181–190 of 529 posts
I'm not sure I follow why people are upset with the publishing company that's sueing. They do own the copyright. One can disagree with the law and think it should be changed (I strongly believe that) but that's up to lawmakers to do. It would be irresponsible for the publisher to ignore that their ownership is being ignored.
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…
Your IP Address is Blocked from www.gutenberg.org We apologize for this inconvenience. Your IP address has been automatically blocked from the address you tried to visit at www.gutenberg.org. This is because the geoIP database shows your address is in the country of Germany. Diagnostic information: Your IP address: Referrer URL (if available): http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/latest-covers Time (GMT): Saturday, 03-Mar-…
This is really misleading. It implies -- nay, outright states -- that Gutenberg is merely complying with the court order. But the court did not order the entire site to be blocked.
A more candid answer is found in their information page:[1]
Q: Why block all of Germany, rather than just those 18 books?
A: ...Because the German Court has overstepped its jurisdiction, and allowed the world's largest publishing group to bully Project Gutenberg for these 18 books, there is every reason to think that this will keep happening... Blocking Germany, in an effort to forestall further legal actions, seems the best way to protect the organization and retain focus on its mission.
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 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…
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> 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…
In the beginning (like it was in this case with gutenberg.org), it isn't a court order, but just an email, asking me if I could respect their local laws.
Books becoming public domain example: In Germany it's 75 years after the author's death, in the US some amount of years after the publication. Who am I to judge which approach is "right"?
Btw: We're suffering quite a lot here in Germany because of software patents in the US.
> 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.
Don't you consider a website in German, accessible from Germany, which looks totally legal for most Germans as some kind of legal presence in Germany?
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Considering how much US patent law has been enforced abroad: most governments. I do hope that these proceedings are forced to take place in the US, because that would set a precedent, however insignificant, that copyright does not apply in other countries.
I hope that countries other than America still get to have their own court system. I certainly don't want America to have final say over everything in the world.
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> 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. No. If you read the court order, they are arguing, that gutenberg.org is targeted at Germans. There are a few reason: 1. there's a link on the front page to view the site in German 2. there's a similar German project: htt…
> If you do a website and target a different country, ignore emails about legal issues from citizens of that country for months, you should start to think about respecting the laws of that country. Surprisingly then, why Doitsche Welle still exists without any lawsuit from abroad.
What?
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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.
Sad...
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> 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 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. No. If you read the court order, they are arguing, that gutenberg.org is targeted at Germans. There are a few reason: 1. there's a link on the front page to view the site in German 2. there's a similar German project: htt…
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> I can see the courts point: International websites have to respect local laws No, they don’t, and shouldn’t. I’m free to offend the sensibilities of China, disgrace the Ayatollah, and violate a wide variety of other “local laws” from the comfort of my home or workplace. If those places don’t like it, they’re also free to censor content until such time that their populace won’t tolerate it any longer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carruthers
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Your IP Address is Blocked from www.gutenberg.org We apologize for this inconvenience. Your IP address has been automatically blocked from the address you tried to visit at www.gutenberg.org. This is because the geoIP database shows your address is in the country of Germany. Diagnostic information: Your IP address: Referrer URL (if available): http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/latest-covers Time (GMT): Saturday, 03-Mar-…
> A Court in Germany ordered that access to certain items in the Project Gutenberg collection are blocked from Germany... until the issue is resolved during appeal, [Project Gutenberg] will comply. This is really misleading. It implies -- nay, outright states -- that Gutenberg is merely complying with the court order. But the court did not order the entire site to be blocked. A more candid answer is found in their in…