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Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

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Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#491

Post by jhasse »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #447
jhasse wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with allowing plaintiffs or prosecutors to play this game is that they can take the list of everything you've ever done, ignore everything that makes what they're trying to prove less likely and present only the list of things that make it more likely. If you look only at that evidence then each piece of it increases the probability that you believe what they want you to believe, regardless of whether i…

> Isn't there a defence? There is, but it's a resource battle. Governments and large corporations can spend a hundred times more hours on something than regular individuals and small nonprofits. If they both had the same resources there might be a 90% chance the defendant wins, but create a large enough resource asymmetry and it flips the other way. This is one of the main reasons for the "beyond a reasonable doubt"…

I see, thanks for the explanation.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#492

Post by detuur »

stordoff wrote: post #396
detuur wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're misinterpreting it. The courts mean that this is an implicit acknowledgement that the contents featured on the Gutenberg website isn't necessarily legal everywhere in the world, and that local laws may apply. If this website was aimed solely at Americans, this notice would be moot. It's like a Russian child pornography site warning that American members might be investigated by the FBI. If it didn't ca…

It's a reminder to _users_; the implication is that whilst there is no legal impediment to them hosting the files, a user accessing them make violate local laws. It's an acknowledgement that PG cannot know the laws of every jurisdiction as they apply to every user - I'm not sure how it could be seen as suggesting those laws directly bind PG. Likewise in your example, merely warning user _shouldn't_ make the operators…

I'm not claiming that just the disclaimer is sufficient to establish jurisdiction. Far from. But courts have a tendency to attempt to take every little detail into regard, even if it weighs very lightly in the presence of other arguments. In this case, having German language options and German volunteer staff is to me, personally, enough reason to state that the website is targeting Germans and that this requires compliance with German laws. If it weren't, it would be too easy to skirt jurisdiction and violate all kinds of laws.

While this, indeed, does mean you have to comply with the local laws of every possible jurisdiction, that's exactly what's happening today. Sometimes it's easier to comply (like Youtube blocking videos in Turkey), sometimes it's easier to pull out (like Google pulling out of China), and sometimes you just really don't care and let them do whatever they want (get yourself blocked like Facebook in many banana republics). It all boils down to how much effort you want to put in. Filtering certain content on your site can quickly prove laborious, as opposed to the trivial effort of just instituting a blanket IP ban as a response to takedown requests.

If you don't heed foreign courts, you're just asking for trouble. You might be out of their jurisdiction today but get into hot water when you ever travel there. You can't have your cake and eat it too, just like you can't make content available to citizens of a foreign jurisdiction without complying to their laws.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#493

Post by caf »

abalone wrote: post #397
gowld wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PG decided they don't have time to deal with Germany's BS, so they implemented the simplest solution guaranteed to work.

More like retaliated to make a point. For comparison, if they faced a U.S. publisher demand to block some books that were in violation, and in response they blocked all of the U.S., it would be misleading to suggest this was merely the "simplest solution".

That would only be the case if they thought the 18 books would be the end of the matter.

Quite obviously, it would not, so blocking all of Germany is the correct move to prevent any future cases under the same legal theories.

They don't want to be under German jurisdiction; the German court has said that serving users in Germany puts them under German jurisdiction; therefore they are no longer serving users in Germany. This seems like it should satisfy everyone concerned.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#494

Post by caf »

Xylakant wrote: post #140
2ion wrote: post #137

Fabulous :S The second time in 6 months German courts violated the public interest and ruled in favour of vested corporate intrests with an affect on me: * In late 2017, a useless commercial weather forecast outlet (aggregating its data itself from national institutations!) sued the German National Weather service into having to take down its free weather app from the Apple and Goole app stores (development and opera…

> In early 2018, the courts lock out the public from a vast aggregate of literature in the public domain. The court decided that 18 titles should not be available. Locking you out completely was project Gutenberg’s decision. I don’t support either court decision, but let’s still keep the facts straight.

These 18 titles were the canary in the coal mine showing that under current German law, it is infeasible to operate a Project Gutenberg-like service accessible in Germany.

The lock-out is just the natural result of that.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#495

Post by detuur »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #278
detuur wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 f…

Covert operations are by definition extra-judicial. They knowingly break laws and international agreements and rely on diplomacy to take care of it later. That's not what's happening with offensive action against criminal sites. If you run a gambling website on a local server without a proper permit in many countries, you'll get sued first. If you don't take down the website when a judge orders you to, police will try to move on to confiscating the server (with a warrant) and/or blocking access (with a warrant). If you evade those measures, eventually computer crime units will move on to hacking into your server (with a warrant) to locate and disable it. It's simple enforcement of the law. Hacking is an extreme measure, but not extra-judicial. Even when servers are abroad and regular confiscation isn't an option, often local law enforcement will seize servers on behalf of foreign jurisdiction. Only when local police is unwilling to cooperate will hacking be used. And it's used all the time, with the appropriate warrants and within the bounds of law. Don't conflate this with NSA hacking which is very extra-judicial and most definitely illegal.

The notion of "voluntary protection" is ridiculous. "Here, citizen, use this app to be warned when you're entering areas with drug violence. Now you're protected." Law enforcement isn't only supposed to protect citizens, but also to combat criminality. Many materials are treated very differently whether you're a consumer or distributor. If criminals run an illegal gambling website, drug trading website, revenge porn website, or any other illegal website you might think of, then even under your narrow interpretation of jurisdiction it would be law enforcement's duty to shut down that website's access nationwide, and not rely on some sort of bullshit voluntary protection.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#496

Post by qwerty456127 »

lucb1e wrote: post #406
qwerty456127 wrote: post #156

This is adorable. I wish other sites like YouTube, GitHub, Wikipedia etc would also refuse to remove something or block something in particular for particular country.

(1) This is not adorable. (2) I feel this is similar to "first they came for the socialists"[1] idea: your country could be next to be blocked access from Github, Youtube or Wikipedia. It's a ridiculous idea that everyone should do this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_.. .

I would absolutely prefer my country to try blocking access to Github, Youtube or Wikipedia rather than Github/Youtube/Wikipedia to block particular content for it on its demand. In fact I would bypass the block anyway so it doesn't really matter practically but it matters a lot from the political point of view.

The governments/institutions demanding web sites to prevent their citizens from accessing particular content are modern day legal terrorists and tyrants and nobody should ever agree to negotiate such things with them nor volunteer to participate in oppressing their citizens.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#497

Post by asterius »

gpvos wrote: post #356
gsich wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest solution would have been to do nothing.

That would be risky for the people running Project Gutenberg, since Germany and the US have extradition treaties.

Unlikely to be extradited for an extra-territorial claim. But the members of the executive and the board might not want to strike Germany from their list of travel destinations forever.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#498

Post by ashelmire »

Mindwipe wrote: post #377
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…

This is the case, and has always been the case. It is pretty common for people to sue international publications for libel in the UK under UK libel laws on the basis that the site has British readers. The US decided to unilaterally breach it's treaty provisions on that front and doesn't enforce British libel judgements (you may think this is a good thing, but that is what actually happened), but notably if you ever v…

Most of our websites violate Chinese law. Do you think we'll ever be held liable? No, of course not.

All websites are, by the nature of the internet, international. But it is not really feasible for them to be held to any legal standard but those where they have servers, are incorporated, or do business.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#499

Post by UncleEntity »

_Microft wrote: post #484
CO-VAX wrote: post #41

I just donated $100 to PGLAF because they are fighting the good fight. Their donation page [0] includes "Think of this as a contribution to your grandchildren." However in this instance I think of it as a contribution against publishers (ab)using the justice system much like so-called patent trolls. > Q: The plaintiff is S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH. Is that the international conglomerate? > A: Yes, it is part of a family…

> However in this instance I think of it as a contribution against publishers (ab)using the justice system Enforcing that Project Gutenberg actually respects german copyright law when offering service to german users is abusing the justice system? That's a surprising interpretation of these events, in my opinion.

> Enforcing that Project Gutenberg actually respects german copyright law when offering service to german users is abusing the justice system? That's a surprising interpretation of these events, in my opinion.

Being a US entity acting 100% legally under US law with no physical presence in Germany but somehow being required to comply with German laws seems a bit abusive to me, in my opinion.

Next time I go trolling because I have karma to burn I suppose I'll have to answer to German hate-speech laws?

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#500

Post by CO-VAX »

_Microft wrote: post #484
CO-VAX wrote: post #41

I just donated $100 to PGLAF because they are fighting the good fight. Their donation page [0] includes "Think of this as a contribution to your grandchildren." However in this instance I think of it as a contribution against publishers (ab)using the justice system much like so-called patent trolls. > Q: The plaintiff is S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH. Is that the international conglomerate? > A: Yes, it is part of a family…

> However in this instance I think of it as a contribution against publishers (ab)using the justice system Enforcing that Project Gutenberg actually respects german copyright law when offering service to german users is abusing the justice system? That's a surprising interpretation of these events, in my opinion.

The "publishers" I was implicitly referring to was the plaintiff.
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