70 years for copyright (no matter from what point) is a ridiculous length to begin with.
Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
261–270 of 529 posts
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#262Can 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…
They probably blocked some version of Mein Kampf, which they have every right to do and ought to do.
The authors and books are listed in the linked faq. None seem politically related, although I don't know German.
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a sincere question. What American laws are enforced outside the US?
DMCA, computer fraud have been and are used to extradite non-US citizens to put them in front of a US court for crimes under US law. Regardless of it being a crime in the country where the suspect lives/did the hack.
I feel if the countries of the parties involved were reversed, it would be a much different situation. Although the content could be hosted in Germany, and aimed at a German audience, other parts of your infrastructure (e.g. domain names, SSL certificates, CDNs) are most likely controlled by US companies, so you do not have much choice in whether you follow US law.
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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...
Is it so uncommon for big companies to evaluate the performance of various divisions independently? If Holtzbrinck recognizes that S. Fischer's activities have caused that subsidiary to start losing money, they will probably modify their opinion. Why would they want to subsidize a losing bet using the profits from other divisions? The fact that two companies are owned by the same holding group does not really mean th…
I would guess most of us outside Germany have no real contact with S. Fischer, but considerable dealings with Holtzbrinck's other subsidiaries.
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
1) the EU moving away from US economic and foreign policy is a relatively recent development. On most issues, from Crimea to copyright, you can usually start from the assumption that European and American positions are somewhat aligned. The exceptions (privacy etc) are well-known exactly because they are exceptions. 2) EU countries have a significant skin in the creative-sector game, in a way they really don't in oth…
>3) do not make the mistake of assuming a humongous organism like the EU always talks with one voice. Already what we call "EU" is actually a hodgepodge of treaties and institutions (including nation-states that literally invented the various different forms of nation-statehood to mark differences with their neighbours...) that are slowly being integrated together. Then you have competing interests between nations, between institutions, between different economic and political interests, and between individuals. In this case a court ruled in a certain way following existing guidelines; but it might well happen that something else, like EuroParliament, looking for a fight at some point, will eventually pick up this sort of issue and push for change.
This is an important point that is often forgotten. People complain that the EU is too complicated, but it became that way be necessity. You couldn't have built a European federation with the same scope and less complexity.
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#266Earlier 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…
PG decided they don't have time to deal with Germany's BS, so they implemented the simplest solution guaranteed to work.
The simplest solution would have been to do nothing.
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#267Can 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.
i doubt it.
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#268Earlier 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 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…
"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.
"Alternatively, international treaties - notably the Berne Convention and related treaties - provide mediation processes through the World Intellectual Property Organization. PGLAF offered to undergo this mediation process, and Plaintiff declined."
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
None of those pass muster. 1. There are plenty of German-speakers not living in Germany. 2. Is that organization somehow affiliated with project gutenberg? Or did it simply use the name, which gutenberg probably doesn't care to trademark and wouldn't have the funds to legally enforce anyway. 3. You must know that hardly anyone uses .us. 4. So all it takes to be subject to a country's courts is for that country's medi…
Those points can't be picked apart like you did. They add up and make it reasonable to argue that gutenberg.org is very well known in Germany and that lots of Germans have downloaded the books in question. The copyright owners are still selling those here and have probably already lost sales due to this. They tried to contact gutenberg.org, but where ignored. This isn't about free speech amd censorship. > If you thin…
Ignored? Where are you seeing that?
Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
If you have Turkish users, you ARE doing business in Turkey. That's obvious.
If you operate a bookstore in New York City, you are doing business in the US and not Turkey. That is true even if someone from Turkey comes into your bookstore, buys one of your books and takes it home with them to Turkey.
Why should the internet be any different?