Hacker News Reader

Comment by gowld | Hacker News Reader

PG decided they don't have time to deal with Germany's BS, so they implemented the simplest solution guaranteed to work.

View on HN

More like retaliated to make a point.

For comparison, if they faced a U.S. publisher demand to block some books that were in violation, and in response they blocked all of the U.S., it would be misleading to suggest this was merely the "simplest solution".

You quoted them selectively to make your retaliation point. The full quote from the FAQ presents a very good argument, allowing access from a hostile legal jurisdiction could encourage thousands of cases and bankrupt the project:

>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.

If German courts maintains that making content available in Germany (ie, putting it on the Internet) gives them jurisdiction over your organisation, your choices are to be compliant with German law, or not to be available in Germany. PGLAF does not have the budget, nor the philosophical inclination to be compliant with German law, so that leaves one option. As you quoted in your GP, they have no reason to believe this will end with these 18 works, so the alternative really is compliance, not just blocking 18 works.

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.)

That would only be the case if they thought the 18 books would be the end of the matter.

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.

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

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

The simplest solution would have been to do nothing.

They still have to comply with the court ruling, i.e. at least block those 18 books in Germany, as they aren't The Pirate Bay. The website's move is smart because it avoids future complications coming from the Urheberrechtsgesetz, the German copyright law, and draws much-needed public attention to how easy it is for bully firms to abuse it.

The Q and A contradicts this.

>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.

According to the ruling, the CEO wouldn't be liable personally unless the violation is willful. Which, having been adjudicated in German court, it now would be. If the CEO becomes personally liable then found in contempt, he would have to avoid travel to Germany. That's a lot to ask of a volunteer.

How come they have to obey the court in Germany?

Copyright laws are to be respected whatever the country. This is a border case, so to see if the principle is sound, let's imagine something. Let's say a country, for whatever reason, decides that its copyright protections are of 1 year only. After that, this country decides that all books, movies, games are freely available from its territory through the internet because their copyrights are expired. Does anyone believes that all the other countries will say : "no problem, it's their law and the site is from their territory, so everything's allright" ? So, laws from any country have to be respected, especially with a global system like the internet. It is often annoying, sometimes disconcerting, but no country would allow their society to be governed by foreign laws. And I really appreciate even more the Project Gutenberg for that, because they care about laws everywhere and obey them according to the territory (the fact that they went for the easy way by blocking the entire country is really not important: it is just a matter of resources, so we have to donate more if this is what bothers us).

You're giving an ethical reason, but I'm more interested in the actual consequences of a US entity ignoring a German court ruling. I'm not sure what teeth this court actually has with regard to American citizens.

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

Is the country with the one-year copyrights a Berne Convention signatory?

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?

That would be risky for the people running Project Gutenberg, since Germany and the US have extradition treaties.

Unlikely to be extradited for an extra-territorial claim. But the members of the executive and the board might not want to strike Germany from their list of travel destinations forever.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com