn't make that assumption at all. As with many other examples, such as GDPR-related geofencing, a good faith attempt to restrict access usually goes a long way even if it's possible for a savvy user to get around the blocks.
- tpush 5y ago
  > If you are blocking people from reading books in the public domain […] ‘Public domain’ doesn’t exist in Germany.
  - arlcode 5y ago
    70 years after the last authors death it becomes public domain. You cannot give up all rights voluntarily.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - detaro 5y ago
    For the purposes of the discussion here, "Gemeinfreiheit" is basically the same thing.
    - hnbad 5y ago
      An important caveat is that in Germany (and Austria, I think?) you can't legally dedicate a work to the public domain, but you can surrender most of your legal rights to a work. This is why international public domain dedications often include a fallback public license.
easytiger 5y ago
I had forgotten about this. Absurd it went on so long. As it happens I'm currently reading Thomas Man's English translation of Death in Venice from Gutenberg. That doesn't seem to be included in the embargoed texts.
zozbot234 5y ago
What's the status of works by Heinrich Mann, who seems to have died in 1950? Shouldn't those have entered the public domain in Germany on Jan 1, 2021? If so, will PG be making those works available to German users?
- yorwba 5y ago
  The message displayed when you try to access a blocked work https://block.pglaf.org/germany.shtml https://block.pglaf.org/germany.shtml states: The block applies to seven books by author Thomas Mann (until January 1, 2026) and five books by author Alfred Döblin (until January 1, 2028). No other Project Gutenberg eBooks, by any author, are blocked in Germany. I can confirm that works by Heinrich Mann are accessible.
dtech 5y ago
Absurd that there are lawsuits from 2015 about 110 year old books.
willvarfar 5y ago
Was there any general awareness in Germany the PG was blocked, and if so, did activism arise? Or did PG block, and mainstream Germany not notice? Or did Germans just shrug and use proxies? Personally I am a PG user but I’m not in Germany. And I’ve read several PG books. But I have also noticed that the download count for many of them is really really low, which is basically saying that PG doesn’t have a lot or actual users :( Let’s fix this! Everyone reading this post should go download a nice book from PG and actually read it! ;)
- weinzierl 5y ago
  Yes, I was annoyed by it being blocked here.
  - zmix 5y ago
    LOL, same here! But, AFAIK, nothing more happened, except us being extremely annoyed.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- rob74 5y ago
  There was no general awareness AFAIK. I'm from Germany and only learnt about it when I went to their site to download a book I was interested in (back in 2019 I think), found out it was blocked, researched the reason, found out that they didn't actually have to block everything, got angry (partly at the plaintiffs, but mostly at PG for their "overcompliance"), then shrugged and downloaded the book from somewhere else. So if this overcompliance was really intended to "instrumentalize" their readers, like the plaintiffs said, then I guess they unfortunately overestimated their impact. The news that the blocking has been removed was reported yesterday by IT news sites (e.g. https://www.heise.de/news/Literaturportal-Project-Gutenberg-wieder-von-Deutschland-aus-erreichbar-6228792.html https://www.heise.de/news/Literaturportal-Project-Gutenberg-...), but it wasn't exactly front page news either...
- pgeorgi 5y ago
  There's a German-language "Projekt Gutenberg"[1] as well, a long time maintained by the publisher Spiegel. They're the more popular project of that kind in Germany, so people probably didn't notice what Project Gutenberg was doing. They claim some kind of edition copyright on the works as re-published by them[2] which is funny or sad, depending on how you look at it. [1] https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/ https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/ [2] https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/info/texte/info.html https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/info/texte/info.html
miki123211 5y ago
What would have happened if Gutenberg had ignored the German court's ruling? Does Germany have any leverage over an institution that is fully based in the US? If so, does it mean that, as a hypothetical website owner, I need to understand and be compliant with every law in every possible country, or risk fines / imprisonment?
- cl3misch 5y ago
  I guess maybe, iff you host content copyrighted in Germany?
- Mindwipe 5y ago
  > If so, does it mean that, as a hypothetical website owner, I need to understand and be compliant with every law in every possible country, or risk fines / imprisonment? This has literally always been the case. Some nations have legal statutes that they will not enforce a foreign judgement against their own citizens (such as the US shield against UK libel judgements) but you're on your own if you leave your country of residence. Plenty of US newspapers still block access to the UK of stories they feel legal risk from for example, because their owners would like to go on holidays sometimes. Extra territorial enforcement is a lot more muddy than people think, but it's never, ever been the case that you're fine if you're incorporated in a different territory. If they can demonstrate that there's a body of people in their country accessing the site, then generally you are liable. It's just if the legal system considers that to be too much of a pain to worry about.
- saddlerustle 5y ago
  My understanding is it's complicated in the US, but between most other western countries there are treaties allowing foreign judgements to be enforced domestically. >If so, does it mean that, as a hypothetical website owner, I need to understand and be compliant with every law in every possible country, or risk fines / imprisonment? By the letter of the law, yes. The idea of a borderless internet never had specific legal standing, it's just largely a convention on non-enforcement.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
ho_schi 5y ago
I want state here on fact, the "copyright" is an rather new anglon-saxon invention and was only later imported to Germany[1]. Interestingly, the era of the "land of poets and thinkers" and the economic rise of Germany was boosted by the fact - that there were no copyrights laws which hindered. Authors had to publish good and more work. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Background Quote from Wikipedia Printing brought profound social changes. The rise in literacy across Europe led to a dramatic increase in the demand for reading matter. Prices of reprints were low, so publications could be bought by poorer people, creating a mass audience. In German language markets before the advent of copyright, technical materials, like popular fiction, were inexpensive and widely available; it has been suggested this contributed to Germany's industrial and economic success. After copyright law became established (in 1710 in England and Scotland, and in the 1840s in German-speaking areas) the low-price mass market vanished, and fewer, more expensive editions were published; distribution of scientific and technical information was greatly reduced. And from the history arctile Heinrich Heine, in a 1854 letter to his publisher, complains: "Due to the tremendously high prices you have established, I will hardly see a second edition of the book anytime soon. But you must set lower prices, dear Campe, for otherwise I really don't see why I was so lenient with my material interests." It is not okay to claim other works as yours, publish private material or just don't give you a fair share upon your work. Probably we should have opted for another approach than "copyright" or "patents". Luckily the US at least got "Fair Use" and maybe the idea of a "Culture Flatrate" from Germany is also a good idea.
- Igelau 5y ago
  > the "copyright" is an rather new anglon-saxon invention and was only later imported to Germany Hmm... it's not exactly "new" if it's older than the unified German state...
- phrz 5y ago
  Copyright is, probably, very Continental. In the late 15th century, before the arrival of the printing press to England, Venice had become the "capital of printing," and the Venetian Cabinet granted the first exclusive right to publish a particular book to Daniele Barbaro for a term of ten years. Christopher May (2002) The Venetian Moment: New Technologies, Legal Innovation and the Institutional Origins of Intellectual Property, Prometheus, 20:2, 172, DOI: 10.1080/08109020210138979. It was only later that England codified the concept of copyright.
earthboundkid 5y ago
It's too bad that PG is totally reader hostile. :-P It could be a great source for the readers of the world. Instead it's a bunch of unreadable text files that give "entrepreneurs" the raw material they need to put out a bunch of $1 ebooks.
- earthboundkid 5y ago
  Lots of bizarre defenses of PG here. Look at it this way: every single person you meet has heard the phrase “Wikipedia” and probably all but the least curious have used it. How many have heard of Project Gutenberg? And why not? Are public domain books unpopular? (No, schools assign tons of public domain books in English class.) Okay, so what’s going on? Answer: Project Gutenberg has decided that making the books readable is not their job. Well okay whatever, it’s their project, but the result is a total failure to be what it could and should be: a peer to Wikipedia and a household name.
- revolvingocelot 5y ago
  PG's goal is the digitization and long-term storage of public-domain written materials, and I'm glad that's all they're doing. I think you're looking for Standard Ebooks [0][1], which utilizes (usually) Project Gutenberg-sourced text, original-edition illustrations, and volunteer editors to create professional, free-as-in-beer ebooks. [0] https://standardebooks.org/ https://standardebooks.org/ [1] I tend to write, or only ever see, "eBooks", but Standard Ebooks styles it "Ebooks". That's the only thing I don't like about them, and I really really don't like it. Given my uncontroversial acceptance of the capitalization used when starting a sentence with the word "Email", I imagine I'll live.
  - robin_reala 5y ago
    Free-as-in-speech as well: each publication including SE additions like the blurb is put back into the public domain.
- rsstack 5y ago
  First: Browsing around the website, all books I could reach from the homepage or by searching for titles I could think of are available in multiple digital formats. Second: PG is older than PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and even HTML. It isn't too surprising to me that there are works there that are text only.
wortelefant 5y ago
Waldorf Frommer is the lawyer firm that represents the publishing house S Fisher Verlag who brought project Gutenberg to court, WF are also notorious for mass-sending letters to supposed torrenters, threatening them with a lawsuit and asking for money ("Massenabmahnungen"). Glad that they lost. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frommer_Legal https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frommer_Legal
tinus_hn 5y ago
Weird how they apparently have agreed to block access to books by the three authors until the copyright expires, while one of them died in 1950 so for that person the copyright term of life+70 years, which this was all about, has already expired.
voidpointer 5y ago
What I'm not getting: If Project Gutenberg is US based, how can they be dragged in front of a German court at all? How could a German court enforce anything on a US based entity? So couldn'd PG's response just have been to ignore the case? What would have happened then?
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  Presumably, nothing could "force" them, but without cooperation they would simply be blocked forever in Germany.
avalonpark 5y ago
At Brigade Komarla Heights, the residential units are designed to have good inflow of natural light and fresh air. https://www.brigadekomarlaheights.org.in/ https://www.brigadekomarlaheights.org.in/
linspace 5y ago
When you feel you are not doing anything useful think that maybe at least you are not doing anything harmful. What an incredible waste of money and time to avoid culture distribution, their authors long ago dead.
pavon 5y ago
I'm curious as to what changed PGLAF's mind. Blocking those specific works was all that the court ordered 3 years ago. Blocking everything was PGLAF's own decision based on perceived risk of further lawsuits about other works. Nothing has really changed to decrease that risk. The plaintiffs may have agreed that those are the only works they own that were in violation, and won't sue about anything else, but any other German who hold the copyright to works are still valid there but not the US still could.
- zinekeller 5y ago
  Nothing, really. The other party countersued (technically appealed) because they still want to remove the works completely, even though it is pointed out that they are under US soil.
da_big_ghey 5y ago
Maybe stupid question, if PGLAF is based in U.S.A., why not just tell plantiff to piss off and ignore any lawsuit in foreign jurisdiction? If no server is in Germany and no business is conducted in Germany why waste money on this instead of expanding project?
indianpianist 5y ago
Great!

450 points by arlcode 5y ago

They settled their 2015 lawsuit and will only be blocking these specific works. More information and Background: https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html

mistrial9 5y ago

Project Gutenburg was blocked in Germany ? news to me, weird.. especialy considering the torrents and spy action that has happened in the same 25 years, while this token effort protects companies formed in the 1950s.

mdp2021 5y ago
Not only in Germany. Also in Italy, as of May 2020 (those hardly definable beasts that carved their way into the state made a bunch of targets associating Project Gutenberg with pirate sites).
pgeorgi 5y ago
In this case Project Gutenberg blocked German IP ranges to try to avoid legal issues (and since they wanted to make a point didn't only block the material under debate but their entire site). That overblocking approach seems to be what they changed now in favor of a targeted block of just Thomas Mann's work or whatever it is the German publishers have been complaining about. Why would a torrent site do the same?

thayne 5y ago

> 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 judgment. ummm, what? Imagine if the UK, or US claimed jurisdiction over any website that published content in English.

nikanj 5y ago
The US has been happy to claim jurisdiction when- and wherever they damn well please
germanier 5y ago
That's only half the story. The court based it on the following facts: * The website was accessible from Germany * The website was partly translated into German * The website offered German-language content * The explicitly offered worldwide service ("anyone anywhere") * There was a disclaimer directed at people not located in the US
- nybble41 5y ago
  And German-language content can only be directed at German citizens or residents? There are five other countries which have German as their official language, and many more where German is spoken. It's ridiculous that the court would consider this sufficient to grant them jurisdiction. > The website was accessible from Germany That's something Germany could control much more easily on its own by putting firewalls at their borders. There is no reason for the site to go out of its way to block access from Germany, even assuming that they could do so reliably, which they can't. > The explicitly offered worldwide service ("anyone anywhere") Just like most web sites are available to "anyone anywhere". That's how the Internet is meant to work. > There was a disclaimer directed at people not located in the US Which is a very large group of people, most of whom are not in or from Germany. They're seriously complaining that the site reminded people that they need to take their own local laws into account before importing content from elsewhere?
  - germanier 5y ago
    I'm not taking a stance, I just try to represent the argument fairly - whether one actually agrees is another thing. Misrepresenting arguments as the PGLAF does is lazy. According to German legal rules you always have to take an overall view into account, not only to each argument on its own. In this case, whether they intended to also(!) reach German users. Anyway, 2016 the highest German civil court ruled in accordance to precedence from the European Court of Justice that copyright infringement on websites fall under German jurisdiction as long as 1) the website is accessible from Germany without circumventing any blocks 2) it's infringing according to German law. Showing that the website operator actually intends to reach German users is no longer necessary.

musicale 5y ago

Appropriately enough!

NoCanDo 5y ago

Fischer being the cunts they are.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
Scummy corporations are gonna be scummy if the law lets them do it. If it's not Fischer, it's gonna be someone else. This is more of a failure of the legal system which enable such behavior.

MayeulC 5y ago

Better submit an URL and your post as a comment :)

arlcode 5y ago
Thanks. I'll keep it in mind for next time :)

heisig 5y ago

This is great news! This is a wonderful project, and the fact that it wasn't accessible from Germany made me profoundly sad and angry. I hope the responsible copyright lawyers have a hard time sleeping because of this and consider changing their line of work. If you are blocking people from reading books in the public domain, it is a good indication that you are one of the bad guys. Even worse, they only blocked people from Germany that didn't know how to use a VPN. German courts really don't get how the internet works.

ghaff 5y ago
>Even worse, they only blocked people from Germany that didn't know how to use a VPN. German courts really don't get how the internet works. I wouldn't make that assumption at all. As with many other examples, such as GDPR-related geofencing, a good faith attempt to restrict access usually goes a long way even if it's possible for a savvy user to get around the blocks.
tpush 5y ago
> If you are blocking people from reading books in the public domain […] ‘Public domain’ doesn’t exist in Germany.
- arlcode 5y ago
  70 years after the last authors death it becomes public domain. You cannot give up all rights voluntarily.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- detaro 5y ago
  For the purposes of the discussion here, "Gemeinfreiheit" is basically the same thing.
  - hnbad 5y ago
    An important caveat is that in Germany (and Austria, I think?) you can't legally dedicate a work to the public domain, but you can surrender most of your legal rights to a work. This is why international public domain dedications often include a fallback public license.

easytiger 5y ago

I had forgotten about this. Absurd it went on so long. As it happens I'm currently reading Thomas Man's English translation of Death in Venice from Gutenberg. That doesn't seem to be included in the embargoed texts.

zozbot234 5y ago

What's the status of works by Heinrich Mann, who seems to have died in 1950? Shouldn't those have entered the public domain in Germany on Jan 1, 2021? If so, will PG be making those works available to German users?

yorwba 5y ago
The message displayed when you try to access a blocked work https://block.pglaf.org/germany.shtml https://block.pglaf.org/germany.shtml states: The block applies to seven books by author Thomas Mann (until January 1, 2026) and five books by author Alfred Döblin (until January 1, 2028). No other Project Gutenberg eBooks, by any author, are blocked in Germany. I can confirm that works by Heinrich Mann are accessible.

dtech 5y ago

Absurd that there are lawsuits from 2015 about 110 year old books.

willvarfar 5y ago

Was there any general awareness in Germany the PG was blocked, and if so, did activism arise? Or did PG block, and mainstream Germany not notice? Or did Germans just shrug and use proxies? Personally I am a PG user but I’m not in Germany. And I’ve read several PG books. But I have also noticed that the download count for many of them is really really low, which is basically saying that PG doesn’t have a lot or actual users :( Let’s fix this! Everyone reading this post should go download a nice book from PG and actually read it! ;)

weinzierl 5y ago
Yes, I was annoyed by it being blocked here.
- zmix 5y ago
  LOL, same here! But, AFAIK, nothing more happened, except us being extremely annoyed.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
rob74 5y ago
There was no general awareness AFAIK. I'm from Germany and only learnt about it when I went to their site to download a book I was interested in (back in 2019 I think), found out it was blocked, researched the reason, found out that they didn't actually have to block everything, got angry (partly at the plaintiffs, but mostly at PG for their "overcompliance"), then shrugged and downloaded the book from somewhere else. So if this overcompliance was really intended to "instrumentalize" their readers, like the plaintiffs said, then I guess they unfortunately overestimated their impact. The news that the blocking has been removed was reported yesterday by IT news sites (e.g. https://www.heise.de/news/Literaturportal-Project-Gutenberg-wieder-von-Deutschland-aus-erreichbar-6228792.html https://www.heise.de/news/Literaturportal-Project-Gutenberg-...), but it wasn't exactly front page news either...
pgeorgi 5y ago
There's a German-language "Projekt Gutenberg"[1] as well, a long time maintained by the publisher Spiegel. They're the more popular project of that kind in Germany, so people probably didn't notice what Project Gutenberg was doing. They claim some kind of edition copyright on the works as re-published by them[2] which is funny or sad, depending on how you look at it. [1] https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/ https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/ [2] https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/info/texte/info.html https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/info/texte/info.html

miki123211 5y ago

What would have happened if Gutenberg had ignored the German court's ruling? Does Germany have any leverage over an institution that is fully based in the US? If so, does it mean that, as a hypothetical website owner, I need to understand and be compliant with every law in every possible country, or risk fines / imprisonment?

cl3misch 5y ago
I guess maybe, iff you host content copyrighted in Germany?
Mindwipe 5y ago
> If so, does it mean that, as a hypothetical website owner, I need to understand and be compliant with every law in every possible country, or risk fines / imprisonment? This has literally always been the case. Some nations have legal statutes that they will not enforce a foreign judgement against their own citizens (such as the US shield against UK libel judgements) but you're on your own if you leave your country of residence. Plenty of US newspapers still block access to the UK of stories they feel legal risk from for example, because their owners would like to go on holidays sometimes. Extra territorial enforcement is a lot more muddy than people think, but it's never, ever been the case that you're fine if you're incorporated in a different territory. If they can demonstrate that there's a body of people in their country accessing the site, then generally you are liable. It's just if the legal system considers that to be too much of a pain to worry about.
saddlerustle 5y ago
My understanding is it's complicated in the US, but between most other western countries there are treaties allowing foreign judgements to be enforced domestically. >If so, does it mean that, as a hypothetical website owner, I need to understand and be compliant with every law in every possible country, or risk fines / imprisonment? By the letter of the law, yes. The idea of a borderless internet never had specific legal standing, it's just largely a convention on non-enforcement.
- bpodgursky 5y ago

ho_schi 5y ago

I want state here on fact, the "copyright" is an rather new anglon-saxon invention and was only later imported to Germany[1]. Interestingly, the era of the "land of poets and thinkers" and the economic rise of Germany was boosted by the fact - that there were no copyrights laws which hindered. Authors had to publish good and more work. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Background Quote from Wikipedia Printing brought profound social changes. The rise in literacy across Europe led to a dramatic increase in the demand for reading matter. Prices of reprints were low, so publications could be bought by poorer people, creating a mass audience. In German language markets before the advent of copyright, technical materials, like popular fiction, were inexpensive and widely available; it has been suggested this contributed to Germany's industrial and economic success. After copyright law became established (in 1710 in England and Scotland, and in the 1840s in German-speaking areas) the low-price mass market vanished, and fewer, more expensive editions were published; distribution of scientific and technical information was greatly reduced. And from the history arctile Heinrich Heine, in a 1854 letter to his publisher, complains: "Due to the tremendously high prices you have established, I will hardly see a second edition of the book anytime soon. But you must set lower prices, dear Campe, for otherwise I really don't see why I was so lenient with my material interests." It is not okay to claim other works as yours, publish private material or just don't give you a fair share upon your work. Probably we should have opted for another approach than "copyright" or "patents". Luckily the US at least got "Fair Use" and maybe the idea of a "Culture Flatrate" from Germany is also a good idea.

Igelau 5y ago
> the "copyright" is an rather new anglon-saxon invention and was only later imported to Germany Hmm... it's not exactly "new" if it's older than the unified German state...
phrz 5y ago
Copyright is, probably, very Continental. In the late 15th century, before the arrival of the printing press to England, Venice had become the "capital of printing," and the Venetian Cabinet granted the first exclusive right to publish a particular book to Daniele Barbaro for a term of ten years. Christopher May (2002) The Venetian Moment: New Technologies, Legal Innovation and the Institutional Origins of Intellectual Property, Prometheus, 20:2, 172, DOI: 10.1080/08109020210138979. It was only later that England codified the concept of copyright.

earthboundkid 5y ago

It's too bad that PG is totally reader hostile. :-P It could be a great source for the readers of the world. Instead it's a bunch of unreadable text files that give "entrepreneurs" the raw material they need to put out a bunch of $1 ebooks.

earthboundkid 5y ago
Lots of bizarre defenses of PG here. Look at it this way: every single person you meet has heard the phrase “Wikipedia” and probably all but the least curious have used it. How many have heard of Project Gutenberg? And why not? Are public domain books unpopular? (No, schools assign tons of public domain books in English class.) Okay, so what’s going on? Answer: Project Gutenberg has decided that making the books readable is not their job. Well okay whatever, it’s their project, but the result is a total failure to be what it could and should be: a peer to Wikipedia and a household name.
revolvingocelot 5y ago
PG's goal is the digitization and long-term storage of public-domain written materials, and I'm glad that's all they're doing. I think you're looking for Standard Ebooks [0][1], which utilizes (usually) Project Gutenberg-sourced text, original-edition illustrations, and volunteer editors to create professional, free-as-in-beer ebooks. [0] https://standardebooks.org/ https://standardebooks.org/ [1] I tend to write, or only ever see, "eBooks", but Standard Ebooks styles it "Ebooks". That's the only thing I don't like about them, and I really really don't like it. Given my uncontroversial acceptance of the capitalization used when starting a sentence with the word "Email", I imagine I'll live.
- robin_reala 5y ago
  Free-as-in-speech as well: each publication including SE additions like the blurb is put back into the public domain.
rsstack 5y ago
First: Browsing around the website, all books I could reach from the homepage or by searching for titles I could think of are available in multiple digital formats. Second: PG is older than PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and even HTML. It isn't too surprising to me that there are works there that are text only.

wortelefant 5y ago

Waldorf Frommer is the lawyer firm that represents the publishing house S Fisher Verlag who brought project Gutenberg to court, WF are also notorious for mass-sending letters to supposed torrenters, threatening them with a lawsuit and asking for money ("Massenabmahnungen"). Glad that they lost. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frommer_Legal https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frommer_Legal

tinus_hn 5y ago

Weird how they apparently have agreed to block access to books by the three authors until the copyright expires, while one of them died in 1950 so for that person the copyright term of life+70 years, which this was all about, has already expired.

voidpointer 5y ago

What I'm not getting: If Project Gutenberg is US based, how can they be dragged in front of a German court at all? How could a German court enforce anything on a US based entity? So couldn'd PG's response just have been to ignore the case? What would have happened then?

LeoPanthera 5y ago
Presumably, nothing could "force" them, but without cooperation they would simply be blocked forever in Germany.

avalonpark 5y ago

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linspace 5y ago

When you feel you are not doing anything useful think that maybe at least you are not doing anything harmful. What an incredible waste of money and time to avoid culture distribution, their authors long ago dead.

pavon 5y ago

I'm curious as to what changed PGLAF's mind. Blocking those specific works was all that the court ordered 3 years ago. Blocking everything was PGLAF's own decision based on perceived risk of further lawsuits about other works. Nothing has really changed to decrease that risk. The plaintiffs may have agreed that those are the only works they own that were in violation, and won't sue about anything else, but any other German who hold the copyright to works are still valid there but not the US still could.

zinekeller 5y ago
Nothing, really. The other party countersued (technically appealed) because they still want to remove the works completely, even though it is pointed out that they are under US soil.

da_big_ghey 5y ago

Maybe stupid question, if PGLAF is based in U.S.A., why not just tell plantiff to piss off and ignore any lawsuit in foreign jurisdiction? If no server is in Germany and no business is conducted in Germany why waste money on this instead of expanding project?

indianpianist 5y ago

Great!