7 ms·

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

by 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.
- arturh85 5y ago
  see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29025058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29025058
gusennan 5y ago
I agree it's good news that the project complied with the original court order from 2018, which was to block the works on German IP addresses that are still under German copyright law. Why would American copyright law apply in Germany? It's a bit disingenous of Project G that, instead of blocking access to just these books in Germany, they blocked access to the all the books. That was project G's, and not the German court's, decision. I'm glad they've changed their minds.
- mannerheim 5y ago
  > Why would American copyright law apply in Germany? It doesn't. Project Gutenberg is an American entity, and operated entirely in the US. This is like asking why should American free speech laws apply in Thailand in regards to Thailand enforcing lèse-majesté laws on an American website.
  - Archelaos 5y ago
    > and operated entirely in the US. The problem is that it sent copyrighted files to Germany (outside the U.S.). The court order only demands to stop this. I doubt that the order is enforcible on U.S. soil. But if individuals associated with an uncomplying organization set foot in or have assets in a territory where the order could be enforced, they risk real consequences.
    - nybble41 5y ago
      It is unreasonable that an individual who is neither a German citizen nor within German territory would later be subject to "real consequences" from the German legal system for actions which were perfectly legal in the time and place where they were performed. Even if they do later travel to Germany. This concept of extraterritorial jurisdiction needs to stop before we end up with a dystopia where either (a) no one can travel anywhere for fear of arrest based on something they did legally elsewhere, or (b) everyone is forced to comply with every law in every global jurisdiction at all times (even the conflicting ones which are impossible to satisfy) no matter where they happen to be or what the local laws may permit. Even if Germany should decide to be unreasonable and claim global jurisdiction, it should either bar the offending individuals from entering altogether or grant them immunity under German law during their stay for anything done outside the country beforehand. Knowingly inviting someone in only to prosecute them would be a gross violation of the basic principles of hospitality. If Germany doesn't want certain data coming in to their country they are welcome to erect a firewall at their border, at their own expense, to prevent their own residents from accessing it. Of course that still infringes the natural rights of the German residents, but that is an internal matter between the German government and those living there, who presumably would be permitted to leave if they so desired. It is not the place of non-German server operators to enforce German censorship laws, including but not limited to copyright.
chronogram 5y ago
The German copyright law doesn't seem unnecessarily vague, simply life+70 years, which is why there are now two authors blocked (3 at the time of the link). If you have a problem with Germany's life+70 years then you shouldn't be upset with the lawyers, you should be upset with your government to change your government's copyright laws to match whatever the US does.
- tut-urut-utut 5y ago
  > you should be upset with your government to change your government's copyright laws to match whatever the US does. Why should every government copy what US does?
  - mantas 5y ago
    Looks like OP wants German laws to match US laws in this department. So he should be angry at lawmakers, not at lawyers.
  - Mindwipe 5y ago
    At least in this case the US copied Europe with it's term extensions (Disney certainly weren't unhappy about it but the notion that Disney drove this is a bit of a myth). And Europe set that term length when the EU unified terms because it set it at the longest length from the member nations at the time, which was Germany's life+70 years. It's pretty interesting but the current global norm for copyright duration is, due to circumstance, almost entirely based on German norms.
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      > the notion that Disney drove this is a bit of a myth I thought it was Elvis Presley.
- pgeorgi 5y ago
  It's a bit more complicated: The US adopted[1] the international regimen (life + 70) with an exception that US statute of limitations from before 1978 continue to apply to works published in the US before 1978. So the US adopted everybody else's rules but has an escape hatch for older works - that only applies in the US and this is where the contention over these 3-5 works comes from. The US later extended the "70 years" rule for anonymous, pseudonymous and work-for-hire works to cover 95 years since publication or 120 years since creation (whatever happens first) because The Mouse squeaked[2]. I'd prefer Germany not to adopt that one. [1] https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
zmix 5y ago
In Germany, the concept of "Public Domain" does not exist. (EDIT: It may exist 70 years after the authors death). IANAL. Besides that, even if it would, the books would not have been in the Public Domain. From the announcement: > In Germany, they are copyrighted based on "life +70 years" of copyright protection (so, copyright will expire after 2020, 2025 and 2027, respectively). From a legal and business perspective, neither German legislation nor the Fischer Verlag are at fault here. It's just the way it is (in Germany): Creators hold their intellectual property for life and can make sure, their heir profits from the work of the (grand)parents, as well (+70 years after death of copyright holder). And while I understand, that Project Gutenberg has limited resources and may have no desire to do the extra work of blocking works on a case by case basis, it would not have been difficult. Instead, they have chosen to collectively punish all people from Germany, which resulted us to be seven years without access, at least as long we did not utilize a VPN. I am very happy, that this has been resolved now. All the legal hassle has cost (non-profit) money and was worthless, because the solution is the same now, they could have implemented seven years ago.
- dmos62 5y ago
  Nitpick. German intellectual property laws are part of German legislation. Legislation is a body of laws. Maybe you meant the German legislative community. Well, it's their responsibility to maintain the legislation. Laws are not immutable.
  - riedel 5y ago
    I think our legislative has better things to do than to adopt US copyright law before 1978. Although it seems unpopular IMHO it would have caused project Gutenberg no harm to remove this few items until copyright is expired. We are always complaining about China that they do not fully honor IP. I believe it is an ethical thing to do to honour the laws of the country were sth was originally created even if strictly legally speaking I can move around the world to circumvent unpleasant jurisdiction.
    - dmos62 5y ago
SapporoChris 5y ago
I ran into the site being blocked a couple of weeks ago. Changed VPN settings to a server in another country and had access without issues. Just saying, the blocking was rather trivial to bypass.
IanSanders 5y ago
>I hope the responsible copyright lawyers have a hard time sleeping because of this and consider changing their line of work. Risking going off tangent, I highly doubt that would happen. When you work in a domain, your entire life becomes it, you slowly lose wider context and alternative perspective. I doubt there are many people who purposefully want to be the bad guys, it seems more like "learned indifference". Just like many people who eat meat on a daily basis but would be uncomfortable with a thought of a chicken being killed in a process (and some freak out from a sight of a live lobster in a restaurant tank). Maybe it's a negative side of the "flow" - losing some degree of empathy.
kmeisthax 5y ago
Sssh! If you tell foreign courts and litigants about VPNs, they'll stop accepting "we'll block it in your country if you get off our backs" and start demanding international jurisdiction. At that point "it's legal in my country" will no longer suffice for anything online (which is basically everything). Everyone will need to be in compliance with the most restrictive subset of the law. Just in the realm of copyright, the public domain would be dramatically curtailed. All you would need is one rich country with strong legal ties to other nations and an appetite for perpetual copyright, and you would have a judgment mill by which you can make using any public domain content extremely risky. The current status quo of country-by-country blocking may seem silly to people who know how to evade those blocks, but it makes courts happy and walls off the worst effects of copyright maximalism.
- myohmy 5y ago
  Hell will freeze over before we get an international court. The US literally has a law on the books to invade the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands if GWB is ever held trial for war crimes (wars of aggression have been a war crime since the end of WW2).
  - winstonewert 5y ago
    Where can I read more about this?
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_International_Criminal_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_Internat... "In 2002, the U.S. Congress passed the American Service-Members' Protection Act (ASPA), which contained a number of provisions, including authorization of the President to "use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court""
      - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
phicoh 5y ago
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. If you look at it from an EU perspective, if you download a book that still falls under copyright in the EU (without permisison) and the server is in the EU, then obviously this is a copyright violation and the person who makes the work available on the server has a problem. If the server is not in the EU, then the person downloading the book is essentially importing a copyrighted work into the EU without permission of the owner. Which is also a copyright violation. Then the question becomes to what extent the person who makes the work available has ties to the EU. The stronger the ties, the more effort can be required to avoid such illegal imports. For example, if there would be ads targeted at the German public, then courts would be very quick that this falls under jurisdiction of German courts. So people in German who would use a VPN to get around the block, who still violate copyright law in Germany.
germanier 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. German courts are aware of the existence of means to circumvent such a block but don't see that as a reason to not even try. See e.g BGH, 26.11.2015 - I ZR 174/14
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by heisig 5y ago

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.
arturh85 5y ago
see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29025058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29025058

gusennan 5y ago

I agree it's good news that the project complied with the original court order from 2018, which was to block the works on German IP addresses that are still under German copyright law. Why would American copyright law apply in Germany? It's a bit disingenous of Project G that, instead of blocking access to just these books in Germany, they blocked access to the all the books. That was project G's, and not the German court's, decision. I'm glad they've changed their minds.

mannerheim 5y ago
> Why would American copyright law apply in Germany? It doesn't. Project Gutenberg is an American entity, and operated entirely in the US. This is like asking why should American free speech laws apply in Thailand in regards to Thailand enforcing lèse-majesté laws on an American website.
- Archelaos 5y ago
  > and operated entirely in the US. The problem is that it sent copyrighted files to Germany (outside the U.S.). The court order only demands to stop this. I doubt that the order is enforcible on U.S. soil. But if individuals associated with an uncomplying organization set foot in or have assets in a territory where the order could be enforced, they risk real consequences.
  - nybble41 5y ago
    It is unreasonable that an individual who is neither a German citizen nor within German territory would later be subject to "real consequences" from the German legal system for actions which were perfectly legal in the time and place where they were performed. Even if they do later travel to Germany. This concept of extraterritorial jurisdiction needs to stop before we end up with a dystopia where either (a) no one can travel anywhere for fear of arrest based on something they did legally elsewhere, or (b) everyone is forced to comply with every law in every global jurisdiction at all times (even the conflicting ones which are impossible to satisfy) no matter where they happen to be or what the local laws may permit. Even if Germany should decide to be unreasonable and claim global jurisdiction, it should either bar the offending individuals from entering altogether or grant them immunity under German law during their stay for anything done outside the country beforehand. Knowingly inviting someone in only to prosecute them would be a gross violation of the basic principles of hospitality. If Germany doesn't want certain data coming in to their country they are welcome to erect a firewall at their border, at their own expense, to prevent their own residents from accessing it. Of course that still infringes the natural rights of the German residents, but that is an internal matter between the German government and those living there, who presumably would be permitted to leave if they so desired. It is not the place of non-German server operators to enforce German censorship laws, including but not limited to copyright.

chronogram 5y ago

The German copyright law doesn't seem unnecessarily vague, simply life+70 years, which is why there are now two authors blocked (3 at the time of the link). If you have a problem with Germany's life+70 years then you shouldn't be upset with the lawyers, you should be upset with your government to change your government's copyright laws to match whatever the US does.

tut-urut-utut 5y ago
> you should be upset with your government to change your government's copyright laws to match whatever the US does. Why should every government copy what US does?
- mantas 5y ago
  Looks like OP wants German laws to match US laws in this department. So he should be angry at lawmakers, not at lawyers.
- Mindwipe 5y ago
  At least in this case the US copied Europe with it's term extensions (Disney certainly weren't unhappy about it but the notion that Disney drove this is a bit of a myth). And Europe set that term length when the EU unified terms because it set it at the longest length from the member nations at the time, which was Germany's life+70 years. It's pretty interesting but the current global norm for copyright duration is, due to circumstance, almost entirely based on German norms.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    > the notion that Disney drove this is a bit of a myth I thought it was Elvis Presley.
pgeorgi 5y ago
It's a bit more complicated: The US adopted[1] the international regimen (life + 70) with an exception that US statute of limitations from before 1978 continue to apply to works published in the US before 1978. So the US adopted everybody else's rules but has an escape hatch for older works - that only applies in the US and this is where the contention over these 3-5 works comes from. The US later extended the "70 years" rule for anonymous, pseudonymous and work-for-hire works to cover 95 years since publication or 120 years since creation (whatever happens first) because The Mouse squeaked[2]. I'd prefer Germany not to adopt that one. [1] https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

zmix 5y ago

In Germany, the concept of "Public Domain" does not exist. (EDIT: It may exist 70 years after the authors death). IANAL. Besides that, even if it would, the books would not have been in the Public Domain. From the announcement: > In Germany, they are copyrighted based on "life +70 years" of copyright protection (so, copyright will expire after 2020, 2025 and 2027, respectively). From a legal and business perspective, neither German legislation nor the Fischer Verlag are at fault here. It's just the way it is (in Germany): Creators hold their intellectual property for life and can make sure, their heir profits from the work of the (grand)parents, as well (+70 years after death of copyright holder). And while I understand, that Project Gutenberg has limited resources and may have no desire to do the extra work of blocking works on a case by case basis, it would not have been difficult. Instead, they have chosen to collectively punish all people from Germany, which resulted us to be seven years without access, at least as long we did not utilize a VPN. I am very happy, that this has been resolved now. All the legal hassle has cost (non-profit) money and was worthless, because the solution is the same now, they could have implemented seven years ago.

dmos62 5y ago
Nitpick. German intellectual property laws are part of German legislation. Legislation is a body of laws. Maybe you meant the German legislative community. Well, it's their responsibility to maintain the legislation. Laws are not immutable.
- riedel 5y ago
  I think our legislative has better things to do than to adopt US copyright law before 1978. Although it seems unpopular IMHO it would have caused project Gutenberg no harm to remove this few items until copyright is expired. We are always complaining about China that they do not fully honor IP. I believe it is an ethical thing to do to honour the laws of the country were sth was originally created even if strictly legally speaking I can move around the world to circumvent unpleasant jurisdiction.
  - dmos62 5y ago

SapporoChris 5y ago

I ran into the site being blocked a couple of weeks ago. Changed VPN settings to a server in another country and had access without issues. Just saying, the blocking was rather trivial to bypass.

IanSanders 5y ago

>I hope the responsible copyright lawyers have a hard time sleeping because of this and consider changing their line of work. Risking going off tangent, I highly doubt that would happen. When you work in a domain, your entire life becomes it, you slowly lose wider context and alternative perspective. I doubt there are many people who purposefully want to be the bad guys, it seems more like "learned indifference". Just like many people who eat meat on a daily basis but would be uncomfortable with a thought of a chicken being killed in a process (and some freak out from a sight of a live lobster in a restaurant tank). Maybe it's a negative side of the "flow" - losing some degree of empathy.

kmeisthax 5y ago

Sssh! If you tell foreign courts and litigants about VPNs, they'll stop accepting "we'll block it in your country if you get off our backs" and start demanding international jurisdiction. At that point "it's legal in my country" will no longer suffice for anything online (which is basically everything). Everyone will need to be in compliance with the most restrictive subset of the law. Just in the realm of copyright, the public domain would be dramatically curtailed. All you would need is one rich country with strong legal ties to other nations and an appetite for perpetual copyright, and you would have a judgment mill by which you can make using any public domain content extremely risky. The current status quo of country-by-country blocking may seem silly to people who know how to evade those blocks, but it makes courts happy and walls off the worst effects of copyright maximalism.

myohmy 5y ago
Hell will freeze over before we get an international court. The US literally has a law on the books to invade the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands if GWB is ever held trial for war crimes (wars of aggression have been a war crime since the end of WW2).
- winstonewert 5y ago
  Where can I read more about this?
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_International_Criminal_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_Internat... "In 2002, the U.S. Congress passed the American Service-Members' Protection Act (ASPA), which contained a number of provisions, including authorization of the President to "use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court""
    - 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

phicoh 5y ago

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. If you look at it from an EU perspective, if you download a book that still falls under copyright in the EU (without permisison) and the server is in the EU, then obviously this is a copyright violation and the person who makes the work available on the server has a problem. If the server is not in the EU, then the person downloading the book is essentially importing a copyrighted work into the EU without permission of the owner. Which is also a copyright violation. Then the question becomes to what extent the person who makes the work available has ties to the EU. The stronger the ties, the more effort can be required to avoid such illegal imports. For example, if there would be ads targeted at the German public, then courts would be very quick that this falls under jurisdiction of German courts. So people in German who would use a VPN to get around the block, who still violate copyright law in Germany.

germanier 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. German courts are aware of the existence of means to circumvent such a block but don't see that as a reason to not even try. See e.g BGH, 26.11.2015 - I ZR 174/14

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]