Somewhat ironic.
Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
151–160 of 529 posts
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#152I’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 cas…
> International websites have to respect local laws. No way. If I, a US citizen, publish a website hosted in the US that is critical of the Turkish president, should a Turkish court be able to compel me to take it down or block access from Turkey? What if I'm Israeli and I publish open source software, source and binary hosted in Israel, that is against US hacking laws. Should a US court be able to order an Israeli t…
Another example:
If you're in a country where child pornography is legal, should all other countries just accept it?
If you're in a country where doxxing is legal, should the victims not be able to do anything against it?
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#153I’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 cas…
What is it that distinguishes a web site from an international web site?
Do you feel that laws on web site content passed in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran or Vietnam should apply to web sites created or operated by you or posts made by you on line? Would you expect yourself and other global posters and journalists to be bound, for example, by Thailand’s Lese Majeste laws on criticism or comment related to their king?
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#154I’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 cas…
If your website breaks moral decency laws in Saudi Arabia, and a court there orders you to close your website, would you comply? Look at it from another perspective - if a German court has a problem with German citizens breaking German law in Germany, it should perhaps pursue those citizens and judge them. A US website can't(and shouldn't) be breaking any German laws by existing in US - maybe you could make an argume…
> If your website breaks moral decency laws in Saudi Arabia, and a court there orders you to close your website, would you comply?
Strawman, because we aren't talking about closing a website, but just blocking access from one country.
Regarding your example: Yes, I would comply and block access from Saudi Arabia to my website.
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#155tl;dr Project gutenberg is a USA entity, and in the USA copyright ends x years after publication. In Germany (and UK and many other EU countries) it's x years after authors death. A Troll Law Firm sued under German copyright and seems to have won the first round.
So this is Brexit for me. We in the UK think we are going to "take back control", but the nature of globalisation just means more and more situations like this. and there are only three ways it goes
- race to the top best regulations are adopted globally. Everyone but the best is a rule taker
- race to the bottom just awful
- confusoploy bad - where you go to gutenberg to get shakespeare's othello and have to sign 19'waivers saying you are not in a dozen jurisdictions that claim copyright still exists
Personally I think confusoploy is our likely destiny. sadly
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#156This is adorable. I wish other sites like YouTube, GitHub, Wikipedia etc would also refuse to remove something or block something in particular for particular country.
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#157> 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.
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.
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.
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#158Fabulous :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…
Why does the EU still have the same gross and absurd copyright terms and laws the US does? It fights US companies like Google on privacy and information security grounds, but seems to follow lockstep with the US on completely irrational copyright policy like "75 years after the author dies, only then can anyone else reproduce this work". The US has it because its government is coopted by big media like Disney, MPAA,…
Perhaps the European interests fighting copyright regulation are stronger than the ones that fought privacy regulation. See: diesel
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
If your website breaks moral decency laws in Saudi Arabia, and a court there orders you to close your website, would you comply? Look at it from another perspective - if a German court has a problem with German citizens breaking German law in Germany, it should perhaps pursue those citizens and judge them. A US website can't(and shouldn't) be breaking any German laws by existing in US - maybe you could make an argume…
> If your website breaks moral decency laws in Saudi Arabia, and a court there orders you to close your website, would you comply? Strawman, because we aren't talking about closing a website, but just blocking access from one country. Regarding your example: Yes, I would comply and block access from Saudi Arabia to my website.
But....why? In a certain way, it's just some random court from a country you've never been to ordering you to do something. Why would you comply. There are ways foreign entities and governments can pursue an American company through the American legal system - the plaintiff decided not to do that here and decided to go through the German system instead. Which is all fine and dandy, but I still don't understand why an American company with no legal presence in Germany should obey rulings of the German court.
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
> for playing devils advocate I can see the courts point: International websites have to respect local laws I think this is an untenable position as it would mean that any website, published from any country, hosted on servers in any country, would have to abide by the laws of the world’s 193 countries. Project Gutenberg’s argument is that they are only a US concern — everyone involved officially is in the US, and th…
I agree with you. Following every law is neither practical and in the case of censorship even counterproductive. I just wanted to point out that the reaction of the court isn’t as entirely pointless as it may seem on first thought.
PGLAF is incorporated in the US, their site is hosted in the US and their employees live in the US. Tell me again why they need to worry about the law of any country but the US?
It's up to the German courts/government to deny access to sites that break their laws, not try to impose their law on people outside their jurisdiction.