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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> 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.

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,

> 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.)

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.

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.

> against a child pornography website

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.

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:..."

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