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Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

cand.pglaf.org

471–480 of 529 posts

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#471
post #91
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.

Same here. No problem accessing it. I am a Telekom customer using IPv6.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#472
post #313

To put things into perspective, the plaintiffs lawyers, Waldorf Frommer, are known for shady tactics. They have built an industry of putting immense pressure on private people. They don't shy away from lawsuits because they are cheap for them and menacing for the people. They don't always win, but under the line it is a very profitable business for them; they employ about 60 lawyers. The public broadcast made documen…

Do you have the titles of the documentaries? I didn't find any. Search engines just deliver tons of links of lawyers offering their services.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#473
post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bel…

You're giving an ethical reason, but I'm more interested in the actual consequences of a US entity ignoring a German court ruling. I'm not sure what teeth this court actually has with regard to American citizens.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#474
post #313

To put things into perspective, the plaintiffs lawyers, Waldorf Frommer, are known for shady tactics. They have built an industry of putting immense pressure on private people. They don't shy away from lawsuits because they are cheap for them and menacing for the people. They don't always win, but under the line it is a very profitable business for them; they employ about 60 lawyers. The public broadcast made documen…

ubiyubix, your comment is dead.

To answer your question, I don't remember which documentaries were good, but searching on YouTube with subsets of the relevant keyword set {abmahnung, abzocke, Waldorf frommer, doku} will give you multiple results.

Just to give one example, I'll name https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w7t4znx8DA

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#475
post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Q and A contradicts this. >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.

According to the ruling, the CEO wouldn't be liable personally unless the violation is willful. Which, having been adjudicated in German court, it now would be. If the CEO becomes personally liable then found in contempt, he would have to avoid travel to Germany. That's a lot to ask of a volunteer.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#476
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree - it's not at all clear. Most people reading the statement would assume that the book they were trying to access was among the 'certain items' blocked by the court.

I'm currently in Germany. The notice appears when trying to access any part of the catalog, even the search. Thus, I don't think this is an issue.

It also appears for the URL they give in the FAQ for donations :-(

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#477
post #300
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! Thanks for the service you do for others by mirroring this content - what's involved with being a mirror? I'm not sure if it's something I have the means or skills to do, but Project Gutenberg (and information projects like it) are the key part of the internet — the parts that deserve to be reserved and accessed freely by all. I'd love to see if there's anything I could do to help out!

It’s very easy. I host official mirrors for a bunch of open source projects at https://mirrors.sorengard.com . You set up Apache on a web server you control, configure virtual host settings in the Apache config files, then put your files to be hosted in something like /var/www/ and point Apache to it. Then set up Rsync by running the rsync daemon and setting an /etc/rsyncd.conf file that configures where the files ar…

You mirror sage, but your site still links to sage.org, which seems to be defunct AFAICT, current is http://www.sagemath.org

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is answered in the FAQ at the bottom of the article. Essentially because this sets a precedent that Germany believes it can sue over anything in the german language and other items in the library might potentially cause the same kind of lawsuit it's better to just block everything instead.

> Germany believes it can sue over anything in the german language You did not read the ruling (carefully). The language of the books was not discussed at all. It was discussed whether the offer (to download books) is directed to people in Germany. Project Gutenberg said "NO", because they use a .org domain. (Obviously trying to claim that Germans only visit .de domains and neglecting the fact that .org is really try…

As you surmise, I have not read the ruling. I was basing my understanding from the following in the article:

> Q: Why didn't Project Gutenberg block access until the Court made its judgement?

> A: PGLAF's legal advisors disagree that any foreign Court or entity has jurisdiction over its actions regarding copyright. The Court in Germany has promoted a theory that it has jurisdiction, mainly because the www.gutenberg.org site has some content in the German language. ...

> Q: So the court thinks that the presence of content in German means that courts in Germany have jurisdiction, regardless of the fact that PGLAF is entirely in the US?

> A: Yes, that was the original basis of the claim for jurisdiction, which the Court accepted in their judgement. Since then, there some more recent decisions in the European Court of Justice, and other German courts, that support this theory based on a Web site being accessible from a country. I.e., if a Web site is accessible from Germany, there are some cases where German courts claimed jurisdiction over that site, even though it was operated, and based, outside of Germany. These cases involve companies that actually operate (for-profit) in Europe, and the cases were between two European countries (i.e. part of the EU). They are not consistent with prior laws and cases, even in Europe, and also not consistent with provisions of the Berne Convention and other international law.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The "ignore the lawsuit" is the important part. No one forced them to enter the lawsuit in Germany.
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