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Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

cand.pglaf.org

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Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#251

Post by gowld »

jhasse wrote: post #180
cloakandswagger wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have immense respect for Saudi Arabia's legal system, or fear of recourse from them? Do you just enjoy being subjugated? If a country doesn't like my site, they're free to block it themselves instead of compelling me to.

I would think that if Saudi Arabia can't access my website, it's their loss, not mine ;)

Confusing the government of a country with its residents, especially a dictatorship like Saudi Arabia, is a harmful error. Sure, it's not your loss, but it's not their loss either -- it's innocent 3rd party's loss.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#252

Post by gowld »

gambiting wrote: post #159
jhasse wrote: post #154

Earlier 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? 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…

There's no reason to obey a foreign order, as long as (1) your jurisdiction's authority doesn't extradite, and (2) you never enter the reach of jurisdiction you offended,

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#253

Post by sjwright »

jhasse wrote: post #232
harshreality wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> illegal where ? On the internet, where project gutenberg is located. The argument put forward, that you repeated, implies just as much that someone could be prosecuted in a Chinese court for publishing a harsh (to the point of being illegal in China) criticism of China named freexinjiang.com, at least if the site included a Chinese version. And that , since it refers specifically to a Chinese province/area, would h…

> On the internet I still don't understand what that means exactly. > whereas Project Gutenberg has zero connection to Germany. I disagree. > what does the nationality of Gutenberg the historical person have to do with anything? Is shakespeare.com subject to uk laws? There's a lot inbetween of zero connection with country X and subject to it's law. So regarding shakesbear.com: No, not necessarily.

> There's a lot inbetween

No, there isn't. Or are you saying Austria could have a greater claim of jurisdiction over Tesla because of its name?

Germany has no more "ownership" over the German language than England has over English.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#254

Post by gowld »

djur wrote: post #247
detuur wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this logic the US has no jurisdiction to act against a child pornography website aimed at Americans, used by Americans, with pictures of American children, as long as the website is hosted in Russia, where child pornography remains legal (or any of the other countries where it's legal and/or authorities don't care). Remember, this means that the FBI has no right to even investigate the persons involved in it. No j…

Your example goes too far -- the FBI would absolutely have jurisdiction to investigate the appearance of American children on such a site, as well as to go after Americans who used the site, because that involves the commission of crimes on American soil.

> against a child pornography website

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#255

Post by mcguire »

obastani wrote: post #190
abalone wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I thought it was pretty clear. They specifically say "certain items" were to be blocked, not the entire website.

Prededents.

Further lawsuits against PG for any of the other German texts could bankrupt the organization.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#256

Post by gowld »

vortico wrote: post #48

I am completely confused by how this court order even works. I am assuming that PGLAF is owned and operated in the US. "PGLAF has no actual presence or activity in Germany". I suppose the Berne Convention allows US police to honor international court orders for copyright violation, but what's to stop a country from making a ridiculous law that extends the copyright length to 2100 years, creating court orders for the…

You said it yourself: the Berne Convention allows US police to honor international court orders. US still has soveriegnty over people residing in its jurisdiciton.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#257

Post by elcapitan »

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.

Can confirm block in O2 network, I can visit the homepage but access no books.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#258

Post by ajmurmann »

mdpopescu wrote: post #245
ajmurmann wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in order not to be "an asshole" German published should just limit themselves to copyright defined by US? I'm sure Disney wouldn't be happy either if their movies that are still under copyright in the US were to be published for everyone to download on a server in some country that had shorter copyright than US. They'd try to sue as well.

Your argument is "there are other assholes". While true, that still doesn't make them likeable. ["Likable"? Never saw that spelling before.]

That's not my argument. My argument or rather question is "Why do we get upset if someone in another country enforces their longer copyright period while we don't get upset every time American companies enforce theirs?" In my perception copyright periods are all insanely long.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#259

Post by mcguire »

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'm not a lawyer, but you may be seeing a cease and desist letter in your near future.

BTW, you may want to make sure you aren't keeping logs including traffic sources' IP addresses.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#260

Post by mcguire »

freeflight wrote: post #54
netsharc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> if you run a mirror which is accessible from Germany Access from Germany isn't the issue, having a German IP is the issue. They don't go after foreign seeders because that would be too much hassle getting the real data behind the IP (just like German law doesn't apply to them), but they hunt down seeders with German IP's with quite a vengeance.

PG is a US organization. They may have volunteer mirrors in Germany, but all of PG itself is in San Francisco, right?
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