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Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

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Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#91

Post by Tomte »

dsacco wrote: post #5

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…

I can still access it. No proxies or VPNs of any kind, just regular Telekom DSL.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#92

Post by lovich »

freeflight wrote: post #84
stale2002 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> total blockage “revenge” is just plain childish. It seems like it is working to get them publicity. If germany doesn't like that they are now being blocked, then they should change their laws. It is their website, so too bad for germany. Protesting ridiculous copywrite laws is perfectly reasonable.

> If germany doesn't like that they are now being blocked, then they should change their laws. Sadly it ain't as easy as that, the copyright lobby is very powerful in Germany, with their very own special interest laws like "mitstörerhaftung" [0] and the "Impressumspflicht". It's stuff like that which prevents open WLAN easily being run and operated because in Germany the person running the AP is liable for everything…

Then Germany as an entity can deal with the results of their society being structured in a way that allows those special interests to have that level of control. America has the same problems as well but it's be unreasonable to expect people in other sovereignties to make special accommodations for me just because my government is making me follow a different set of rules

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#93

Post by teamhappy »

freeflight wrote: post #46
cheschire wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only block the books themselves, not the index pages. Attempting to view any book will result in a block message.

I'm on one of the biggest German ISPs (Deutsche Telekom) and I can access front page and books just fine. Tried it with the HTML versions of four different books, among them "most popular" like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and A Tale of Two Cities, they all work without issue.

Vodafone/Kabel Deutschland doesn't seem to be blocked either. (I tried a couple from the 18 that are supposed to be blocked.)

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#94

Post by chris_engel »

Tomte wrote: post #91
dsacco wrote: post #5

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…

I can still access it. No proxies or VPNs of any kind, just regular Telekom DSL.

Try to access a book.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#95

Post by chris_engel »

rawland wrote: post #70
dsacco wrote: post #5

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…

Works (Search, lookup, random German authors) fine for me. PS: I'm surfing with (mostly) this configuration: http://12bytes.org/tech/firefox/firefoxgecko-configuration-g... No idea, if this might affect the outcome. IMHO, not.

Did you actually open a book? Because everything else is not blocked.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#97

Post by Findus23 »

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.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#98

Post by freeflight »

lovich wrote: post #92
freeflight wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If germany doesn't like that they are now being blocked, then they should change their laws. Sadly it ain't as easy as that, the copyright lobby is very powerful in Germany, with their very own special interest laws like "mitstörerhaftung" [0] and the "Impressumspflicht". It's stuff like that which prevents open WLAN easily being run and operated because in Germany the person running the AP is liable for everything…

Then Germany as an entity can deal with the results of their society being structured in a way that allows those special interests to have that level of control. America has the same problems as well but it's be unreasonable to expect people in other sovereignties to make special accommodations for me just because my government is making me follow a different set of rules

> it's be unreasonable to expect people in other sovereignties to make special accommodations for me

Nobody is expecting PG to do anything like that, what is expected is that PG just removes these 18 books from German access, if they don't then the German publisher can cease&desist them over giving access to said books, which would have no effect at all on GP due to it being an entity that's registered in California, so German c&d letters have literally no effect on them.

GP is taking a stance here, which I very much appreciate as a German, but quite a few people here seem to be misunderstanding what's actually happening here or expected from GP.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#99

Post by teamhappy »

curiousfab wrote: post #40

PG did exactly the right thing here. 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 pu…

> Making an effort not to buy books from that publishing house ever again, and telling all my friends about it.

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...

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#100

Post by TulliusCicero »

zorked wrote: post #21

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.

That seems like especially bizarre reasoning considering that Germany isn't even the only country that speaks German natively. Why do they get jurisdiction instead of Austria?
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