Is this Verlag related to the academic publisher / rent seeker, Springer Verlag?
"Verlag" just means "publishing company" in German.[1] There are probably many publishers in Germany that have that word in their name.
Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
131–140 of 529 posts
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#132I hope frivolous lawsuits such as this further inspire non profits to take their hosting to decentralized providers such as zeronet and ipfs. There’s almost no need to host these projects centrally anymore, and it seems to only invite attacks such as this one.
It’s not frivolous, almost by definition, if you win a lawsuit. You can disagree with this court’s judgement on all sorts of issues, but Germany isn’t usually known to be a banana republic with corrupt and/or completely incompetent judges.
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#133> 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…
> With publishing content in Germany (or whatever country) over Internet (or otherwise) they have crossed physical and legal borders.
This really goes to the fundamental nature of the internet and digital technology. Is it "push" whereby a web site "sends" the content to the visitor (therefore assumes the burden of copyright infringement, because they initiate a transfer out of their country into the visitor's) or is it "pull" where a visitor effectively goes to a country, gets the content and returns home, and the visitor is doing the international transfer and thus inheriting the liability of that?
To my mind the "pull" model is more persuasive because the visitor is clearly the agent in control of the transfer. This judgement seems to go against it though, and say that as a web site operator, you are the one doing the international transfer of the information.
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#134Can 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.
Also Telekom DSL, not blocked.
edit: Sorry: Only the frontpage isn't, search and books are ...
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#135> "It also seeks punitive damages and fines." But there is no such thing as punitive damages under German law?
The pglaf document isn't the most accurate in general (eg. claiming that Germany has "life + 75" terms, while correctly calculating life + 70 right in the next sentence; or discussing that the 56 years rule will end in the US in 2034, since books published after 1978 are subject to life + 70 as well - I guess Gutenberg won't be able to publish a single new book between 2034 and 2048), so I guess the claims made were only about damages (even if pglaf might consider them "punitive") and fines.
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#136"The legal guidance PGLAF received is that US law requires that such proceedings would have taken place in the US" Cute. Who cares about what US law may require?
The company that's suing them operates in the US, so it would be subject to US law. From the article:
"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."
And, as noted in the article, the German courts would also be bound by international copyright treaties to which Germany is a party.
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#137Fabulous :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.
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#138Is this Verlag related to the academic publisher / rent seeker, Springer Verlag?
Verlag means "publisher", it's not part of a name.
(There are two publishers going by "Springer" though, you were referring to J. Springer, not A. Springer)
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't see why Project Gutenberg thinks it isn't subject to German law. 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.
That’s just not how it works by any standard. Target users in a country, be subject to laws in that country. Basically all courts will assume jurisdiction by that rule. See for example the Mega case: Kim dotcom was a NZ resident, he was still prosecuted in the US. The critical question is enforcement: no US law enforcement would carry out a North Korean court order. Things get problematic if the is a viable enforceme…
Does project Gutenberg identify their German based volunteers? Are they going to respond to a German order to identify them, assuming they're not responding to a German order to suppress books in the first place?
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#140Fabulous :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 opera…
> In early 2018, the courts lock out the public from a vast aggregate of literature in the public domain.
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.