Hacker News Reader

Comment by Findus23 | Hacker News Reader

I’m really for open access to old books, but for playing devils advocate I can see the courts point: International websites have to respect local laws. After all those are the only ones I can directly influence (by voting, etc.) If we’d start to ignore this (even if it is in my advantage in this case), this means I have no influence any more on how companies are allowed to interact with me (which shouldn’t be the case in a democratic state)

It’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.

View on HN

> for playing devils advocate I can see the courts point: International websites have to respect local laws

I think this is an untenable position as it would mean that any website, published from any country, hosted on servers in any country, would have to abide by the laws of the world’s 193 countries.

Project Gutenberg’s argument is that they are only a US concern — everyone involved officially is in the US, and 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.

I agree with you. Following every law is neither practical and in the case of censorship even counterproductive. I just wanted to point out that the reaction of the court isn’t as entirely pointless as it may seem on first thought.

> I just wanted to point out that the reaction of the court isn’t as entirely pointless as it may seem on first thought.

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.

They have no legal basis for the books being removed in the US, since they are in the public domain there. If they can't make German law stick, they have no recourse.

They can go for the ISPs, or push for some German law to restrict local access. Doesn't mean they should, though.

Again, said ISPs are US-based, and the only precedent for blocking in the US is DMCA, which considers these works public domain.

I'm referring to local ISPs that German users use to access the Internet. Presumably the court can order them to block access to resources.

PGLAF is incorporated in the US, their site is hosted in the US and their employees live in the US. Tell me again why they need to worry about the law of any country but the US?

It's up to the German courts/government to deny access to sites that break their laws, not try to impose their law on people outside their jurisdiction.

You don‘t want to tell me that a US court would show any restraint if a non-US based person violated American copyright?

For many years, China felt no urge to follow international copyright agreements. It was popular in certain circles to buy pirated Chinese editions (in English) of textbooks because they were very cheap.

Likewise, Microsoft has long had problems with pirated versions of Windows. Further, DVDs and CDs....

The general response from US courts was, "eh, what can we do?"

US rightsholders have been seriously abusing copyright outside of US borders. I personally am not okay with it.

If Germany's laws must be applied to a US business, then the US is prima facie not sovereign.

I think you have a big shock coming about how international law works and applies to websites outside of their country.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

> Doitsche Welle

What?

I guess dw.com.

Because all German speaking people reside in Germany right?

No, but most do. So translating to German and offering German books (pretty well known ones btw) should get you thinking about German laws for a moment.

Most speakers of German don't live in Germany.

There are roughly 200 million German speakers in the world, but only 82 million residents of Germany.

Sure, you know what I mean though.

None of those pass muster.

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.

Those points can't be picked apart like you did. They add up and make it reasonable to argue that gutenberg.org is very well known in Germany and that lots of Germans have downloaded the books in question. The copyright owners are still selling those here and have probably already lost sales due to this. They tried to contact gutenberg.org, but where ignored. This isn't about free speech amd censorship.

> 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.

> illegal where?

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.

> On the internet

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.

> There's a lot inbetween

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.

Are you really asserting that

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?

Point a is covered under GDPR. If you have German on your website their courts have jurisdiction. The language is so vague that they will have jurisdiction over all the world when it comes to PI privacy laws.

That's...a little disturbing.

If you have German on your website their courts have jurisdiction.

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.

https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-23/

a) No

b) What do you mean exactly?

> 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.

You can be. A US court would be pretty reluctant to enforce it, but you can and always could.

Ignored? Where are you seeing that?

In the court order.

> Those points can't be picked apart like you did. They add up

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.

The US does have .us - it was actually the first ccTLD - and a complex hierarchy under it, it's just not commonly used for historical reasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.us

It's not commonly used because the hierarchy is weird. Originally the names had to be four deep, containing both the state and the locality, which is silly since all but the smallest operations span localities and even small companies often change locality. So they eventually allowed registrations directly at .us but there is still no .us equivalent to .org.uk.

> 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.

Isn't there a defence? I also don't believe the court would like to find out that the prosecutor lied.

> Isn't there a defence?

There is, but it's a resource battle. Governments and large corporations can spend a hundred times more hours on something than regular individuals and small nonprofits. If they both had the same resources there might be a 90% chance the defendant wins, but create a large enough resource asymmetry and it flips the other way.

This is one of the main reasons for the "beyond a reasonable doubt" 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.

I see, thanks for the explanation.

> 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.

The failure to protect their trademark in Germany would actually demonstrate that they are not operating in Germany.

Without commenting on the other arguments-#3 seems ludicrous. Claiming that a country's local law applies to an institution in another country "because it's named after someone who lived in our territory" seems a pretty ethically and legally impotent argument. Especially when you consider that "Germany" in its current sense did not exist until many hundreds of years after Gutenberg died. Should modern French courts get to censor any global website using "Louis" in the domain? "Napoleon"? Or does it only apply to last names?

It was just a small point which might make German think "this is a website that is legal in Germany" or even "this is a website from an entity in Germany". But it isn't, it's a US website, legal in the US and illegal in Germany.

1) So? There are many German-speakers who live in the US and in other countries outside of Germany. There is a huge difference between "targeting" people who speak German and those who live 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.

1. The german language page is actually targeting Liechtenstein, not Germany.

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.

"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.

"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."

On point 3 : The fact that the (original) Gutenberg is in germany is irrelevant. Gutenberg here refers to the Gutenberg bible, not the place.

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.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Do you want to imply that the prosecutor lied about this?

if we followed your reasoning, you are able to provide anything illegal at a website, simply by hosting it in a country which you dont really target (eg isle of man).

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 German court has no authority to compel a US company to block a subset of IP addresses though. If they want to enforce domestic policy they only have the right to force domestic companies to perform the block (i.e, by requiring that all German ISPs block access to the site).

A website would need to comply with German laws iff they have operations in Germany.

> This is distinct from, say, a company explicitly providing a service to customers in a particular country (cf GDPR).

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?

Of course it would be fair. Because EU citizens would be harmed.

That‘s the duty of a state. Protect its citizens.

EU Citizens are harmed here! Those publishers are being denied income because a site is hosting content they hold German copyright for, for free!

(Starting with the caveat that I’m not hugely well-versed in the GDPR:)

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.

(Thanks for the well-reasoned reply! I'll preface mine by saying that I'm not terribly well-versed in the GDPR either... and that's really part of the problem.)

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.

This is the case, and has always been the case.

It is pretty common for people to sue international publications for libel in the UK under UK libel laws on the basis that the site has British readers.

The US decided to unilaterally breach it's treaty provisions on that front and doesn't enforce British libel judgements (you may think this is a good thing, but that is what actually happened), but notably if you ever visit the UK as an American publisher you're still liable...

Yes, that’s a good point (and, as someone who works in newspapers, something I’m well acquainted with).

Perhaps my original comment was too simplistic; it is a thorny issue.

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

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

Google does it. Wikipedia has local lawsuits.

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.

> International websites have to respect local laws.

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.

Another example:

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?

Other countries can try to block that content, or they can try to punish their own residents for viewing it.

Why would residents of the permissive country comply with a foreign court order?

> Other countries can try to block that content

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.

> try to block

Excellent phrasing. They can try. And they'll fail. Blocking is trivially easy to avoid and circumvent. As long as there's no jurisdiction, a country can't take any action against a criminal site, it can only take steps to protect its population from harmful outside influence, which is by blocking. The offenders remain free and often unidentified.

But when there is jurisdiction, a country can take 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.

> But when there is jurisdiction, a country can take offensive action.

That isn't what jurisdiction means. You're describing the digital equivalent of covert operations in a foreign country.

> Without it, the only logical way to protect your population is to erect deep-scanning firewalls and abolishing free traffic across national networks, much like China and Iran are doing.

It would work perfectly well to publish 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.

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

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

> Covert operations are by definition extra-judicial.

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.

> If you're in a country where child pornography is legal, should all other countries just accept it?

Yes.

> If you're in a country where doxxing is legal, should the victims not be able to do anything against it?

No.

> If you're in a country where child pornography is legal, should all other countries just accept it?

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.

Yes and yes.

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.

> They cannot ban a citizen of another country from hosting said porn if it's legal there.

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.

The rule is: you can't, in any way, compel citizens of other countries living outside your country to do anything. You really shouldn't even try, unless it's with the cooperation with the other country (just fill a lawsuit there!).

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?

> 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.

Could you elaborate?

If you have Turkish users, you ARE doing business in Turkey. That's obvious.

If you operate a bookstore in New York City, you are doing business in the US and not Turkey. That is true even if someone from Turkey comes into your bookstore, buys one of your books and takes it home with them to Turkey.

Why should the internet be any different?

Well bad news. The world doesn't and has never worked in the way you want it to.

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.

> "International websites have to respect local laws."

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:

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."

I have to be blunt here, whomever is giving PGLAF legal advice here almost certainly did not advise that last paragraph, because there is abundant precedent that it's incorrect.

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?

The reaction of blocking access to all of Project Gutenberg only for german users and not for european user strongly suggests rather a kneejerk reaction/retaliation than an abundance of caution on their part.

> I can see the courts point: International websites have to respect local laws

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carruthers

But they had to wait for him to enter US soil

Not only that, but his company was taking bets from US citizens, which is a much stronger argument for presence in a territory than simply "your website is accessible to our citizens."

If your website breaks moral decency laws in Saudi Arabia, and a court there orders you to close your website, would you comply?

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.

> If your website breaks moral decency laws in Saudi Arabia, and a court there orders you to close your website, would you comply?

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.

But....why? In a certain way, it's just some random court from a country you've never been to ordering you to do something. Why would you comply. There are ways foreign entities and governments can pursue an American company through the American legal system - the plaintiff decided not to do that here and decided to go through the German system instead. 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.

> But....why? In a certain way, it's just some random court from a country you've never been to ordering you to do something. Why would you comply.

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?

> 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.)

But then German ISPs will be ordered to block the content in Germany. I don't know what's better, at least now the gutenberg.org frontpage is still accessible and theres an explanation which wouldn't be the case with an DNS block.

The German ISPs blocking the content is far better. In that case, Germans are living by German laws, and Americans are living by US laws. The alternative is to expect everyone to live by any law anywhere in the world, which is probably impossible in cases where things conflict.

> everyone to live by any law anywhere

The site is obly blocked in Germany.

Sure, but Germans having an issue with an American site just cost that American company €50,000 for no reason at all. I agree with the poster saying that if Germany had an issue with content they could have just blocked the website themselves.

The books being available for download for free might have cost a German company even more. So I wouldn't say "no reason at all".

Like I said before - there is a legal path for foreign companies to sue American companies under the American legal system. If the plaintiff could demonstrate loses due to actions by project Gutenberg, I'm 100% certain that an American court would have ruled in favour of the plaintiff. But this €50k isn't even going to the publisher - it's in fees to the German court system, which - in my opinion - could have been completely and totally ignored. So when I said "no reason at all" I meant that PG will now be paying €50k for something that they shouldn't be a part of.

By this logic the US has no jurisdiction to act against a child pornography website aimed at Americans, used by Americans, with pictures of American children, as long as the website is hosted in Russia, where child pornography remains legal (or any of the other countries where it's legal and/or authorities don't care).

Remember, this means that the FBI has no right to even investigate the persons involved in it. No jurisdiction means no investigation.

Your example goes too far -- the FBI would absolutely have jurisdiction to investigate the appearance of American children on such a site, as well as to go after Americans who used the site, because that involves the commission of crimes on American soil.

> against a child pornography website

Oh sure they could investigate, I didn't express myself well enough. But they're not going to get much without internal server data. They wouldn't be able to undertake any action against the site, much like American officers can't come to Russia to arrest suspects. They would be wholly dependent on cooperation with local authorities, who wouldn't care at all because it's not illegal in Russia.

There's no reason to obey a foreign order, as long as (1) your jurisdiction's authority doesn't extradite, and (2) you never enter the reach of jurisdiction you offended,

Do you have immense respect for Saudi Arabia's legal system, or fear of recourse from them? Do you just enjoy being subjugated?

If a country doesn't like my site, they're free to block it themselves instead of compelling me to.

I would think that if Saudi Arabia can't access my website, it's their loss, not mine ;)

Confusing the government of a country with its residents, especially a dictatorship like Saudi Arabia, is a harmful error. Sure, it's not your loss, but it's not their loss either -- it's innocent 3rd party's loss.

At some point, the residents of a country are responsible for its government. The inverse of the "consent of the governed" principle.

Saudi Arabia is run by a king. Its citizens don't get to vote them out of office. They are ruled by a dictator and many of them do NOT consent to being governed by the dictator.

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.

https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/gutenberg-lawsuit-judgement-E...

"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:..."

There is the idea of universal jurisdiction for certain crimes, but it's usually stuff like genocide and really nasty stuff, not copyright infringement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_jurisdiction

Yes - Israel used this rather famously on ex-Nazis that they "extralegally imported" from around the world, even though a) the accused was not an Israeli citizen, b) none of the victims were Israeli citizens at the time of the crime, c) the crimes did not occur on Israeli territory. In most other cases those would be major jurisdictional issues.

What is it that distinguishes a web site from an international web site?

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?

gutenberg.org has a link to view it in German on the front page. I guess if you provide several translations and use a top level domain like .org, you are more likely an international web site than an English-only .us web site.

All websites that are not intentionally blocked from specific regions by the website operator, a government or internet service providers are available everywhere in the world. English is the world's most spoken language. In effect, most websites are international websites.

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.

That's why the reasoning of the court went beyond "It's an international website".

But it did not use reasoning that courts in most other parts of the world accept, including the US coults it would have to ask to enforce its judgement in the absence of voluntary compliance.

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.

German is spoken in countries other than Germany: looking at only countries where the German language enjoys some form of official or co-official status, we have Germany (of course), Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Denmark, Hungary, Italy, and Poland also formally recognise German as a minority language.

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.

> 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.

Only if you really don't like the idea of the Internet should you advocate for that kind of thing. If every website would have to comply with every country's laws this would immediately lead to almost complete segregation of the Internet. Why should anybody take the risks of making their websites internationally available? It's hard enough to ensure that your website complies with your own country's laws. It's impossible to do that for every country.

If a country doesn't like what a website provides they are free to block it at the border, just like with physical goods.

International websites have to respect local laws

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.

Generally speaking, no, you only have to follow the laws of the county where you are resident. I don't know why Project Gutenberg is taking any notice of the court case at all, although it probably should warn its contributors not to work on projects that aren't yet public domain in their own countries, to avoid any risk of legal action.

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 court decision in question, in part, says,

The court has not ordered the site blocked, but the texts in question taken down.

Sure, but if the defendants don't have any interests in Germany, how would the claim be enforced?

> International websites have to respect local laws.

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.

Yes, I absolutely agree with you there. Copyright across international borders is really complex but the only important factor can't be the country of origin. (This would obviously create copyright paradises and is generally unpractical)

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.

What is a "German book"? A book in German? A book "owned" by a German?

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.)

There is an established treaty for handling this particular issue. The court in question has decided not to follow that treaty.

Could you be more specific?

The Berne Convention specifies minimum copyright provisions (equivalent to current US and German practice, IIUC), requires other countries to protect works as strongly as their own, and describes how to resolve conflicts (WIPA).

> International websites have to respect local 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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com