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Comment by ajmurmann | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I follow why people are upset with the publishing company that's sueing. They do own the copyright. One can disagree with the law and think it should be changed (I strongly believe that) but that's up to lawmakers to do. It would be irresponsible for the publisher to ignore that their ownership is being ignored.

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According to the linked faq,

* 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.

The judgement clearly states that the books in question should be blocked from being accessed from Germany. The court is aware that such blocks can be circumvented but that's still fine. They never claimed jurisdiction over what happens to users outside of Germany and explicitly haven't ordered the site to take down those books completely.

Nobody likes an asshole, even a responsible one.

So in order not to be "an asshole" German published should just limit themselves to copyright defined by US?

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.

In the US, yes. Disney would be free to ask US courts to require ISPs in the US to block those servers, assuming they have no more direct legal route by treaty.

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.

I'm sure Disney wouldn't be happy, but that doesn't mean they should have legal recourse (beyond in the US - e.g. targeting downloaders) either. If German law was changed to place Snow White back under copyright, I suspect Disney would not accept that as having effect in the US.

Your argument is "there are other assholes". While true, that still doesn't make them likeable. ["Likable"? Never saw that spelling before.]

That's not my argument. My argument or rather question is "Why do we get upset if someone in another country enforces their longer copyright period while we don't get upset every time American companies enforce theirs?" In my perception copyright periods are all insanely long.

Oh, absolutely agreed with that. I'm against Imaginary Property anyway. And I do get upset every time American companies enforce their copyrights :)

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