[tame3902]

There was a court case about this. Project Gutenberg got sued by a German publishing house for hosting works still copyrighted in Germany.

"Although they were in the public domain in the United States, the German court (Frankfurt am Main Regional Court) recognized the infringement of copyrights still active in Germany, and asserted that the Project Gutenberg website was under German jurisdiction because it hosts content in the German language and is accessible in Germany." [1]

Project Gutenberg lost repeatedly in court but the whole saga ended with a settlement.

"Under the terms of the agreement, Project Gutenberg eBooks by the three authors will be blocked from Germany until their German copyright expires." [1]

So if you have a German IP you can't access the ebooks, but if don't you can read them.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gutenberg#Copyright