Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany • Hacker News Board

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#281

Post by freech » Sun, Mar 04, 2018, 3:08 AM UTC

jhasse wrote: post #152

antoncohen wrote: post #122

Earlier 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…

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?

> If you're in a country where child pornography is legal, should all other countries just accept it?

Yes.

> If you're in a country where doxxing is legal, should the victims not be able to do anything against it?

No.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#282

Post by incompatible » Sun, Mar 04, 2018, 3:09 AM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #277

incompatible wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

Sure, but if the defendants don't have any interests in Germany, how would the claim be enforced?

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#283

Post by mcguire » Sun, Mar 04, 2018, 3:09 AM UTC

jhasse wrote: post #154

gambiting wrote: post #116

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? 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.

https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/gutenberg-lawsuit-judgement-E...

"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:..."

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#284

Post by mcguire » Sun, Mar 04, 2018, 3:11 AM UTC

gowld wrote: post #251

jhasse wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At some point, the residents of a country are responsible for its government. The inverse of the "consent of the governed" principle.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#285

Post by mdpopescu » Sun, Mar 04, 2018, 3:16 AM UTC

ajmurmann wrote: post #258

mdpopescu wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, absolutely agreed with that. I'm against Imaginary Property anyway. And I do get upset every time American companies enforce their copyrights :)

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#286

Post by pmoriarty » Sun, Mar 04, 2018, 3:18 AM UTC

teamhappy wrote: post #99

curiousfab wrote: post #40

PG did exactly the right thing here. By only blocking these 18 books, nobody would have taken much notice of this. By blocking all German users from the site, they will get a lot of media attention, and S. Fischer Verlag will get a lot of bad press. Whether or not they will move from their position is questionable, but it will hurt them. Just sent a small donation to PG. Making an effort not to buy books from that pu…

> 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...

If enough people stop buying from just Macmillan alone, that would have an impact.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#287

Post by mcguire » Sun, Mar 04, 2018, 3:19 AM UTC

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…

The Berne Convention is a treaty and doesn't work that way. (IIRC, it defines the periods in question; by putting the treaty, Germany is obligated to honor the (BC) copyrights on US-copyrighted works, but can apply its own to German copyrighted works.)

The US would not ratify a treaty that works the way you describe. One hopes.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#288

Post by mcguire » Sun, Mar 04, 2018, 3:23 AM UTC

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #209

smsm42 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This legal theory is completely nuts. This means if I write something in, say, Russian on my website, and it's accessible to people from Russia, I am now considered to be obliged to follow every whim of Putin regarding my site's contents, even if I don't ever step my foot in Russia and don't want anything to do with it? Hopefully this is just plain old corruption and not idiotic legal theory that language you use mak…

And what about publishing in English? Does the UK take precedence and the US has no standing? Or is a publisher subject to courts in both countries?

Technically, the US had no official language. It could claim jurisdiction over anything in any language.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#289

Post by Bizarro » Sun, Mar 04, 2018, 3:27 AM UTC

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…

International websites have to respect local laws

I keep on seeing this type of political agenda comments parroted around HN lately, when everybody knows it's not true.

It's not a german website and absolutely does not have to respect German law.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#290

Post by Bizarro » Sun, Mar 04, 2018, 3:32 AM UTC

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…

So yeah: 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.

And once again we get this lie being said around here. You should really just be honest with your political comments and come out with what you really want to say.