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Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

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Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#271

Post by mcguire »

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.

Are you really asserting that

a) anything in the German language falls under the jurisdiction of the German government, and that

b) a relationship bearing on legal jurisdiction between two otherwise completely unrelated entities can be created by otherwise unrelated third parties?

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#272

Post by zebraflask »

mcguire wrote: post #262
zebraflask wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Read them in the original. They are not pleasant and bringing up the memory of those things is just as bad as causing them.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#273

Post by sseth »

jhasse wrote: post #165
robjwells wrote: post #111

Earlier 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…

On point 3 : The fact that the (original) Gutenberg is in germany is irrelevant. Gutenberg here refers to the Gutenberg bible, not the place.

And in any case are we now assigning global trademark rights to cities / countries for names used in their jurisdiction? To give an example, Budweiser would be subject to Czech jurisdiction, since it is named after a Czech town. This is not much of an argument.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#274

Post by toyg »

detuur wrote: post #227
toyg wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you would mention diesel. At the moment, European governments are queuing up to announce draconian bans on diesel coming into force in just a few years. That's certainly not pleasing most entrenched players in the energy and manufacturing sectors. If you wanted to highlight established interests successfully fighting their corner in EU proceedings, you could have picked something like tax harmonisation o…

Could we for once and for all stop entertaining the ridiculous notion that GMOs are somehow harmful or a thing that should be avoided? Every single argument I've heard against GMOs, so far, has been a form of wilfully ignorant neo-luddism. While yes, the contracts that companies selling GMOs utilise are socially unfair, it's not like we consider databases to be a horrific thing because Oracle licensing terms are bull…

> the ridiculous notion that GMOs are somehow harmful

I did not express any judgement on this topic, I just pointed out that the current state of play at EU level on the subject is the result of extensive lobbying from the relevant industry.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#275

Post by bubblethink »

toyg wrote: post #169
zanny wrote: post #146

Earlier 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…

>likely contribute a pretty penny to the publisher's bottom line

Is there any evidence for this ? Judging by the dates of the works, this looks like it is just a shakedown and an attempt to set precedent.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#276

Post by Myrmornis »

> The is no reason to remove them. The 18 eBooks are all in the public domain in the US, and have been for many years. Copyright status in another country is not relevant to the legitimate ability of Project Gutenberg -- or anyone/anything in the US -- to make any use of these books.

Suppose a country X existed which doesn't honor US copyrights at all. By symmetry, it seems that Project Gutenberg would approve of a website hosted entirely in country X, offering full texts of all publications by US authors, up to the present day, for download by anyone in the world, including in the US.

I do realize that PG is under no obligation to have an opinion on any such hypothetical circumstance. But nevertheless, that seems to be the implication. Are they really so anarchic? Or do they just think US copyright laws are more important than everyone else's?

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#277

Post by mcguire »

incompatible wrote: post #242
Findus23 wrote: post #97

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…

Generally speaking, no, you only have to follow the laws of the county where you are resident. I don't know why Project Gutenberg is taking any notice of the court case at all, although it probably should warn its contributors not to work on projects that aren't yet public domain in their own countries, to avoid any risk of legal action. In this case the legal situation seems clear. The case is about several books wr…

The court decision in question, in part, says,

"The defendants are ordered, on penalty of an administrative fine of up to EUR 250,000.00 or, alternatively, imprisonment of up to 6 months, for each case of non- compliance, said imprisonment to be imposed on the second defendant, to cease and desist from making the following works publicly available or letting them be made publicly available, namely:..."

The court has not ordered the site blocked, but the texts in question taken down.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#278

Post by AnthonyMouse »

detuur wrote: post #240
Pinckney wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other countries can try to block that content, or they can try to punish their own residents for viewing it. Why would residents of the permissive country comply with a foreign court order?

> try to block Excellent phrasing. They can try. And they'll fail. Blocking is trivially easy to avoid and circumvent. As long as there's no jurisdiction, a country can't take any action against a criminal site, it can only take steps to protect its population from harmful outside influence, which is by blocking. The offenders remain free and often unidentified. But when there is jurisdiction, a country can take offe…

> But when there is jurisdiction, a country can take offensive action.

That isn't what jurisdiction means. You're describing the digital equivalent of covert operations in a foreign country.

> Without it, the only logical way to protect your population is to erect deep-scanning firewalls and abolishing free traffic across national networks, much like China and Iran are doing.

It would work perfectly well to publish free open source scanning software and allow your citizens to voluntarily use it if they want to be "protected" from such things.

Unless your citizens are the perpetrators rather than the victims, but in that case you haven't got a jurisdictional problem.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#279

Post by mcguire »

chki wrote: post #107
Findus23 wrote: post #97

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…

Yes, I absolutely agree with you there. Copyright across international borders is really complex but the only important factor can't be the country of origin. (This would obviously create copyright paradises and is generally unpractical) If you publish a German book on a site with parts of it written in German either you will get problems with German copyright or the person downloading the content. Both solutions are…

What is a "German book"? A book in German? A book "owned" by a German?

Are you comfortable having United States laws apply to you because you are using a "United States web site" in English? (Actually, the latter doesn't matter; the US doesn't have an official language.)

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#280

Post by soneil »

ufo wrote: post #203

Does anyone know why the books involved in the lawsuit are in the public domain in the US but not in Germany?

That's in the article. In the US, the copyright term (for the relevant period) was the date they were published plus n years. In (most of) Europe, it's the life of the author plus n years.

So for a book published 50 years before the author died, the term expires in the US long before it does in (most of) Europe.

(This has since changed in the US, but did not apply retroactively. So published+n still applies to works published before the change to life+n)

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