In the US, copyright protection is based on the number of years since publication. PG should be careful about misinforming people. This statement is only true for books created before '78. Since then, in the US, copyright protection is also some years after the death of the author, except works for hire.
It literally says this: "in the US, copyright protection for works published prior to 1978 is based on the number of years since publication. " Did they edit the page since you posted your comment 18 hours ago?
Yes, as I copy-pasted. The footer also says it was updated today.
> "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" Why do German courts think they can overstep jurisdictions?
See, they think they don't. From the court document: > The action is admissible. In particular, the District Court of Frankfurt am Main has international and local jurisdiction pursuant to § 32 ZPO (German Rules of Civil Procedure). According to § 32 ZPO, the court of the district where an unlawful act was committed has jurisdiction for suits brought against such acts. Unlawful acts within the meaning of § 32 ZPO als…
Yet the plaintiff in this case rejected international mediation. They're hell bent on keeping this case in German court.
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.
And I certainly don't want other countries having any say over what happens within US borders. It happens, but it doesn't make it right.
PGLAF thinks that the German court is wrong. However, they would prefer to not have German court decision - even if they believe it is wrong - against them to be in power, since international treaties mean it can have consequences beyond Germany. Thus, they are fighting it in German court. In order to raise chances of winning, they choose not to openly flaunt German court decision - which they can always do later if…
> PGLAF thinks that the German court is wrong. They made that point in their article and they also made clear that this is not just their opinion but also that of their legal teams in the US and Germany. > However, they would prefer to not have German court decision - even if they believe it is wrong - against them to be in power, since international treaties mean it can have consequences beyond Germany. And that is…
> The way to avoid embarrassment on all sides would have been to ignore the lawsuit and point the publisher to the proper ways to handles this, namely either US court or WIPO.
They did. See this part of the FAQ:
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.
I'm also German and strongly disagree with your opinion. Privacy is a very delicate topic in Germany since the Nazis and the Stasi used to arrest people for even talking bad about them.
If it’s so delicate, why do Germans permit a law that requires people to register their religion? When I had applied for a German residency permit, I was asked to disclose a religion, ostensibly to determine taxes. I feel like Germans fall back on the “delicate topic” nonsense as a permanent justification for just about everything, but in reality, they tolerate plenty of big government violations of privacy and indiv…
> I was asked to disclose a religion, ostensibly to determine taxes.
The Church's "member fee" is being collected as a tax by the state because of some Weimar Republic law that has been kept around. Bishops are also payed by the state. This was to stop the then powerful churches from revolting against the government because the government wanted to clean up older laws and conflicts. [1] Don't ask me why it's still this way, I know a lot of people that want to get rid of that, including myself. You can get out of paying church tax very easily at the city hall, btw. You can then also state that your religion is following the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Imho, you are blowing this out of proportion.
> It’s illogical, Facebook isn’t going to lead to Nazism or the Stasi again
Right, but governments that request access to this data can. It's better to not collect data in the first place.
They still have to comply with the court ruling, i.e. at least block those 18 books in Germany, as they aren't The Pirate Bay. The website's move is smart because it avoids future complications coming from the Urheberrechtsgesetz, the German copyright law, and draws much-needed public attention to how easy it is for bully firms to abuse it.
How come they have to obey the court in Germany?
Copyright laws are to be respected whatever the country. This is a border case, so to see if the principle is sound, let's imagine something. Let's say a country, for whatever reason, decides that its copyright protections are of 1 year only. After that, this country decides that all books, movies, games are freely available from its territory through the internet because their copyrights are expired. Does anyone believes that all the other countries will say : "no problem, it's their law and the site is from their territory, so everything's allright" ?
So, laws from any country have to be respected, especially with a global system like the internet. It is often annoying, sometimes disconcerting, but no country would allow their society to be governed by foreign laws.
And I really appreciate even more the Project Gutenberg for that, because they care about laws everywhere and obey them according to the territory (the fact that they went for the easy way by blocking the entire country is really not important: it is just a matter of resources, so we have to donate more if this is what bothers us).
How are German ones worse? I always think of Disney and Mosanto when I think about litigious companies..
The German copy right law was quite noticeable written with companies in mind, and had originally a right to private copies to get private people out of the reaches of the law. You could copy an entire book, or a movie, give it to a friend and that would be perfectly legal. (As long as you are clearly not doing that in any kind of commercial fashion.) Early in the last decade, judges ruled that this basically never a…
You are misinformed on many levels.
You can still copy copyrighted data and send it to a friend over the internet, just like you can copy a book cover to cover and give the copy to a friend. The focus is on friend, however. When you torrent and connect to strangers, then it is public distribution and not anymore sharing between friends.
Also, the law § 104a UhrG clearly states that copyright infringement has to be brought to the local court of the defendant, when the defendant is a natural person. This is the case since the 9th October 2013.
They could arguably have ignored the decision. If a German court rules that something should not be available in Germany, they should order German ISPs to block it. That's what the UK does about "illegal" torrenting and streaming. And that's what China does about the Dali Lama, Falun Gong, Uighur resistance, and so on. Edit: OK, so some argue that Project Gutenberg, which does business from the US, and which has no p…
An ISP block would also only block the entire site. This was not the intention of the court otherwise they would have done that instead. The court only wanted some books blocked, not the entire site, because under german copyright those books are not yet public domain.
The court did not order the books blocked, it ordered them taken down and for PG to pay damages.
PGLAF is incorporated in the US, their site is hosted in the US and their employees live in the US. Tell me again why they need to worry about the law of any country but the US? It's up to the German courts/government to deny access to sites that break their laws, not try to impose their law on people outside their jurisdiction.
You don‘t want to tell me that a US court would show any restraint if a non-US based person violated American copyright?
For many years, China felt no urge to follow international copyright agreements. It was popular in certain circles to buy pirated Chinese editions (in English) of textbooks because they were very cheap.
Likewise, Microsoft has long had problems with pirated versions of Windows. Further, DVDs and CDs....
The general response from US courts was, "eh, what can we do?"