71–80 of 529 posts
> PGLAF is entirely in the US PGLAF has awesome mission, but that base assumption is not really correct. With publishing content in Germany (or whatever country) over Internet (or otherwise) they have crossed physical and legal borders. You must obey local laws everywhere and US laws are legal in their soil only. The attitude that US laws are something globally applicable and Internet is something above local laws is…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The link addresses just that: > The decision to acceed to the German Court's order to make items inaccessible from Germany is intended to be a temporary appeasement, while the appeal occurs - this is because the German appeal Court will likely look disfavorably on PGLAF if it shows contempt for the German Court.
Well, no crap sherlock I don't see why Project Gutenberg thinks it isn't subject to German law. And yes, it sucks and it is against the spirit of the internet. But it's either them being sued or ISPs being ordered to block the website.
For the same reason that it's not subject to North Korean law, or Saudi law, or the laws of any tin pot dictatorship: It's not located there.
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 thi…
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 fro…
Here in Austria the law regarding copyright is pretty similar to Germany so it’s really interesting why no one has sued before.
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 thi…
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.
So yeah, while the language issue is only part of the judicial reasoning, is is indeed mentioned three times in the judicial conclusions. The court does not however appear to adopt plaintiff's theory on jurisdiction because some of the volunteers were German.
As such, I'm inclined to think that while the focus on the language issue is perhaps a bit overstated in their statement, it is definitely grounded in the opinion of the court.
As an aside though, I'm not convinced the court spent too much time considering the jurisdictional arguments here, which I think are probably the most important part of this case. Most of the analysis is concerned with whether the publisher plausibly alleged they own the copyright. I assume that is because that is usually the primary point of contention in copyright cases.
But there is no such thing as punitive damages under German law?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, no crap sherlock I don't see why Project Gutenberg thinks it isn't subject to German law. And yes, it sucks and it is against the spirit of the internet. But it's either them being sued or ISPs being ordered to block the website.
> But it's either them being sued or ISPs being ordered to block the website. Sued by whom? Afaik gutenberg.org is registered in California, no German jurisdiction, the cease&desist orders usually used to shut something like this down don't apply here. Same deal with ISPs: Afaik there's no legal framework to support anything like that, it's for exactly that reason why law firms like Waldorf and Frommer uses cease&des…
You might be careful with that assertion. As recently as Feb. 1st 2018 (so a month ago), Vodafone was compelled to block access to kinox.to in a preliminary injunction (1). The EUGH decided in 2014 that blocking pages is at least an option (2). This is contradictory to the EU e-commerce regulations, so the legality is somewhat murky at the moment, but it’s not definitely off the table.
(1) https://netzpolitik.org/2018/netzsperren-vodafone-muss-kinox...
(2) Telekabel Wien vs. Constantin Film http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...
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 thi…
Can confirm it. All books are blocked even though the front page is accessible.