[freech]

> mainly because the www.gutenberg.org site has some content in the German language.

That's an extraordinary theory of international law. By that logic Austria and Namibia also have jurisdiction.

[Xylakant]

This is an extremely short (and misleading) summary of the courts argument. Among the reasons for assuming jurisdiction is the assumption that project Gutenberg targets users in Germany and part of that assumption is Project Gutenberg’s statement that the goal is to make the works available globally (thus including germany) (quote: “anyone anywhere”). The fact that content and at least parts of the page is available in Germany adds to that assumption. It’s been established that websites targeting german people (also) fall under german jurisdiction.

So no, not an extraordinary or new theory of international law.

[dsr_]

It is, however, a terrible theory, since the immediate effect is that every website is subject to every jurisdiction in the world.

[Moru]

In Sweden you have to follow swedish law if you target your business towards swedes. If you use swedish language, sell directly to swedes and so on. I'm sure Germany has something similar.

[zanny]

Swedish is a bit more rare in International linguistics, but German is not. There is an entire population in the American mideast that learn and speak German as just an example of a very far off population of non-German speakers of the language.

Even without speakers, Gutenberg hosting these books does not mean they are targeting Germans. I can put any of these texts through Google translate and read them myself despite my only experience with German being one class in high school.

[thesimon]

It's false though. The court says German law applies because German users can access the site. German language is only briefly mentioned, but not the argument of the court.

[jhasse]

How do you think so? From the court order:

"Hierfür spricht, dass die Webseite teilweise in Deutsch gehalten ist, dass auf der Seite Werke in deutscher Sprache angeboten werden [...]"

And there are even more arguments by the prosecutor which go beyond "accessible from Germany".