I just donated $100 to PGLAF because they are fighting the good fight. Their donation page [0] includes "Think of this as a contribution to your grandchildren." However in this instance I think of it as a contribution against publishers (ab)using the justice system much like so-called patent trolls.
> Q: The plaintiff is S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH. Is that the international conglomerate?
> A: Yes, it is part of a family of companies all under single ownership and control or majority stakeholdership, from Germany, reaching around the world. S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH is a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg Holtzbrinck GmbH. Internationally it is known in the US and elsewhere as Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC. Readers in the US know this as Macmillan, which is one of the largest publishers in the US by revenue, and owns many familiar imprints. US readers might also recall that Macmillan was one of four companies accused by the US Dept. of Justice in 2012 of price fixing. The companies eventually settled the antitrust claims, including by giving credits to customers who had overpaid for eBooks.
Can someone in Germany confirm this block is actually in place?
In any case, if anyone in Germany would like to access Project Gutenberg, I maintain a full, daily updated mirror here: https://mirrors.sorengard.com/gutenberg. I also support FTP and Rsync if you’d like to download that way.
No donations are asked for, but it would be helpful if more people hosted mirrors for precisely this reason :). Unfortunately this mirror doesn’t have the search capabilities of the Project Gutenberg homepage, but it at least has all the files.
Now I’m actually curious about what is going to happen with Project Gutenberg mirrors. In general, many mirror admins (such as myself) join a project’s mirror mailing list and don’t necessarily pay attention to the right announcements to learn about this kind of legal minutia. That presents something of a logistics problem all around.
Putting aside ethics, it’s likely that many/most downstream mirrors simply won’t block German traffic. Project Gutenberg can stop redirecting German traffic to those mirrors on the fly, but they can’t stop the mirrors from being available unless they start banning mirrors (and mirror syncing traffic) that don’t enforce similar blocks...this seems logistically untenable.
It would be cool if we could get a lawyer to chime in about Project Gutenberg’s liability with respect to forcing other mirrors to comply. For example, I’m making my own mirror available to Germany. Is Project Gutenberg complicit in a meaningful sense, if they allow me to continue mirroring?
We apologize for this inconvenience. Your IP address has been automatically blocked from the address you tried to visit at www.gutenberg.org. This is because the geoIP database shows your address is in the country of Germany.
A Court in Germany ordered that access to certain items in the Project Gutenberg collection are blocked from Germany. Project Gutenberg believes the Court has no jurisdiction over the matter, but until the issue is resolved during appeal, it will comply.
For more information about the German court case, visit PGLAF's information page about the German lawsuit.
For more information about the legal advice Project Gutenberg has received concerning international issues, visit PGLAF's International Copyright Guidance for Project Gutenberg
How can I get unblocked?
All IP addresses in Germany are blocked. This block will remain in place until legal guidance changes.
If your IP address lookup is incorrect
Use the Maxmind GeoIP demo to verify status of your IP address. Project Gutenberg updates its listing of IP addresses approximately monthly.
The block is indeed in place, but trivially circumvented using a VPN.
Please e careful with your mirror. You are now susceptible to the same lawsuit as the original Project Gutenberg. I am not sure where you are in the world, but Germany has legal assistance treaties with the US/UK/Scandanavia, all EEC and Schengen countries.
Based on how media companies sue German torrent sharers (it's a cash cow for the law firms, like the one that is involved here, Waldorf Frommer), they sue individuals for making copyrighted content available on the internet -- because when you're torrenting something other people can get the completed parts from your computer, so if you run a mirror which is accessible from Germany, you will probably get a letter from the above law firm.
Hi! Thanks for the service you do for others by mirroring this content - what's involved with being a mirror? I'm not sure if it's something I have the means or skills to do, but Project Gutenberg (and information projects like it) are the key part of the internet — the parts that deserve to be reserved and accessed freely by all. I'd love to see if there's anything I could do to help out!
By only blocking these 18 books, nobody would have taken much notice of this. By blocking all German users from the site, they will get a lot of media attention, and S. Fischer Verlag will get a lot of bad press. Whether or not they will move from their position is questionable, but it will hurt them.
Just sent a small donation to PG.
Making an effort not to buy books from that publishing house ever again, and telling all my friends about it.
But did they do the right thing by participating in a court that has no jurisdiction? Why would they participate in that? Doesn't participating extend legitimacy to the claims, and make one subject the outcome (including paying the legal fees when losing)?
Fabulous :S The second time in 6 months German courts violated the public interest and ruled in favour of vested corporate intrests with an affect on me:
* In late 2017, a useless commercial weather forecast outlet (aggregating its data itself from national institutations!) sued the German National Weather service into having to take down its free weather app from the Apple and Goole app stores (development and operations funded with tax payer money!) and charge a fee for it. Somehow the judges got convinced that the Service unduly competed with a third-rate commercial information service.
* In early 2018, the courts lock out the public from a vast aggregate of literature in the public domain.
I'm sure I'll have a fresh item to continue the list soon.
Why does the EU still have the same gross and absurd copyright terms and laws the US does? It fights US companies like Google on privacy and information security grounds, but seems to follow lockstep with the US on completely irrational copyright policy like "75 years after the author dies, only then can anyone else reproduce this work".
The US has it because its government is coopted by big media like Disney, MPAA, and RIAA and the average American is too ignorant / doesn't care at all about the death and stifling of culture that 100+ year copyright terms bring about. Europeans seem to have more democratic governments that are more willing to represent the interests of their citizens, so why is it just as bad over there?
To put things into perspective, the plaintiffs lawyers, Waldorf Frommer, are known for shady tactics. They have built an industry of putting immense pressure on private people. They don't shy away from lawsuits because they are cheap for them and menacing for the people. They don't always win, but under the line it is a very profitable business for them; they employ about 60 lawyers.
The public broadcast made documentaries about their cease-and-desist-industry against private people. Even the German Bundestag changed multiple times the law to stop that madness, but it took many years because the christian party opposed effective changes. Now, even though the law has changed on the 13th October 2017, they continue to pressure people into paying.
Some courts are heavily in favour of them, most notably the Amtsgericht München. This makes the situation even worse for people who cannot afford to appeal a judgement even though they are convinced they are not guilty, because the financial risk is too high. I would not be surprised if the judgement in this case gets overthrown in a higher court.
The defendants german lawyers, WILDE BEUGER SOLMECKE, are known for legal defense against Waldorf Frommer. Personally, I don't trust them completely because they offer an all-inclusive legal defense package that is conveniently priced at 2/3 of the value Waldorf Frommer asks for. This industry is a huge employment scheme for lawyers.
Publishing the name of the company will not really help to fight them. Every company is a team of people behind, so listing names of those people can have a better effect instead.
To answer your question, I don't remember which documentaries were good, but searching on YouTube with subsets of the relevant keyword set {abmahnung, abzocke, Waldorf frommer, doku} will give you multiple results.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> "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."
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH is part of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group since 1963 [0].
Macmillan Publishers Ltd is wholly owned by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group since 1999 [1]
Basically a sister company of Macmillan which may (or may not) be hit with the negative publicity fallout in the more than 70 countries it operates in...
The explanation is at least slightly dishonest (hopefully not intentionally) in claiming that jurisdiction was established due to content being available in German, which makes it sound like a whacko court claiming to own a language. Reading the decision one learns that some of the volunteers involved in running PG and posting these materials were residents of Germany.
I am completely confused by how this court order even works.
I am assuming that PGLAF is owned and operated in the US. "PGLAF has no actual presence or activity in Germany".
I suppose the Berne Convention allows US police to honor international court orders for copyright violation, but what's to stop a country from making a ridiculous law that extends the copyright length to 2100 years, creating court orders for the 1 billion people who own a Bible or other old text without paying license fees, and collecting all the money in the world?
In the US, copyright protection is based on the number of years since publication.
PG should be careful about misinforming people. This statement is only true for books created before '78. Since then, in the US, copyright protection is also some years after the death of the author, except works for hire.
> PGLAF complied with the Court's order on February 28, 2018 by blocking all access to www.gutenberg.org and sub-pages to all of Germany.
I can access www.gutenberg.org and sub-pages just fine from Germany. So the block doesn't seem to be active at the moment.
> Q: Why didn't Project Gutenberg simply remove the items?
> A: The is no reason to remove them. The 18 eBooks are all in the public domain in the US, and have been for many years. Copyright status in another country is not relevant to the legitimate ability of Project Gutenberg -- or anyone/anything in the US -- to make any use of these books.
But why then even block access from Germany? If the stance is that "Copyright status in another country is not relevant to the legitimate ability of Project Gutenberg -- or anyone/anything in the US -- to make any use of these books.", what is the rationale for the blocking.
There is also the German Projekt Gutenberg (http://projekt.gutenberg.de/) which is promoted by
Spiegel Online (one of the most widely read German-language news websites [1]) even under their own domain as http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/. I don't know what kind of relationship the German Projekt Gutenberg has with PGLAF. The German Projekt Gutenberg is accessible for me from Germany right now, but apparently has blocked the controversial books. For example the page that lists Heinrich Mann's works says about the book "Der Untertan": "Exists in Projekt Gutenberg-DE, but is blocked until 31.12.2020" {"Im Projekt Gutenberg-DE vorhanden (gesperrt bis 31.12.2020)"} [2].
I hope and suspect that the US courts would refuse to enforce the judgement against Project Gutenberg. A little bit of research shows that for a foreign judgement to be enforced, a country would need to have personal jurisdiction over the defendant.
That doesn't seem to be the case here, at least under the US law that would apply if the judgement was being enforced.
Given all the overreach of European governments over the past few years (VATMOSS, GDPR, and now this), I suspect the time is ripe for something like the SPEECH act, a law clarifies that when a US citizen makes something available on the US, that does does not subject them to the law of a non-US country - and that allows the US citizen to claim court costs if someone tries to register a judgement against them.
What would be the consequence of not complying? Would they just require German ISPs to filter the site? Could they enforce a judgement on a US company?
[+] [-] CO-VAX|8 years ago|reply
> Q: The plaintiff is S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH. Is that the international conglomerate?
> A: Yes, it is part of a family of companies all under single ownership and control or majority stakeholdership, from Germany, reaching around the world. S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH is a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg Holtzbrinck GmbH. Internationally it is known in the US and elsewhere as Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC. Readers in the US know this as Macmillan, which is one of the largest publishers in the US by revenue, and owns many familiar imprints. US readers might also recall that Macmillan was one of four companies accused by the US Dept. of Justice in 2012 of price fixing. The companies eventually settled the antitrust claims, including by giving credits to customers who had overpaid for eBooks.
[0] https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Project_Gutenberg_N...
[+] [-] dsacco|8 years ago|reply
In any case, if anyone in Germany would like to access Project Gutenberg, I maintain a full, daily updated mirror here: https://mirrors.sorengard.com/gutenberg. I also support FTP and Rsync if you’d like to download that way.
No donations are asked for, but it would be helpful if more people hosted mirrors for precisely this reason :). Unfortunately this mirror doesn’t have the search capabilities of the Project Gutenberg homepage, but it at least has all the files.
Now I’m actually curious about what is going to happen with Project Gutenberg mirrors. In general, many mirror admins (such as myself) join a project’s mirror mailing list and don’t necessarily pay attention to the right announcements to learn about this kind of legal minutia. That presents something of a logistics problem all around.
Putting aside ethics, it’s likely that many/most downstream mirrors simply won’t block German traffic. Project Gutenberg can stop redirecting German traffic to those mirrors on the fly, but they can’t stop the mirrors from being available unless they start banning mirrors (and mirror syncing traffic) that don’t enforce similar blocks...this seems logistically untenable.
It would be cool if we could get a lawyer to chime in about Project Gutenberg’s liability with respect to forcing other mirrors to comply. For example, I’m making my own mirror available to Germany. Is Project Gutenberg complicit in a meaningful sense, if they allow me to continue mirroring?
[+] [-] tdons|8 years ago|reply
We apologize for this inconvenience. Your IP address has been automatically blocked from the address you tried to visit at www.gutenberg.org. This is because the geoIP database shows your address is in the country of Germany.
Diagnostic information:
Your IP address: <redacted>
Referrer URL (if available): http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/latest-covers
Time (GMT): Saturday, 03-Mar-2018 21:19:12 GMT
Why did this block occur?
A Court in Germany ordered that access to certain items in the Project Gutenberg collection are blocked from Germany. Project Gutenberg believes the Court has no jurisdiction over the matter, but until the issue is resolved during appeal, it will comply.
For more information about the German court case, visit PGLAF's information page about the German lawsuit.
For more information about the legal advice Project Gutenberg has received concerning international issues, visit PGLAF's International Copyright Guidance for Project Gutenberg
How can I get unblocked?
All IP addresses in Germany are blocked. This block will remain in place until legal guidance changes.
If your IP address lookup is incorrect
Use the Maxmind GeoIP demo to verify status of your IP address. Project Gutenberg updates its listing of IP addresses approximately monthly.
[+] [-] drvortex|8 years ago|reply
Please e careful with your mirror. You are now susceptible to the same lawsuit as the original Project Gutenberg. I am not sure where you are in the world, but Germany has legal assistance treaties with the US/UK/Scandanavia, all EEC and Schengen countries.
https://www.congress.gov/treaty-document/108th-congress/27/d... https://www.mlat.info/mlat-index
[+] [-] netsharc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] err4nt|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lunatic666|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] merb|8 years ago|reply
And yes german copyright laws are a fucking joke.
[+] [-] curiousfab|8 years ago|reply
By only blocking these 18 books, nobody would have taken much notice of this. By blocking all German users from the site, they will get a lot of media attention, and S. Fischer Verlag will get a lot of bad press. Whether or not they will move from their position is questionable, but it will hurt them.
Just sent a small donation to PG.
Making an effort not to buy books from that publishing house ever again, and telling all my friends about it.
[+] [-] teamhappy|8 years ago|reply
Good luck with that. S. Fischer is owned by Holtzbrinck. They own Macmillan, Springer Nature and a bunch of other publishing houses. Here's a list of their subsidiaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holtzbrinck_Publishing_Group#S...
[+] [-] 762236|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sitkack|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrs95|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2ion|8 years ago|reply
* In late 2017, a useless commercial weather forecast outlet (aggregating its data itself from national institutations!) sued the German National Weather service into having to take down its free weather app from the Apple and Goole app stores (development and operations funded with tax payer money!) and charge a fee for it. Somehow the judges got convinced that the Service unduly competed with a third-rate commercial information service.
* In early 2018, the courts lock out the public from a vast aggregate of literature in the public domain.
I'm sure I'll have a fresh item to continue the list soon.
[+] [-] zanny|8 years ago|reply
The US has it because its government is coopted by big media like Disney, MPAA, and RIAA and the average American is too ignorant / doesn't care at all about the death and stifling of culture that 100+ year copyright terms bring about. Europeans seem to have more democratic governments that are more willing to represent the interests of their citizens, so why is it just as bad over there?
[+] [-] Xylakant|8 years ago|reply
The court decided that 18 titles should not be available. Locking you out completely was project Gutenberg’s decision.
I don’t support either court decision, but let’s still keep the facts straight.
[+] [-] madez|8 years ago|reply
The public broadcast made documentaries about their cease-and-desist-industry against private people. Even the German Bundestag changed multiple times the law to stop that madness, but it took many years because the christian party opposed effective changes. Now, even though the law has changed on the 13th October 2017, they continue to pressure people into paying.
Some courts are heavily in favour of them, most notably the Amtsgericht München. This makes the situation even worse for people who cannot afford to appeal a judgement even though they are convinced they are not guilty, because the financial risk is too high. I would not be surprised if the judgement in this case gets overthrown in a higher court.
The defendants german lawyers, WILDE BEUGER SOLMECKE, are known for legal defense against Waldorf Frommer. Personally, I don't trust them completely because they offer an all-inclusive legal defense package that is conveniently priced at 2/3 of the value Waldorf Frommer asks for. This industry is a huge employment scheme for lawyers.
[+] [-] xvilka|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madez|8 years ago|reply
To answer your question, I don't remember which documentaries were good, but searching on YouTube with subsets of the relevant keyword set {abmahnung, abzocke, Waldorf frommer, doku} will give you multiple results.
Just to give one example, I'll name https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w7t4znx8DA
[+] [-] ubiyubix|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MikeGale|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orivej|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Findus23|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] robjwells|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] antoncohen|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] greenyoda|8 years ago|reply
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."
[+] [-] crx087|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gambiting|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] simonh|8 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] adrianN|8 years ago|reply
If a country doesn't like what a website provides they are free to block it at the border, just like with physical goods.
[+] [-] Bizarro|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] incompatible|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Buge|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] chki|8 years ago|reply
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|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] briandear|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] cerebellum|8 years ago|reply
S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH is part of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group since 1963 [0].
Macmillan Publishers Ltd is wholly owned by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group since 1999 [1]
Basically a sister company of Macmillan which may (or may not) be hit with the negative publicity fallout in the more than 70 countries it operates in...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._Fischer_Verlag [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macmillan_Publishers
[+] [-] zorked|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vortico|8 years ago|reply
I am assuming that PGLAF is owned and operated in the US. "PGLAF has no actual presence or activity in Germany".
I suppose the Berne Convention allows US police to honor international court orders for copyright violation, but what's to stop a country from making a ridiculous law that extends the copyright length to 2100 years, creating court orders for the 1 billion people who own a Bible or other old text without paying license fees, and collecting all the money in the world?
[+] [-] akerro|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icebraining|8 years ago|reply
PG should be careful about misinforming people. This statement is only true for books created before '78. Since then, in the US, copyright protection is also some years after the death of the author, except works for hire.
[+] [-] weinzierl|8 years ago|reply
I can access www.gutenberg.org and sub-pages just fine from Germany. So the block doesn't seem to be active at the moment.
> Q: Why didn't Project Gutenberg simply remove the items?
> A: The is no reason to remove them. The 18 eBooks are all in the public domain in the US, and have been for many years. Copyright status in another country is not relevant to the legitimate ability of Project Gutenberg -- or anyone/anything in the US -- to make any use of these books.
But why then even block access from Germany? If the stance is that "Copyright status in another country is not relevant to the legitimate ability of Project Gutenberg -- or anyone/anything in the US -- to make any use of these books.", what is the rationale for the blocking.
There is also the German Projekt Gutenberg (http://projekt.gutenberg.de/) which is promoted by Spiegel Online (one of the most widely read German-language news websites [1]) even under their own domain as http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/. I don't know what kind of relationship the German Projekt Gutenberg has with PGLAF. The German Projekt Gutenberg is accessible for me from Germany right now, but apparently has blocked the controversial books. For example the page that lists Heinrich Mann's works says about the book "Der Untertan": "Exists in Projekt Gutenberg-DE, but is blocked until 31.12.2020" {"Im Projekt Gutenberg-DE vorhanden (gesperrt bis 31.12.2020)"} [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegel_Online
[2] http://projekt.gutenberg.de/autor/heinrich-mann-1637
[+] [-] quickthrower2|8 years ago|reply
PG should take steps to honour the copyright laws of other countries.
My reasoning is this:
Say hypothetically I started "Project Open" in a country with zero copyright protections.
Then by that country's laws, I can list Amazons entire kindle catalog, buy all their books and scan them, and make it open access.
And by the PG argument, ignore the laws of other countries that demand copyright protection for those books, until I get sued.
At which point I block the site for the countries based on IP address (as if proxies and VPNs and people who travel don't exist)
If someone did that, they'd probably be characterised as a pirate site and shut down by the FBI.
[+] [-] freech|8 years ago|reply
That's an extraordinary theory of international law. By that logic Austria and Namibia also have jurisdiction.
[+] [-] trothamel|8 years ago|reply
I hope and suspect that the US courts would refuse to enforce the judgement against Project Gutenberg. A little bit of research shows that for a foreign judgement to be enforced, a country would need to have personal jurisdiction over the defendant.
That doesn't seem to be the case here, at least under the US law that would apply if the judgement was being enforced.
Given all the overreach of European governments over the past few years (VATMOSS, GDPR, and now this), I suspect the time is ripe for something like the SPEECH act, a law clarifies that when a US citizen makes something available on the US, that does does not subject them to the law of a non-US country - and that allows the US citizen to claim court costs if someone tries to register a judgement against them.
[+] [-] discordianfish|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] konschubert|8 years ago|reply
Or one has to restrict access to those counties where one follows the law, creating a fragmented web.
This is only going to get worse as the world keeps dialing back on globalization.
[+] [-] driverdan|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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