Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany • Hacker News Board

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#501

Post by adrianratnapala » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 2:51 AM UTC

__david__ wrote: post #473

GlobalFrog wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No one really wants to antagonize the court system of another country for ever, so this gives the German courts some teeth. In this case Project Gutenberg is saying they are complying because they want an appeal and that the courts would look unfavourably on them if they just ignored the original order.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#502

Post by gluejar » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:01 AM UTC

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#503

Post by wnoise » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:06 AM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #480

withoutmalice wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ignoring a lawsuit doesn't make the lawsuit go away, it means a default judgement.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#504

Post by toyg » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:20 AM UTC

detuur wrote: post #490

toyg wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ah I see. Still, your statement that extensive lobbying has won is pretty much a blanket statement for any contentious legislation. Both sides will extensively lobby and whichever side wins will be able to attribute it to lobbying. In GMOs case, it appears that the traditional lobbyists (the corporate lobbyists) have actually lost in the EU. GMOs are subject to dumb shit like mandatory labelling which only reinforces…

> Both sides will extensively lobby

Absolutely, but often one side will not have industrial interests in play. I'm not intimate with the OGM situation, but the mainstream perception was that this is one of those cases where there is a difference in budgets, let's say.

> it appears that the traditional lobbyists (the corporate lobbyists) have actually lost

They had lost, and comprehensively, when the blanket ban was introduced. But they've since won by reversing it. If the situation actually were to be crystallized now, it would be a victory for pro-OGM interests and their lobbyists.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#505

Post by PhasmaFelis » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:31 AM UTC

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".

You're getting downvoted because it sounds like you're defending the plaintiffs, but you're essentially right. They could have minimized disruption to German users by removing the affected books and committing to remove other books upon request. They instead chose to respond in a very broad way that will draw a lot of attention.

Which, I want to be clear, is a good thing. PG is absolutely in the right here, and this response is well-calculated to raise awareness and put their attackers in the spotlight.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#506

Post by squiggleblaz » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:34 AM UTC

robjwells wrote: post #111

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…

> 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.

I disagree. The way we're going, the internet will be just like traditional trade. There will be ports and customs to bring things into your country, and if you want to host a site you'd only assume you're hosting it in your country.

It would be the death of the internet (are national internets still the internet? maybe some countries will remain relatively open), but the process began a long time ago.

It is caused by local interests who can control parliaments and courts, it is caused by national security interests and censorship requirements.

The fracturing of the internet. I wouldn't've guessed it would happen when I first logged in to slashdot many years ago, but I don't see it getting stopped.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#507

Post by smsm42 » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:55 AM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #400

smsm42 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 best way to not have a German court decision would have been not to ask for one.

PGLAF didn't.

> They could have easily avoided the whole situation if they just ignored the lawsuit brought against them in Germany.

That would not have avoided having court decision - that would just lead to the decision be by default, without their argument even being heard and without the court exposing the flimsy base on which the decision stands. They'd have lost not because the argument is bad but because they didn't show up. And you can't appeal not showing up.

> They are fighting in a German court, even if they could have avoided it, because they would prefer not to have a German court decision? That doesn't make any sense.

I am not sure what gives you trouble here. Imagine you are wrongfully arrested. You would then probably go to court and demand your being released, and compensated, even if you would prefer - and would vigorously claim - that the entire arrest is unlawful and you shouldn't even be here at the first place. Same here.

> The way to avoid embarrassment on all sides would have been to ignore the lawsuit

Ignoring court decisions rarely works that well, especially in modern globalized world.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#508

Post by smsm42 » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:58 AM UTC

deanmen wrote: post #296

smsm42 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where German language websites advertising in German, to Germans, accepting Euros, and shipping to German addresses, is somehow not considered to be "doing business" in Germany simply because their offices and servers happen to be hosted in the US You're saying it like it's a bad thing. If US has better laws than Germany and businesses serving Germans want to choose that jurisdiction because of it, it's "competitio…

You have to pay U.S. taxes on worldwide income. The U.S. is the only country that does this, though.

That is indeed a defect of US system, and one that people should account for when they make their choices. I wish US stopped doing that (especially that the tax treaties in many cases lead to the fact that US doesn't even see any money anyway, it just produces tons of paperwork for expats).

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#509

Post by thomastjeffery » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:49 AM UTC

briandear wrote: post #444

wolco wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't buy but pirate and share. Let's not block information only payment.

So the authors should work for free? That’s theft.

No matter how much propaganda has told you otherwise, copyright violation is not theft.

Theft involves a physical loss by the victim. After a theft, the victim no longer has the stolen property. Would you consider it theft if someone looked at your car, and built an exact copy 1,000 miles away? Of course not! You still have your car.

Re: Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany

#510

Post by thomastjeffery » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:50 AM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #286

teamhappy wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Unfortunately, a significant portion of their business is in public education, where that isn't seen as an option.