Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
cand.pglaf.org
cand.pglaf.org
> Q: The plaintiff is S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH. Is that the international conglomerate?
> A: Yes, it is part of a family of companies all under single ownership and control or majority stakeholdership, from Germany, reaching around the world. S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH is a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg Holtzbrinck GmbH. Internationally it is known in the US and elsewhere as Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC. Readers in the US know this as Macmillan, which is one of the largest publishers in the US by revenue, and owns many familiar imprints. US readers might also recall that Macmillan was one of four companies accused by the US Dept. of Justice in 2012 of price fixing. The companies eventually settled the antitrust claims, including by giving credits to customers who had overpaid for eBooks.
[0] https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Project_Gutenberg_N...
They are mostly lawyers fighting strategic court battles in one of the cheapest country to do so, which in Europe happens to be Germany. This is a cost-effective way to further the cause of human and freedom rights.
If you are upset about
* excessive surveillance
* anti-whistleblower laws
* laws against freedom of information
then consider joining, they need your support to do what they do: https://freiheitsrechte.org/join/
Disclaimer: I'm not involved with the GFF except as a paying member.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Digital_Rights
https://edri.org/members/ (EFF from USA is also a member)
GFF is more German centered organization. I don't know how it relates to other German organizations like https://digitalcourage.de/ and https://digitalegesellschaft.de/
I donated to them last year, guess it's time for another one.
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?
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 this mirror doesn’t have the search capabilities of the Project Gutenberg homepage, but it at least has all the files.
Now I’m actually curious about what is going to happen with Project Gutenberg mirrors. In general, many mirror admins (such as myself) join a project’s mirror mailing list and don’t necessarily pay attention to the right announcements to learn about this kind of legal minutia. That presents something of a logistics problem all around.
Putting aside ethics, it’s likely that many/most downstream mirrors simply won’t block German traffic. Project Gutenberg can stop redirecting German traffic to those mirrors on the fly, but they can’t stop the mirrors from being available unless they start banning mirrors (and mirror syncing traffic) that don’t enforce similar blocks...this seems logistically untenable.
It would be cool if we could get a lawyer to chime in about Project Gutenberg’s liability with respect to forcing other mirrors to comply. For example, I’m making my own mirror available to Germany. Is Project Gutenberg complicit in a meaningful sense, if they allow me to continue mirroring?
Cannot confirm it, Gutenberg.org works fine for me.
Edit: tried 3 different ISPs, no issues.
Edit 2: Tried accessing books, this was blocked for 1/3.
Tried it with the HTML versions of four different books, among them "most popular" like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and A Tale of Two Cities, they all work without issue.
Edit: Individual books are blocked.
Vodafone?
We apologize for this inconvenience. Your IP address has been automatically blocked from the address you tried to visit at www.gutenberg.org. This is because the geoIP database shows your address is in the country of Germany.
Diagnostic information:
Your IP address: <redacted>
Referrer URL (if available): http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/latest-covers
Time (GMT): Saturday, 03-Mar-2018 21:19:12 GMT
Why did this block occur?
A Court in Germany ordered that access to certain items in the Project Gutenberg collection are blocked from Germany. Project Gutenberg believes the Court has no jurisdiction over the matter, but until the issue is resolved during appeal, it will comply.
For more information about the German court case, visit PGLAF's information page about the German lawsuit.
For more information about the legal advice Project Gutenberg has received concerning international issues, visit PGLAF's International Copyright Guidance for Project Gutenberg
How can I get unblocked?
All IP addresses in Germany are blocked. This block will remain in place until legal guidance changes.
If your IP address lookup is incorrect
Use the Maxmind GeoIP demo to verify status of your IP address. Project Gutenberg updates its listing of IP addresses approximately monthly.
This is really misleading. It implies -- nay, outright states -- that Gutenberg is merely complying with the court order. But the court did not order the entire site to be blocked.
A more candid answer is found in their information page:[1]
Q: Why block all of Germany, rather than just those 18 books?
A: ...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... Blocking Germany, in an effort to forestall further legal actions, seems the best way to protect the organization and retain focus on its mission.
Further lawsuits against PG for any of the other German texts could bankrupt the organization.
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 trying to stress international coverage)
The court ruled "YES" because
- Project Gutenberg explicitly mentions to be available worldwide (before the geo blocking resulting from this very case)
- Project Gutenberg has some of its Web site translated into German. (In court they argued they did that to address US users, because German is the 3rd biggest foreign language in the US. The court did not accept that argument.)
Furthermore it was counted against them that project Gutenberg advises on its web site that users must check local copyright laws before downloading, because downloading might be illegal according to local laws.
Taking these points into account I must say the court ruling was logical from a legal viewpoint. Project Gutenberg had only lame excuses and in fact denied their own mission in court.
The real issue is that incompatible country laws don't fit at all with Internet (unless you propose a Chinese big (fire)wall). But I don't see any improvements any time soon, a certain president just declared last week that trade wars are the way to go.
In the context of existing copyright laws the ruling is understandable. It's just plain nonsense to have contradicting copyright laws in the age of a global internet. And if you say that copyright should only be enforced according to the country of the distributor then you just move all contents to a country that does not enforce at all. But isn't it just the US that complains a lot about (their) IP not enforced in China or Vietnam?
> 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.
>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.
If so, then it is in violation of the treaty, which sets a minimum term for copyrights. The WIPO may adjudicate and other signatories may take action.
If not, then what you have is a national sovereignty issue. Other countries can restrict trade with the one with different laws, but they can't directly stop it from refusing to be similar to them (without a military invasion!).
This is currently the situation with things like online gambling. It's legal in some parts of the world, and in others the citizens accessing the sites may be prosecuted, but the sites themselves are usually beyond the reach of the disapproving countries - often the USA.
I should note that it is totally possible to have two countries with CONTRADICTORY laws that cannot be simultaneously satisfied. How would you deal with that situation, if all must be respected?
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".
>There are thousands of eBooks in the Project Gutenberg collection that could be subject to similar over-reaching and illigitimate actions.
>PGLAF is a small volunteer organization, with no income (it doesn't sell anything), other than donations. There is every reason to fear that this huge corporation, with the backing of the German Court, will continue to take legal action. In fact, at least one other similar complaint arrived in 2017 about different books in the Project Gutenberg collection, from another company in Germany.
I'm sure PGLAF will welcome a German spin-off that makes works available in a manner compliant with German law, they just don't have the resources to be that place.
(Oh, and so what if they retaliated? Seems like a perfectly reasonable excuse for a bit of theatrics.)
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.
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.
Access from Germany isn't the issue, having a German IP is the issue. They don't go after foreign seeders because that would be too much hassle getting the real data behind the IP (just like German law doesn't apply to them), but they hunt down seeders with German IP's with quite a vengeance.
They only go for German seeders because asking a foreign ISP for the address of someone who used a particular IP address at a particular date and time would probably get them the middle finger as a reply. In the case of PG, they know who is making the copyrighted content available in Germany, because PG has an address on their website.
And a German court said it's within their jurisdiction.
If you run a mirror with your contact information available, presumably they will contact you next.
Oh they are still around?! Someone should shut them down and jail for the mere reason of the enourmous amount of paper they waste on trolling letters.
PS: I'm surfing with (mostly) this configuration:
http://12bytes.org/tech/firefox/firefoxgecko-configuration-g...
No idea, if this might affect the outcome. IMHO, not.
Sad...
If you are using IPv6, you are still able to access it.
Yes, it works here with IPv6.
edit: Sorry: Only the frontpage isn't, search and books are ...
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 are located and who can access them.
For example, let’s say you wanted to set up a mirror for the Ubuntu Package Archive. You could do that step by step with the following resources:
1. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-inst...
2. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-...
3. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Rsyncmirror
Maybe I’ll write up a short guide and throw it up somewhere. It’s really pretty straightforward. FTP is unfortunately trickier than HTTP and Rsync, but vsftpd removes a lot of the warts.
Please e careful with your mirror. You are now susceptible to the same lawsuit as the original Project Gutenberg. I am not sure where you are in the world, but Germany has legal assistance treaties with the US/UK/Scandanavia, all EEC and Schengen countries.
https://www.congress.gov/treaty-document/108th-congress/27/d... https://www.mlat.info/mlat-index
BTW, you may want to make sure you aren't keeping logs including traffic sources' IP addresses.
And yes german copyright laws are a fucking joke.
Fixed that for you :-)
Early in the last decade, judges ruled that this basically never applies to anything internet, with the result that the entire copyright law is applicable. That would not be a big problem, except the entire law is written with the idea that both parties have already lawyers on staff. One example is the "Abmahnung," the way copy right disputes are meant to be resolved is, the lawyer of anybody who believes their copy right to be infringed sends a letter that tells the other guy to stop that, pay damages and sign a contract to never do that again. The escalation of that is, when you receive such a letter, then you sue against the "Abmahnung" and the judge who hears the case also decides about the original infringement. Trouble is, you are now suing and therefore the court is wherever the people who send the "Abmahnung" in the first place reside -- not a big problem if you are an large company in the first place.
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.
Please don't spread wrong information.
If I may ask, how much disk capacity does running a Gutenberg mirror currently take?
I think that is also a good case for hosting this on ZeroNet, the internet as it should be : P2P and decentralized.
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 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...
> Why would they want to subsidize a losing bet using the profits from other divisions?
Because owning S. Fischer, Rowohlt and Droemer Knaur means owning a large chunk of the german book market.
Well, depending on the books, it may be easy to download the books online without buying them...
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.
Good question - I was wondering myself. What's stopping them from simply ignoring the ruling and walking away? It's certainly not Project Gutenberg's obligation to carry out a block ordered by a country they don't do any business in. And if anyone thinks it is, does that still apply if the court isn't a german one, but instead one from...let's say...the faroer islands? Nobody would care and I don't see why Project Gutenberg should in this case.
They can seize all assets within their reach (e.g. donations from Germans) but this would be a larger problem if the site would be a for-profit company with European customers. So the risk for the site to have the ruling actually enforced is lower than usual.
* 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 operations funded with tax payer money!) and charge a fee for it. Somehow the judges got convinced that the Service unduly competed with a third-rate commercial information service.
* In early 2018, the courts lock out the public from a vast aggregate of literature in the public domain.
I'm sure I'll have a fresh item to continue the list soon.
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.
Can't say I blame them for either reason.
It’s also a bad decision in practical and strategic terms: either they appeal the decision, then they accepted jurisdiction and the legality of the injunction or they don’t - and what options do they have then? Keep up the block indefinitely or cave in at some point, showing that against a determined adversary, they’ll eventually back down? Imho, it’s good only for internet cookie points.
Edit: OK, so some argue that Project Gutenberg, which does business from the US, and which has no physical presence in Germany, should have done what the German court ordered. But consider the implications. Firms hosting content from a particular country would be subject to court orders from every country. That would not end well.
The court only wanted some books blocked, not the entire site, because under german copyright those books are not yet public domain.
Most site blocks are on the DNS level as they aren't particularly complicated.
They already are if they target users in a given country. Lack of international enforcement just means that they might escape enforcement. See also GDPR, the US case against Mega, a company run by a NZ resident and incorporated in Hongkong IIRC. See also how Twitter blocks certain tweets in certain countries lest they’re blocked completely. Same holds true for Facebook. Google censors certain autocomplete and searches in some countries. They also adhere to the EU “right to be forgotten” regulations - despite being an US company.
In the Mega case, the US basically leveraged their Five Eyes relationship with New Zealand to have Kim Dotcom's estate semi-illegally raided in January 2012. I say semi-illegally because it was done under agreements that are normally used against terrorists. I doubt that China could get away with rendition from US soil. No more than the US could get away with rendition of Snowden from Russian soil.
So basically, which countries get to enforce their law in other countries depends on relationships and dependencies, relative military power, and support from powerful allies. Under those standards, Germany might have a chance of prevailing against Project Gutenberg in the US. Except that the US doesn't like to be pushed around.
The lock-out is just the natural result of that.
It happens that in this case the books are in US public domain but not the German, but that's more of an exception than a rule: current US and EU copyright terms are the same (life of author + 70 years). Australia on the other hand has life of author + 60 years.
The US has it because its government is coopted by big media like Disney, MPAA, and RIAA and the average American is too ignorant / doesn't care at all about the death and stifling of culture that 100+ year copyright terms bring about. Europeans seem to have more democratic governments that are more willing to represent the interests of their citizens, so why is it just as bad over there?
If you wanted to highlight established interests successfully fighting their corner in EU proceedings, you could have picked something like tax harmonisation or OGMs - fields where extensive lobbying seems to have ultimately won the day.
While yes, the contracts that companies selling GMOs utilise are socially unfair, it's not like we consider databases to be a horrific thing because Oracle licensing terms are bullshit.
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.
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 people's ill-founded fears and will inevitably poison debate going forward. After all, "why would they force labelling if it were harmless?"
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.
Conforming to these rules is necessary to join any international club.
Without agreeing to terrible copyright laws, as a country, you basically don’t exist.
Take a look at the map here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Intellectual_Property_Or...
2) EU countries have a significant skin in the creative-sector game, in a way they really don't in other segments. In tech the US are more or less dominant, most "Big Bad Corps" are American, hence it's easier to attack. As soon as big European interests are in the picture, things naturally become harder. In this case, the incriminated books are by top German authors and likely contribute a pretty penny to the publisher's bottom line.
3) do not make the mistake of assuming a humongous organism like the EU always talks with one voice. Already what we call "EU" is actually a hodgepodge of treaties and institutions (including nation-states that literally invented the various different forms of nation-statehood to mark differences with their neighbours...) that are slowly being integrated together. Then you have competing interests between nations, between institutions, between different economic and political interests, and between individuals. In this case a court ruled in a certain way following existing guidelines; but it might well happen that something else, like EuroParliament, looking for a fight at some point, will eventually pick up this sort of issue and push for change.
> Europeans seem to have more democratic governments that are more willing to represent the interests of their citizens
I wish I could share this view. Alas, things like corruption, regulatory captivity, and revolving doors, are big problems on this side of the pond too.
This is an important point that is often forgotten. People complain that the EU is too complicated, but it became that way be necessity. You couldn't have built a European federation with the same scope and less complexity.
Is there any evidence for this ? Judging by the dates of the works, this looks like it is just a shakedown and an attempt to set precedent.
Heinrich Mann was a very important figure during Weimar. Again, chances are it pops up in compulsory reads.
I honestly don't know Döblin, but looking at how his most famous book is described, he seems to be another key read about the Weimar years - again, likely compulsory at school in Germany.
Schoolbooks make a lot of money.
Also from Germany ;)
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 individual liberty while becoming hysterical about Google or Facebook. It’s illogical, Facebook isn’t going to lead to Nazism or the Stasi again — but the actual government could, yet Germans tolerate their government tracking people by religion or a government conducting mass surveillance but they lose their minds over an American social media company?
Russians and East Europeans aren’t constantly claiming “sensitivity” because of the past abuses of the KGB or NKVD despite those organizations killing vastly more people than the Nazis.
It’s hypocrisy. You can’t claim to be sensitive about a Nazi past while still tolerating the government to register people by their religion. Facebook privacy issues aren’t going to lead to Nazism; any implication of same is just nonsense.
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.
No, the US followed the EU on that one. The Berne Convention first set that policy¹ in 1886, and amongst the original signatories were multiple European countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Others followed soon after, like Luxembourg (1888), Denmark (1903), Austria and Greece (1920), Hungary (1922), Ireland (1927), Finland (1928), etc.
The US was a holdout; they kept the policy based only on date of publication, which led to a much shorter duration, and only joined Berne a century after its creation.
Which is why the books in question in this lawsuit are in the public domain in the US but not in Germany.
¹ Berne only said life + 50, but it was already life + 80 in Germany before the US ever joined. The EU then harmonized at life + 70 in Directive 93/98/EEC.
But somehow, all of Europe’s problems are because of America?
You know the Elder Race trope in sci-fi? I think we Europeans think of ourselves a bit like that. Having suffered so much in both world wars, and having since mostly stopped fighting, we see ourselves as mature. Between the 50s-80s, we also mostly embraced a style of social-democracy with strong safety nets, which made us think of ourselves as compassionate. And our ancient heritage - cities, traditions, etc - make us feel wise.
Americans are seen a bit like the ancient Greeks and Romans saw the Barbarians. We might like some of you (hell, some barbarians were made into Roman emperors!), but you are still seen as violent and dangerous; be that due to your foreign policy (Vietnam, the Balkans, Iraq) or your way of life (love of guns, poor social safety net, anti-science beliefs, etc).
But the real problem is that you are powerful, and you use that power. The previous poster might be incorrect regarding that particular policy, but their misconception comes from the fact that the US has been forcing IP treaties (e.g. ACTA) on other countries. And it's not just those treaties, it's your products and even your culture. You mentioned Coca-Cola. You know how that used to be called in my country, especially during the more left-wing days of the late 70s? The "dirty water of imperialism". The fear of being Americanized exists - and it's not unreasonable.
But you should also know that the US is not seen as the source of all evils, that's probably just what reaches you. There's plenty of internal strife. In my country, during the crisis, the enemies were Merkel and Schaeuble, for example.
Germany has many powerful media/publishing companies as well, and most people don't care. It's really a very similar situation.
The Hacker News contention that the US exports it's copyright policy flat out isn't true really. The EU has always had very similar beliefs on the value of strong, long term copyright.
Uh... you do realize the EU had them first?
The public broadcast made documentaries about their cease-and-desist-industry against private people. Even the German Bundestag changed multiple times the law to stop that madness, but it took many years because the christian party opposed effective changes. Now, even though the law has changed on the 13th October 2017, they continue to pressure people into paying.
Some courts are heavily in favour of them, most notably the Amtsgericht München. This makes the situation even worse for people who cannot afford to appeal a judgement even though they are convinced they are not guilty, because the financial risk is too high. I would not be surprised if the judgement in this case gets overthrown in a higher court.
The defendants german lawyers, WILDE BEUGER SOLMECKE, are known for legal defense against Waldorf Frommer. Personally, I don't trust them completely because they offer an all-inclusive legal defense package that is conveniently priced at 2/3 of the value Waldorf Frommer asks for. This industry is a huge employment scheme for lawyers.
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
S. Fischer Verlag
O.W. Barth
Wolfgang Krüger
Argon Verlag (de)
Scherz Verlag (de)
Fretz & Wasmuth
Rowohlt Verlag
Kiepenheuer & Witsch
Verlagsgruppe Droemer Knaur
Die Zeit
Macmillan
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Faber & Faber
Henry Holt and Company
Holt Paperbacks
Metropolitan Books
Times Books
Owl Books
Palgrave Macmillan
Picador
Roaring Brook Press
Neal Porter Books
First Second Books
St. Martin's Press
Tom Doherty Associates
Tor Books
Forge Books
Bedford, Freeman and Worth Publishing Group
W.H. Freeman
Bedford-St. Martin's
Worth Publishers
Hayden-McNeil
Nature Publishing Group
Scientific American
Audio Renaissance
Renaissance Media
Macmillan Publishers
Palgrave Macmillan
Pan Macmillan
Macmillan
Pan Books
Picador
Macmillan Children's Books
Campbell Books
Priddy Books
Boxtree
Sidgwick & Jackson
Nature Publishing Group
Macmillan EducationIt’s a hard decision as the internet is global and I don’t have a real solution, but I don’t think taking US (or any other) law as „the valid law on the Internet“ is helpful.
German companies operating in the US need to respect US law. As the article noted:
"Q: Why did this all take place in the German Court system, rather than the US - where Plaintiff does business as Macmillan, and PGLAF is based?
A: The legal guidance PGLAF received is that US law requires that such proceedings would have taken place in the US, and in fact any attempts at enforcement of the judgement would need to occur in the US Court system. PGLAF already informed Plaintiff and the German Court that the US Court system is the appropriate venue for Plaintiff's concerns. Plaintiff declined."
Also, German courts need to respect international law and treaties. As the article noted:
"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.
International treaties explicitly and unambiguously support PGLAF's legal guidance as described above: that the copyright status in one country is not impacted or enforceable or otherwise relevant in other countries. Plaintiff managed to find a German Court, and some precedents from Germany (and, after the lawsuit was filed, from the EU), which were willing to flaunt international treaties by developing a theory that PGLAF is under jurisdiction of the German Court system."
In addition, EU copyright harmonisation means that the publisher would succeed in this case in every country in the EU (or just getting the judgement from the German court carried up to the European court). Will PGLAF block the entire EU when that happens?
If you publish a German book on a site with parts of it written in German either you will get problems with German copyright or the person downloading the content. Both solutions are problematic but only the former can be effective so this is what courts will decide in those cases. BTW I'm currently studying law in Germany and this is a lower local court and there will be a new trial at the Oberlandesgericht. Because of the importance of the case it would also be quite possible that a federal court will take a look at it in the end, so this is far from over.
Are you comfortable having United States laws apply to you because you are using a "United States web site" in English? (Actually, the latter doesn't matter; the US doesn't have an official language.)
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 the site is hosted in the US.
This is distinct from, say, a company explicitly providing a service to customers in a particular country (cf GDPR).
And, to counter your point with an extreme example, it would mean that no-one is ever able to criticise the Thai monarch on any website in the world lest they be jailed under Thailand’s lèse majesté laws.
It’s one thing to say that an in-country website respect that country’s laws, it’s another entirely to say that any website hosted anywhere in the world must respect that country’s laws.
And I think you’re right to do so!
Honestly, regarding the whole case, I think the court has erred in accepting the publisher’s argument that Project Gutenberg is a valid target for a lawsuit in Germany.
If the publisher wants the books removed it should sue in the US, if it wants to prevent access from Germany it should seek another local remedy.
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.
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?"
If Germany's laws must be applied to a US business, then the US is prima facie not sovereign.
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: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/
3. Gutenberg was after all German and .org isn't .us
4. gutenberg.org was mentioned quite a lot in the German media
Also, let's not forget, that gutenberg.org was contacted about this in advance, multiple times.
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.
Surprisingly then, why Doitsche Welle still exists without any lawsuit from abroad.
What?
There are roughly 200 million German speakers in the world, but only 82 million residents of Germany.
1. There are plenty of German-speakers not living in Germany.
2. Is that organization somehow affiliated with project gutenberg? Or did it simply use the name, which gutenberg probably doesn't care to trademark and wouldn't have the funds to legally enforce anyway.
3. You must know that hardly anyone uses .us.
4. So all it takes to be subject to a country's courts is for that country's media to bring up your activities?
If you think those points create any sort of legal nexus in Germany, that would also imply that most activism and protest against authoritarian countries' laws should be illegal, with those responsible subject to the authoritarian regimes' legal systems. That is untenable if you have an ounce of respect for free speech or liberal values or a free internet.
Apply the reasoning to the laws of certain Middle Eastern countries. China. North Korea.
> If you think those points create any sort of legal nexus in Germany, that would also imply that most activism and protest against authoritarian countries' laws should be illegal
illegal where?
> 3. You must know that hardly anyone uses .us.
I really didn't know. .de is very common in Germany.
On the internet, where project gutenberg is located. The argument put forward, that you repeated, implies just as much that someone could be prosecuted in a Chinese court for publishing a harsh (to the point of being illegal in China) criticism of China named freexinjiang.com, at least if the site included a Chinese version. And that, since it refers specifically to a Chinese province/area, would have at least some nexus to China, whereas Project Gutenberg has zero connection to Germany.
Arguing the connection by language (the fact that German-language books of note exist to be digitized does not imply a connection to Germany the country) or Gutenberg's biography (what does the nationality of Gutenberg the historical person have to do with anything? Is shakespeare.com subject to uk laws?) is insanity.
> I really didn't know [.us isn't commonly used]
I didn't realize how this might not be intuitive to people in other countries, so...
The U.S. mostly invented / was the testbed for the internet. It's standard in the U.S., and for almost any English-language website that's not seeking to be tied to a specific country of origin, to use .com .net or .org. I get that people in countries where English isn't official or where they're targeting the country's population as visitors will prefer .cc tlds either to indicate that their site targets that country's residents, or targets people who speak that country's primary language, but .us is not at all the norm in the USA; .com .net and .org generally serve that purpose, and .us is a distant fourth [1].
But, supposing .us were the primary domain used by U.S. organizations, even if Project Gutenberg didn't use .org but instead used a generic TLD, it would still have zero to do with Germany.
[1] It's actually 6th, behind .xyz and .info, but those two probably have a higher percentage of spammy junk websites and email domains, so .us might be fourth in domains that aren't junk ecommerce advertising sites.
I still don't understand what that means exactly.
> whereas Project Gutenberg has zero connection to Germany.
I disagree.
> what does the nationality of Gutenberg the historical person have to do with anything? Is shakespeare.com subject to uk laws?
There's a lot inbetween of
zero connection with country X
and
subject to it's law.
So regarding shakesbear.com: No, not necessarily.
No, there isn't. Or are you saying Austria could have a greater claim of jurisdiction over Tesla because of its name?
Germany has no more "ownership" over the German language than England has over English.
a) anything in the German language falls under the jurisdiction of the German government, and that
b) a relationship bearing on legal jurisdiction between two otherwise completely unrelated entities can be created by otherwise unrelated third parties?
Nope:
"In order to determine whether such a controller or processor is offering goods or services to data subjects who are in the Union, it should be ascertained whether it is apparent that the controller or processor envisages offering services to data subjects in one or more Member States in the Union. (...) the mere accessibility of the controller’s, processor’s or an intermediary’s website in the Union, of an email address or of other contact details, or the use of a language generally used in the third country where the controller is established, is insufficient to ascertain such intention" (emphasis mine)
As long as German is used in the country where PG is located - and it is - then it's not enough to show that they're targeting German citizens.
b) What do you mean exactly?
You can be. A US court would be pretty reluctant to enforce it, but you can and always could.
Others are doing a fine job of taking apart the specifics, but it's important to understand why this form of argument is itself a fallacy.
Inference works by taking into account new evidence and using it to adjust the probability with which you believe something to be true. So if you see Bob wearing a red shirt, you are more likely to believe that Bob owns a red shirt. Could still be that he has borrowed it or something, but it's now more likely he owns one than it was previously. By contrast, if you go all through Bob's bedroom and find zero red shirts, that makes it less likely, even though it's still possible he owns one that isn't in his bedroom.
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 it's actually true. How guilty they can make you look is directly proportional to their level of resources in finding things that make you look bad, independent of your actual guilt.
> I really didn't know. .de is very common in Germany.
Most countries have .co.uk, .org.uk, .net.uk, etc. The US doesn't have those. US companies use .com, .org, .net, etc. regardless that they're nominally not US-specific.
Isn't there a defence? I also don't believe the court would like to find out that the prosecutor lied.
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" standard in criminal cases, but that doesn't apply to civil cases even when the plaintiff is 10,000 times the size of the defendant, and isn't enough in criminal cases where the defendant is relying on a criminally over-worked public defender and everything is greased to mass-produce guilty pleas and discourage trials.
> I also don't believe the court would like to find out that the prosecutor lied.
It isn't strictly lying, it's just not pointing out inconvenient facts.
Prosecutors can get into trouble for this when it's really damning, like not disclosing a witness who says it was somebody else, but that's separate from all the banality like the number of man hours they spent investigating you without finding anything before they could come up with what they're presenting.
The failure to protect their trademark in Germany would actually demonstrate that they are not operating in Germany.
2) So they should sue to block that one if they believe it is doing something wrong.
3) Huh? What possible difference does it make what country someone born in 1468 was born in? And, apparently it's a sad state of affairs in Germany today compared to the time of Gutenberg who actually did something to increase access to written materials.
4) So they should sue the German media for mentioning it. I'm pretty sure that the Project Gutenberg team can't stop the German media from mentioning their web site.
It's a US-based web site, with US-based staff, with no Germany-based connections or business. It's clear that it is outside the proper jurisdiction of German courts and that the only reason for reaching this decision is economically-driven corruption. The whole thing is embarrassing.
Or, you could ask every Germany-based web site to obey all the laws of every country in the world.
2. Similar projects are not the actual project in question.
3. ICANN is not a governmental agency; filing for a particular TLD is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for belonging to a particular country's jurisdiction. Being named after a 15th century German is not an argument worthy of response.
4. Popularity in a country is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for that country to have jurisdiction over an organization.
"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."
And in any case are we now assigning global trademark rights to cities / countries for names used in their jurisdiction? To give an example, Budweiser would be subject to Czech jurisdiction, since it is named after a Czech town. This is not much of an argument.
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.
thus, courts must be able to ask for what they did in the case of gutenberg.
by the way i dont see the big problem, except if the fines were big (maybe they were like only 200 usd)
A website would need to comply with German laws iff they have operations in Germany.
In what ways do you think the GDPR is distinct from the laws in the present case? Let's say, for argument's sake, that gutenberg.org starts capturing PII about visitors and storing it without conforming to the GDPR. Do you think it would be fair for the EU to sue them and (attempt to) enforce their law? If so, why?
That‘s the duty of a state. Protect its citizens.
I think that actively soliciting personal data from people (wherever they may be) and collecting or processing it entails a higher level of responsibility. The GDPR in that situation effectively says: if you want to collect or process data on EU citizens you have to follow some rules.
I don’t believe that simply publishing a document online, for anyone who may wish to see it, has that “active character.”
However, others have pointed out that offering the Gutenberg website in a German translation is a similar act. I do think this is arguable, and this point does appear in the court ruling:
> “Apart from that, the first defendant’s website is also intended to target German users. This is supported by the fact that the website is partially in German, that the site offers German-language works, and that the first defendant explicitly strives to make the works available globally” [from the English translation]
However, going back to my point earlier, my concern is with the idea of making the website “publicly accessible in Germany.” I think there is a disconnect here between the understanding of traditional publishing (where it takes effort to publish abroad) and internet publishing (where it takes effort to prevent access from abroad).
I worry about the chilling effect of such a ruling. Should I, out of an abundance of caution, only make my blog available to readers in the UK (where I am, and where my blog is hosted)? I think it is easy to see what the effects of such a ruling could be, and (take to their logical conclusion) would have a severely detrimental effect on information exchange via the internet.
AFAICT, the GDPR consider an IP address to be PII. So collecting visitor logs or sticking an analytics script on the page -- even without asking people to sign in or otherwise identify themselves -- would fall under the purview of the GDPR. I don't think doing such things should cross the line into "active character".
It's also a terrible idea to infer intent from offering translations in other languages. As another comment pointed out (I presume correctly) there are more German speakers outside Germany than there are within its borders. Why should trying to improve the accessibility of a web site by people around the world make one susceptible to the laws of a language's native country?
As you say, the implied end state is the real problem: do I now need to learn about the relevant laws of every country whose residents (or even citizens?) might visit my web site? That's regulation without representation, and should be resisted on principle IMHO. Or will every site need a standard disclaimer that it's only intended for residents of X?
Perhaps some creative lawyer will figure out how to add a clause to Terms of Use that shifts responsibility for damages incurred by exposure to extraterritorial laws to the offending (offended?) user, and we can have a detente through mutually assured destruction of dueling lawsuits. :)
And just to preempt any criticism from the European peanut gallery, I'm in favor of stronger privacy protections on the Internet but they need to be worked out and agreed on globally, not imposed unilaterally by claiming extraterritorial jurisdiction.
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 visit the UK as an American publisher you're still liable...
Perhaps my original comment was too simplistic; it is a thorny issue.
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.
I'd argue that this is part of the (unfortunate) reality of running a global project and, as commented elsewhere, the only safe option to avoid lawsuits is to pick a set of laws (US here), have lawyers for the same and .. restrict _everyone_ not under these laws to access the resource.
If you block Germany for different copyright laws, why not France? Poland? Canada? (My naive assumption is that these laws are not the same worldwide and differ in gazillion edgecases between countries, even if otherwise somewhat compatible. That assumption might be wrong of course. IANAL)
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.
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 argument that German people accessing the website from Germany are breaking German law, but that's not what the court is saying. The court is saying that because project Gutenberg hosts books in German, then Germany has the right to judge them - which is obviously bollocks, you can speak German or write in German without having anything to do with Germany, a country cannot own a language.
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.
In the beginning (like it was in this case with gutenberg.org), it isn't a court order, but just an email, asking me if I could respect their local laws.
Books becoming public domain example: In Germany it's 75 years after the author's death, in the US some amount of years after the publication. Who am I to judge which approach is "right"?
Btw: We're suffering quite a lot here in Germany because of software patents in the US.
> Which is all fine and dandy, but I still don't understand why an American company with no legal presence in Germany should obey rulings of the German court.
Don't you consider a website in German, accessible from Germany, which looks totally legal for most Germans as some kind of legal presence in Germany?
No.
The site is created in some set of locations, and is hosted on servers in some set of locations. If none of those locations is in Germany, Germany has no personal jurisdiction.
(At least under US law, which is what counts when it comes to enforcing judgement against someone in the US.)
The site is obly blocked in Germany.
Remember, this means that the FBI has no right to even investigate the persons involved in it. No jurisdiction means no investigation.
If a country doesn't like my site, they're free to block it themselves instead of compelling me to.
Just because they'd get slaughtered in a revolt and don't have the ability to overthrow the king, doesn't mean that they have consented to the actions of the unelected people ruling over them.
"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:..."
No, they don’t, and shouldn’t.
I’m free to offend the sensibilities of China, disgrace the Ayatollah, and violate a wide variety of other “local laws” from the comfort of my home or workplace.
If those places don’t like it, they’re also free to censor content until such time that their populace won’t tolerate it any longer.
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 to stop doing something that is legal in Israel?
(Both of these are hypothetical, I don't know if there are such laws.)
If I have no business in a country (or pseudo country like EU) they should have no jurisdiction over me. I shouldn't have to comply with every crazy authoritarian, free speech suppressing, restricted use country in the world.
If countries want to prosecute their own citizens for visiting my site, consuming my content, or using my software, that is their business.
Now if I do business in that country... that is different, then they might have some legal jurisdiction over me.
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?
Why would residents of the permissive country comply with a foreign court order?
Opens the door for censorship.
> they can try to punish their own residents for viewing it.
Impossible without more surveillance
> Why would residents of the permissive country comply with a foreign court order?
Let's say you want to travel to the country at some point in the future.
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 offensive action. It gives legal ground to investigate the involved persons, it gives permission to hack the website, it gives permission to hijack it and replace it by honeypots. It gives the weapons to not just temporarily silence criminals, but to destroy their enterprise and bring them to justice.
Remote jurisdiction is the base of modern countermeasures against websites and servers involved in drugs, child pornography, terrorism, and human trafficking. 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.
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 free open source scanning software and allow your citizens to voluntarily use it if they want to be "protected" from such things.
Unless your citizens are the perpetrators rather than the victims, but in that case you haven't got a jurisdictional problem.
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.
Might want to take that up the the military judges who make decisions about them all the time.
They're extra-judicial in the target countries, but so is what you want to do.
> It's simple enforcement of the law.
It's law enforcement taking action in a foreign country without that country's permission. In violation of their laws.
You're saying it's OK for the US to hack a gambling site hosted in a foreign country because it's illegal in the US. How does that not justify China hacking a pro-democracy website hosted in the US because it's illegal in China?
> "Here, citizen, use this app to be warned when you're entering areas with drug violence. Now you're protected."
The US State Department does exactly that when the area of drug violence is in another country. What are they supposed to do? Invade?
> 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.
People have been placing illegal bets by mail since the invention of mail. That has never justified the government in reading everybody's mail, much less bombing Ireland after their local law enforcement doesn't put a stop to it.
Yes.
> If you're in a country where doxxing is legal, should the victims not be able to do anything against it?
No.
No, they could try to convince the country to change it laws. Maybe if they think the issue is important enough blockade the country. Maybe even with help of other countries that have the same idea about the problem. But they can't prosecute a citizen of that country for doing anything legal in that country. It's possible to try to change the other countries laws using diplomacy.
Other countries can ban their citizens from accessing the child porn. They cannot ban a citizen of another country from hosting said porn if it's legal there.
This is obvious. Whether it's about porn, dissident political opinions or my cooking blog makes no difference.
Repeat after me: your country has no right to order citizens of other countries who live outside of your country to do anything. And vice versa, of course.
On a more personal note, here - a bit east from you - there was a time when your government could order people around, and it did. We don't want to repeat that, which is what you're calling for. There's a lot of blood behind some countries becoming independent. Show some respect for that.
That some countries could use their independence to allow child porn is unfortunate. I still won't support invading them over it. You need to realize that you're arguing for just that - infringing their independence - just without the tanks entering the picture (for now). Honestly, stop that. There are still people alive who remember the last time your folks did that. At the very least, let those people die out before doing it again.
That's not what's happening though, gutenberg.org was only ordered to make the 18 books not accessible from German IPs. No one talked about a hosting ban.
If you do try, it's a straight path to extraordinary renditions, drone strikes, assassinations and other such joyous things. I'm not saying that it has to lead to this, but it could, it did in the past, and we've instituted a rule to prevent that. Please, honor the rules we've all agreed upon!
Now, back to the issue in question. If you put a site on the Internet, you're by default giving access to it to everyone - you need to put some effort into it to make filtering traffic possible. It doesn't matter how much effort is needed - just that you have to do something.
This court order tries to compel PG to do that "something". It doesn't matter, at all, how many books are involved. It doesn't matter that it's "just for German IPs". It doesn't matter how easy it is to implement. What's important is that the court tries to compel citizens of another country to do something. No matter how small it is, it's simply wrong. It shouldn't happen!
The court could force ISPs in its country to filter traffic so that you can't access those books. It could make filtering these books to be hardcoded in home routers and public access points. It could, for all I care, ban the Internet in its entirety - inside your country. It cannot, and should not even try, to force PG to do anything.
Now, there are exceptions to everything, established precedents, international agreements - I'm not a lawyer, I don't know if there's a legal argument which would allow the interference in other country affairs in this case. What I'm saying is that such interference, as a rule, is not allowed, supporting it should be viewed with suspicion and every argument presented should be very carefully scrutinized and verified.
Again, as a rule, you don't force foreigners who never set foot on your soil to do anything. Infringing on another country sovereignty is simply a no-go (unless you have a lot of nukes, apparently, but I digress). Why is it hard to understand?
Could you elaborate?
Why should the internet be any different?
Countries generally find enforcing their laws against entities with nothing inside their borders at all a bit more hassle than it's worth, but it has never, ever been the case that they can't.
Do you feel that laws on web site content passed in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran or Vietnam should apply to web sites created or operated by you or posts made by you on line? Would you expect yourself and other global posters and journalists to be bound, for example, by Thailand’s Lese Majeste laws on criticism or comment related to their king?
That doesn't make them subject to the laws of every country. Most legal systems do not accept the standard the German court used and require a more significant physical, legal or economic connection to a country before a website may be subject to its laws.
PGLAF appears to be complying because it wants to win an appeal in German court, which might be compromised by ignoring the ruling of a lower German court. If PGLAF decided to ignore the ruling, there would likely be no consequences.
That's not to mention the countless expats/second language speakers around the world.
Having a German language version of your website/product is by no means equivalent to being subject to the jurisdiction of Germany the country.
Never said that.
In this case the legal situation seems clear. The case is about several books written by Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann and Alfred Döblin, who died less than 70 years ago, and all their works are still in copyright in Germany. However, copyright law in the US is more complex, and their works published before 1923 are public domain there.
Project Gutenberg has every right to publish these works from a web server located in the United States. If Germany doesn't like it, it can order that Gutenberg's website be blocked, like is already done with sites like The Pirate Bay in many countries, and with many other sites in restrictive countries like China.
"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 has not ordered the site blocked, but the texts in question taken down.
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.
If a country doesn't like what a website provides they are free to block it at the border, just like with physical goods.
What does "local laws" mean? Laws local to me and the website I run? Sure.
Laws local to someone in the world (aka laws non-local to me)? No I'm not going to obey Chinese laws.
No. A website doesn’t really exist unless a person visits it. It’s up to the user to respect local laws. If certain content is illegal somewhere, that’s not the fault of the website. The website isn’t in the country of concern. Why is it there problem? It’s up to the user to choose if they want to break local laws by consuming “illegal” content.
If I start a phone sex number in the Cayman Islands and such phone systems are illegal to use in Germany, then why is it my problem? I am not forcing people to call, nor why should I care where a call comes from. The end user is the one violating the law by calling my service. It isn’t like I am broadcasting.
Same concept. A website is no different than a phone number.
S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH is part of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group since 1963 [0].
Macmillan Publishers Ltd is wholly owned by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group since 1999 [1]
Basically a sister company of Macmillan which may (or may not) be hit with the negative publicity fallout in the more than 70 countries it operates in...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._Fischer_Verlag [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macmillan_Publishers
It is only mentioned in the plaintiff's complaint though, not in the reasoning by the court.
It might be slightly dishonest, but it's at least pointing the user in the direction of the actual culprit. Imho this is a valid approach because it creates awareness for a problem that the vast majority of people are never really aware of.
So yeah, while the language issue is only part of the judicial reasoning, is is indeed mentioned three times in the judicial conclusions. The court does not however appear to adopt plaintiff's theory on jurisdiction because some of the volunteers were German.
As such, I'm inclined to think that while the focus on the language issue is perhaps a bit overstated in their statement, it is definitely grounded in the opinion of the court.
As an aside though, I'm not convinced the court spent too much time considering the jurisdictional arguments here, which I think are probably the most important part of this case. Most of the analysis is concerned with whether the publisher plausibly alleged they own the copyright. I assume that is because that is usually the primary point of contention in copyright cases.
Not completely nuts, but definitely an overreach.
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 "competition", not a "loophole". Otherwise another "loophole" we could find is that some Germans, seeking lower taxes and high standards of living, and more beneficial laws, may just move to US altogether, thus depriving German state of much needed tax income and stopping being subjects to German laws. We wouldn't want them to plug that "loophole", do we?
The US doesn't enforce those judgements any more, but the UK still holds the principle.
How perverse. If you extrapolate this, any web site warning anybody about anything could be seen as endorsing that activity. "Child pornography is illegal and not supported by this web site" becomes "You knew there were child pornographers accessing your web site and this is proof you were aiding and abetting child pornography".
It's like a Russian child pornography site warning that American members might be investigated by the FBI. If it didn't care about American members, it wouldn't put out such notice.
Likewise in your example, merely warning user _shouldn't_ make the operators subject to a foreign court. Said court would be able to seize equipment in its jurisdiction, pursue local users, compel payment processors not to do business with them etc., but a site operating legally wholly within its home jurisdiction (i.e. location of staff/business/servers etc.) shouldn't be subject to an overseas court merely because it is accessible from that location. It seems almost untenable that a site could comply with the local laws of every possible jurisdiction that may access the site.
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.
They don't get jurisdiction instead of Austria; the court rules it had jurisdiction to hear the claim brought before it, not that Austrian courts would lack such jurisdiction.
Jurisdiction is very often not exclusive.
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 1 billion people who own a Bible or other old text without paying license fees, and collecting all the money in the world?
So, similarly of how nothing stopped the BS Copyright Term Extension Act itself -- and firms are policing and collecting money all around the world based on it?
Generally speaking: Nothing. Practically speaking: Impossibility to enforce unless you’re a major power. Look how american laws often get enforced world wide while North Korean law doesn’t practically matter.
Honestly, laws have always been enforced internationally, that’s why extradition treaties exist. The internet just makes it much much simpler to commit a crime on foreign soil.
The US would not ratify a treaty that works the way you describe. One hopes.
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.
"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?
I can access www.gutenberg.org and sub-pages just fine from Germany. So the block doesn't seem to be active at the moment.
> Q: Why didn't Project Gutenberg simply remove the items?
> A: The is no reason to remove them. The 18 eBooks are all in the public domain in the US, and have been for many years. 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.
But why then even block access from Germany? If the stance is that "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.", what is the rationale for the blocking.
There is also the German Projekt Gutenberg (http://projekt.gutenberg.de/) which is promoted by Spiegel Online (one of the most widely read German-language news websites [1]) even under their own domain as http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/. I don't know what kind of relationship the German Projekt Gutenberg has with PGLAF. The German Projekt Gutenberg is accessible for me from Germany right now, but apparently has blocked the controversial books. For example the page that lists Heinrich Mann's works says about the book "Der Untertan": "Exists in Projekt Gutenberg-DE, but is blocked until 31.12.2020" {"Im Projekt Gutenberg-DE vorhanden (gesperrt bis 31.12.2020)"} [2].
> The decision to acceed to the German Court's order to make items inaccessible from Germany is intended to be a temporary appeasement, while the appeal occurs - this is because the German appeal Court will likely look disfavorably on PGLAF if it shows contempt for the German Court.
I don't see why Project Gutenberg thinks it isn't subject to German law. And yes, it sucks and it is against the spirit of the internet.
But it's either them being sued or ISPs being ordered to block the website.
Sued by whom? Afaik gutenberg.org is registered in California, no German jurisdiction, the cease&desist orders usually used to shut something like this down don't apply here.
Same deal with ISPs: Afaik there's no legal framework to support anything like that, it's for exactly that reason why law firms like Waldorf and Frommer uses cease&desist letters to pretty much blackmail people into stopping the "distribution", it's all based on civil action.
You might be careful with that assertion. As recently as Feb. 1st 2018 (so a month ago), Vodafone was compelled to block access to kinox.to in a preliminary injunction (1). The EUGH decided in 2014 that blocking pages is at least an option (2). This is contradictory to the EU e-commerce regulations, so the legality is somewhat murky at the moment, but it’s not definitely off the table.
(1) https://netzpolitik.org/2018/netzsperren-vodafone-muss-kinox...
(2) Telekabel Wien vs. Constantin Film http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...
It's still really shitty that stuff like this keeps on happening and even when these claims turn out to be straight up scams (like that whole Redtube mess [0]) it has barely any real consequences in terms of laws being changed.
[0] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13600869.2015.1...
Or you can follow the link in the first article to https://netzpolitik.org/2014/eugh-legt-zensur-grundlagen-net... which has a link to the court decision (grep for “Das Urteil”)
Weird stuff going on at CVRIA?
If someone hosts a website in another country, hosting US copyrighted material, I assume something similar would happen if the site refused to take the material down
https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-... is what happens. Being on the 301 report watch lists can have pretty nasty consequences in trade relations with the US.
For the same reason that it's not subject to North Korean law, or Saudi law, or the laws of any tin pot dictatorship: It's not located there.
The critical question is enforcement: no US law enforcement would carry out a North Korean court order. Things get problematic if the is a viable enforcement route: you make profits in a country, you have a subsidiary in that country, you want to travel to that country or you have employees in that country that might have to take the fall for you. What do you think why Twitter and Facebook and Apple all mostly conform to Chinese Law with Apple even moving the chinese iCloud key to China?
Project Gutenberg seems to have volunteers in Germany that could theoretically be personally targeted with a lawsuit for aiding copyright infringement. Now what? Claim US jurisdiction, lean back and wait? Expose them to that (unlikely) scenario? I, as a rights holder, if I’d really wanted to push this, would at least threaten to go down that route. Even if it’s later struck down, the hassle for the volunteers would be massive.
I said that if they argue that Copyright status in another country is irrelevant [1], that the copyright status in one country is not impacted or enforceable or otherwise relevant in other countries [2], that any attempts at enforcement of the judgement would need to occur in the US Court system and that the German Court has overstepped its jurisdiction [4], the only logical consequence would have been to just ignore a lawsuit filed in Germany.
Why not wait and see if the publisher brings the case to a US court or follows the WIPO process? What harm could it do?
[1] 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.
[2] International treaties explicitly and unambiguously support PGLAF's legal guidance as described above: that the copyright status in one country is not impacted or enforceable or otherwise relevant in other countries.
[3] any attempts at enforcement of the judgement would need to occur in the US Court system
[3] Because the German Court has overstepped its jurisdiction, and allowed the world's largest publishing group to bully Project Gutenberg for these 18 books [..]
[4] The legal guidance PGLAF received is that US law requires that such proceedings would have taken place in the US, and in fact any attempts at enforcement of the judgement would need to occur in the US Court system. PGLAF already informed Plaintiff and the German Court that the US Court system is the appropriate venue for Plaintiff's concerns. Plaintiff declined.
Let's think of something different: I print one of those books and send it to Germany. I assume the person receiving the book could be subject to prosecution. But if the company that did that is also present in Germany (offers services in Germany) then I suspect they would be held responsible as well.
> The decision to acceed to the German Court's order to make items inaccessible from Germany is intended to be a temporary appeasement, while the appeal occurs - this is because the German appeal Court will likely look disfavorably on PGLAF if it shows contempt for the German Court. Ultimately, PGLAF seeks to establish that any complaints about copyright must be brought either to the US Courts (where PGLAF operates) or WIPO processes (as guided by international treaties).
And continues:
> Q: Is there anything that can be done about the situation?
> A: Project Gutenberg is fighting for an appeal. Ideas about how to appeal the case in German, and any possible legal actions in the US, are welcome. You can reach Dr. Newby by email, gbnewby AT pglaf.org.
It says they have no idea how to appeal the case in Germany and the paragraph above basically says they have no real intention anyway because they want to bring the case either to an US Court or to the WIPO.
I am highly sympathetic with the PGLAF but their argumentation is completely incongruent. Either they accept the jurisdiction of the German court, then they should appeal in Germany and the appeasement makes sense, or they don't, then they should just ignore it completely.
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 my point. The best way to not have a German court decision would have been not to ask for one. They could have easily avoided the whole situation if they just ignored the lawsuit brought against them in Germany.
> Thus, they are fighting it in German court.
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.
> In order to raise chances of winning, they choose not to openly flaunt German court decision
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. Being ignored by a US organization wouldn't have been a big deal neither for the German court nor the publishers, this happens all the time. I appreciate PGLAF highly, but what they did here just caused unnecessary drama.
> - which they can always do later if it turns out resolving it within German justice system is a no go.
Which would be the ultimate embarrassment for the German justice system, don't you think?
> It is a common thing to do - you can disagree with some decision being legal and still temporary abide by it in order to work within the judicial system and not put yourself outside it.
I agree with that, I just think that in this case there was no need for it. PGLAF could have avoided the situation without consequences.
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.
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.
PG should take steps to honour the copyright laws of other countries.
My reasoning is this:
Say hypothetically I started "Project Open" in a country with zero copyright protections.
Then by that country's laws, I can list Amazons entire kindle catalog, buy all their books and scan them, and make it open access.
And by the PG argument, ignore the laws of other countries that demand copyright protection for those books, until I get sued.
At which point I block the site for the countries based on IP address (as if proxies and VPNs and people who travel don't exist)
If someone did that, they'd probably be characterised as a pirate site and shut down by the FBI.
* The subset of things that are legal in all jurisdictions is probably rather small. Let's say hypothetically that a country bans the distribution of all works in English - should PG comply with that as well?
* Why should I have to care about laws beyond my jurisdiction when setting up a service? That seems like a tremendous burden.
> they'd probably be characterised as a pirate site and shut down by the FBI.
That's a likely outcome, but if Project Open is operating lawfully in its own country, on what grounds should the FBI be able to claim jurisdiction? Unilaterally applying laws over foreign persons in foreign territories feels like an overstep.
If there's an international treaty (or indeed several) backing it up? Probably. Unlikely that there would be though.
That's an extraordinary theory of international law. By that logic Austria and Namibia also have jurisdiction.
"Hierfür spricht, dass die Webseite teilweise in Deutsch gehalten ist, dass auf der Seite Werke in deutscher Sprache angeboten werden [...]"
And there are even more arguments by the prosecutor which go beyond "accessible from Germany".
Even without speakers, Gutenberg hosting these books does not mean they are targeting Germans. I can put any of these texts through Google translate and read them myself despite my only experience with German being one class in high school.
There's a difference between theoretical plausible deniability, and practical plausible deniability. This excuse falls in the first category, accompanied by other colourful excuses like "I didn't steal that, someone must've slipped it into my pocket and I didn't notice". Theoretically possible, but ultimately implausible and completely dismissible unless you've got proof to back it up.
This sort of "remote jurisdiction" is necessary. Otherwise the only recourse to criminal foreign sites targeting your country will be to endlessly try to block it, while blocks are cheap and easy to evade.
The GDPR rests on the same principle of remote jurisdiction. If your website targets EU citizens, you have to abide by EU privacy rules.
So no, not an extraordinary or new theory of international law.
However, if you do add things as “we ship to germany” to a shop then you fall under german jurisdiction - which is fine in my books, because the customer should have a simpler legal recourse than the company.
Having to conform to foreign laws is just the flip side of being able to reach those people easily.
I hope and suspect that the US courts would refuse to enforce the judgement against Project Gutenberg. A little bit of research shows that for a foreign judgement to be enforced, a country would need to have personal jurisdiction over the defendant.
That doesn't seem to be the case here, at least under the US law that would apply if the judgement was being enforced.
Given all the overreach of European governments over the past few years (VATMOSS, GDPR, and now this), I suspect the time is ripe for something like the SPEECH act, a law clarifies that when a US citizen makes something available on the US, that does does not subject them to the law of a non-US country - and that allows the US citizen to claim court costs if someone tries to register a judgement against them.
The US would have to pull out of all international copyright treaties and the WTO for this to happen, so it's not going to happen.
Or one has to restrict access to those counties where one follows the law, creating a fragmented web.
This is only going to get worse as the world keeps dialing back on globalization.
In general, we're going to run into increasing numbers of cases like this.
Why do German courts think they can overstep jurisdictions?
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 also include copyright infringements. Along with local jurisdiction, this provision also governs the international jurisdiction of German courts. An unlawful act within the meaning of § 32 ZPO is deemed to have been committed both at the place where the offense was committed and at the place where the offense had its effect, so jurisdiction optionally applies to the place where the infringement was committed or where the legally protected interest was affected. A conclusive claim of facts substantiating an unlawful act committed within the judicial district is enough to establish jurisdiction. § 32 ZPO also covers claims for injunctive relief. According to § 32 ZPO, if a copyright or related property right is allegedly infringed by making the protected property publicly accessible via a website, the place where the unlawful act was committed is Germany if the asserted rights are protected in Germany and if the website is (also) publicly accessible in Germany. However, intended availability of the web presence in Germany (among other countries) is not a requirement (...).
This - to me - is quite a funny piece of jurisdiction and probably one of the reasons why international mediation processes do exist.
I suspect that if the Brits started claiming jurisdiction — well, _everywhere_ - on this basis, then that would raise eyebrows
Are they related to Springer Verlag and/or that other German publishing group whose main objective was to take collections of Wikipedia articles, verbatim, and turn them into books?
Here in Austria the law regarding copyright is pretty similar to Germany so it’s really interesting why no one has sued before.
I am curious about what Project Gutenberg would do if this judgement was replicated in every country in the EU, which feels plausible.
I'm sure Disney wouldn't be happy either if their movies that are still under copyright in the US were to be published for everyone to download on a server in some country that had shorter copyright than US. They'd try to sue as well.
Disney could also apply legal sanctions to the owners of the servers, should they ever travel to the US, and could probably convince the US Marines to extradite the owner. But I don't think that should be encouraged.
* They did not own all of the copyrights at the time the suit was filed. In fact, they may not own the rights now.
* International treaties like the Berne Convention have means to resolve these disputes. The plaintiffs have ignored those and filed suit in their own, likely incorrect, jurisdiction.
* The suit, and the decision, does not ask for the texts in question be blocked in German jurisdiction. It calls for them to be taken down entirely, even though they are legal in the US.
I’d be interested to see if they work in this case.
Is this just a dick move to enrage people and get attention?
And they could have blocked just the pages with the books in question directly after receiving the copyright violation notification...
Most of these books are over a century old.
I would expect that between the extremes of copyright abolishment and the current system of 'life + 70 years', most people would agree that some amount of protection is fair, but I seriously doubt that a majority feels that anything over 30 years since publication is necessary, much less considered fair. I wonder if that was ever researched in recent years.
Not that it matters; global copyright laws are permantently frozen because amending them is a costly matter requiring global coordination, and there is little political will to tackle this (or even consider it a problem). Any attempt to lower the extend of copyright (in any jurisdiction) will be met by a wall of well-paid lawyers and lobbyists pay-rolled by all the major content owners.
When written for a company, the span should be much shorter: like with patents, one can expect them to think of a new story after a while.
So I agree that death+70 is ridiculous, but 70 by itself, so long as it's not past the author's death (unless s/he dies within 5-10 years after creating the work)... I think that's not completely crazy.
I think it's wrong for the U.S. to be a "safe haven" for people whose attitude towards the rest of the world is "screw you and your laws." That's exactly Google's legal strategy with privacy laws: They make sure everything they do when they violate E.U. privacy laws somehow comes under U.S. jurisdiction, which says something to the effect of "...well U.S.-based persons have a right to privacy, but, as for the rest of the world, dear Google, you hereby have permission to do whatever you want". (At least that's my non-expert understanding of U.S. privacy laws. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).
I'm a huge fan of PGLAF and the work it's doing, but I'm sorry to say that, in blocking all of Germany for everything, I do see a little bit of a reflection of this "screw the rest of the world" notion. Of course I do recognize that it's probably not borne out of pure bad attitude, but rather limited resources. When they clear works to be published, their clearance process is probably based only on U.S.-laws, and then they put it up globally. The solution would have to be to clear the rights on a matrix where every work needs to be looked at from the point of view of every jurisdiction, and access-controlled accordingly. Obviously that's a resource-intensive task, and I totally respect that PGLAF says they don't have the resources for that.
So really, what this is probably driving towards, is that every jurisdiction needs its own Project Gutenberg, with access restricted to that jurisdiction, and clearing rights according to its own laws. If a German legal expert reading this is interested in taking on such a task, please do get in touch. I'm up for the role of being the techie in this operation.
- country A has different copyright laws than country B.
- A copyright holder from country A asks an organization in country B to take off some content based on country A's copyright laws.
- The organization in country B decides not to take off the content, as it is perfectly fine under country B copyright laws, and block whole country A access.
So here are some questions:
- Might this case set a precedent?
- Some of those weird, small and autonomous one-island countries can come up with some very relaxed copyright laws and start distribute content "legally" ?
If the small Island country tries to play that game, they find that much needed international trade with other bigger countries starts to dry up, and fast.
Hosting public-domain content for free doesn't really produce much revenue, so for a country to sacrifice so much lost trade/needed supplies for no economic benefit doesn't really work in the long term.
Now, I don't like these laws one bit, but I also really don't like this (over)reaction. If your legal counsel argues that you should block a country to avoid being sued for different laws, shouldn't the same counsel point out that this is likely for most of the world?
Or is Germany the oddball here and the majority of the world doesn't have CP laws, or doesn't care or .. have laws that are literally one to one compatible with the US ones?
However, Europe has some really strange copyright directives that go even further than the US. For instance, architecture is copyrightable, and so taking and distributing photos of the outside of a building is not technically allowed without permission from the owner. So taking tourist photos within an EU country and posting them online could be seen as copyright infringement.
Of course, this is just a general guideline, if you actually want to do business you need to ask lawyers familiar with the laws of all the countries you wish to do business with (though this is prohibitively expensive for volunteer efforts, which explains why they didn't do it).
So for a book published 50 years before the author died, the term expires in the US long before it does in (most of) Europe.
(This has since changed in the US, but did not apply retroactively. So published+n still applies to works published before the change to life+n)
But there is no such thing as punitive damages under German law?
>Pay Court costs, assessed at 50% of total costs. This is estimated to be at least 50,000 Euros, but is not yet assessed.
which seems false. The court set the amount involved in this case to 100k€, which would incurr about 3k€ in court costs and around 5k€ for each sides lawyers.
50k€ of costs would only occur if they would fight this through to the surpreme court. They don't seem to want this though.
Regarding the punitive damages: You are correct, the court awarded them damages, no punitive damages, no fines.
(There are two publishers going by "Springer" though, you were referring to J. Springer, not A. Springer)
(For those who don't know, IMSLP hosts a lot of sheet music scans that are out of copyright in canada, and not in the EU).
Suppose a country X existed which doesn't honor US copyrights at all. By symmetry, it seems that Project Gutenberg would approve of a website hosted entirely in country X, offering full texts of all publications by US authors, up to the present day, for download by anyone in the world, including in the US.
I do realize that PG is under no obligation to have an opinion on any such hypothetical circumstance. But nevertheless, that seems to be the implication. Are they really so anarchic? Or do they just think US copyright laws are more important than everyone else's?
Project Gutenberg:
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. Those other cases involve companies that actually operate (for-profit) in Europe, and cases 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. In addition, PGLAF has pointed out that Germany is widely spoken in the US (the third-most common second language), and also is widely taught in schools and colleges. PGLAF has no actual presence or activity in Germany.
Court Decision:
Reasons for the decision The action is admissible and well founded. 1. 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 also include copyright infringements. Along with local jurisdiction, this provision also governs the international jurisdiction of German courts. An unlawful act within the meaning of § 32 ZPO is deemed to have been committed both at the place where the offense was committed and at the place where the offense had its effect, so jurisdiction optionally applies to the place where the infringement was committed or where the legally protected interest was affected. A conclusive claim of facts substantiating an unlawful act committed within the judicial district is enough to establish jurisdiction. § 32 ZPO also covers claims for injunctive relief. Accordingto§32ZPO,ifacopyrightorrelatedpropertyrightisallegedlyinfringedby making the protected property publicly accessible via a website, the place where the unlawful act was committed isGermanyiftheassertedrightsareprotectedinGermanyand if the website is (also) publicly accessible in Germany. However, intended availability of the web presence in Germany (among other countries) is not a requirement (Federal Court of Justice, GRUR 2016, 1048, marginal number 18 - An Evening with Marlene Dietrich; cf. Regional Court of Hamburg, Judgment dated 06/19/2015 - 308 0 161/13, BeckRS 2015, 18942; Regional Court of Hamburg, Judgment dated 06/17/2016 - 308 0 161/13, BeckRS 2016, 12262). These requirements are met in this case, as the works in dispute which are protected in Germany are indisputably also available in Germany. Also, the plaintiff has convincingly argued that the availability has led to downloads in Germany. Apart from that, the first defendant’s website is also intended to target German users. This is supported by the fact that the website is partially in German, that the site offers German- language works, and that the first defendant explicitly strives to make the works available globally (“anyone anywhere”). This is not contradicted by the disclaimer in the first defendant’s website stating that users must verify if they are entitled to download the works in their respective countries. Rather, this disclaimer indicates that the defendants are aware that their website is also visited by users from other countries than the United States.
I mean, Facebook does, for dog's sake!
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.
PGLAF has awesome mission, but that base assumption is not really correct. With publishing content in Germany (or whatever country) over Internet (or otherwise) they have crossed physical and legal borders. You must obey local laws everywhere and US laws are legal in their soil only. The attitude that US laws are something globally applicable and Internet is something above local laws is naive and total blockage “revenge” is just plain childish.
It seems like it is working to get them publicity. If germany doesn't like that they are now being blocked, then they should change their laws.
It is their website, so too bad for germany.
Protesting ridiculous copywrite laws is perfectly reasonable.
Sadly it ain't as easy as that, the copyright lobby is very powerful in Germany, with their very own special interest laws like "mitstörerhaftung" [0] and the "Impressumspflicht". It's stuff like that which prevents open WLAN easily being run and operated because in Germany the person running the AP is liable for everything that happens trough said connection.
There are a ton of law firms who solely generate their income by sending out bulk cease&desist letters to torrent seeders, people who don't have a proper "Impressum" on their webpage and a number of other "formal" reasons. Kindergartens and retirement homes have gotten c&d letters over singing Christmas songs amounting to "copyrighted content".
These letters pretty much boil down to "Pay this fine and sign that you won't do it again if you still do it again you are liable for several thousands of € in damages".
Most people just pay the "fine" (usually starting at around 500€ sometimes quite a bit higher depending on the content) as it's easier and less hassle compared to taking it to the court, which are quite often technological inept and thus are very likely to side with the claimant's version of "This is theft/piracy!". It's pretty much a very own sub-sector of law firms in Germany.
Most people often think practices like these are something reserved to the US, a while ago, but Germany has its fair share of copyright insanity going on too. At this point, I'd guess Germany is even a far bit crazier than the US.
[0] https://qz.com/694618/why-is-it-impossible-to-find-free-wi-f...
Nobody is expecting PG to do anything like that, what is expected is that PG just removes these 18 books from German access, if they don't then the German publisher can cease&desist them over giving access to said books, which would have no effect at all on GP due to it being an entity that's registered in California, so German c&d letters have literally no effect on them.
GP is taking a stance here, which I very much appreciate as a German, but quite a few people here seem to be misunderstanding what's actually happening here or expected from GP.
"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:..."
Plus damages.
"via the website www.gutenberg.org (including its sub-pages) without the plaintiff’s consent, if and to the extent to which it is possible for internet users to access them (screen display and/or download) from Germany."
If you want to talk about national courts censoring content from the whole www then you need to talk to US courts and their "chilling effects".
So if someone sues me due to this post, then good luck with that, unless you figure out where I am.
The article claims that they're doing it to protect themselves from future lawsuits, not as "revenge":
"Q: Why block all of Germany, rather than just those 18 books?
A: PGLAF's legal advisors disagree with all claims that there must be any blocking, or removal, or anything associated - censorship, fines/fees, disclaimers, etc. - for items that are in the public domain in the US. Period.[1]
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. There are thousands of eBooks in the Project Gutenberg collection that could be subject to similar over-reaching and illigitimate actions.
PGLAF is a small volunteer organization, with no income (it doesn't sell anything), other than donations. There is every reason to fear that this huge corporation, with the backing of the German Court, will continue to take legal action. In fact, at least one other similar complaint arrived in 2017 about different books in the Project Gutenberg collection, from another company in Germany."
[1] For the reasoning behind this, see the quotes in my earlier comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16512068
Then the article is disingenuous, because the same copyright period and liabilities exist in most EU countries.
Singling out Germany because a German company was first to sue is pure revenge.
If they wanted to protect themselves, they would block the whole EU and a whole lot of countries outside the EU, not just Germany.
This really goes to the fundamental nature of the internet and digital technology. Is it "push" whereby a web site "sends" the content to the visitor (therefore assumes the burden of copyright infringement, because they initiate a transfer out of their country into the visitor's) or is it "pull" where a visitor effectively goes to a country, gets the content and returns home, and the visitor is doing the international transfer and thus inheriting the liability of that?
To my mind the "pull" model is more persuasive because the visitor is clearly the agent in control of the transfer. This judgement seems to go against it though, and say that as a web site operator, you are the one doing the international transfer of the information.
So this is Brexit for me. We in the UK think we are going to "take back control", but the nature of globalisation just means more and more situations like this. and there are only three ways it goes
- race to the top best regulations are adopted globally. Everyone but the best is a rule taker
- race to the bottom just awful
- confusoploy bad - where you go to gutenberg to get shakespeare's othello and have to sign 19'waivers saying you are not in a dozen jurisdictions that claim copyright still exists
Personally I think confusoploy is our likely destiny. sadly
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg was a German citizen, certainly any site that takes his name submits to German laws!
Cute. Who cares about what US law may require?
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.
"Q: Why did this all take place in the German Court system, rather than the US - where Plaintiff does business as Macmillan, and PGLAF is based?
A: The legal guidance PGLAF received is that US law requires that such proceedings would have taken place in the US, and in fact any attempts at enforcement of the judgement would need to occur in the US Court system. PGLAF already informed Plaintiff and the German Court that the US Court system is the appropriate venue for Plaintiff's concerns. Plaintiff declined."
And, as noted in the article, the German courts would also be bound by international copyright treaties to which Germany is a party.