> PGLAF complied with the Court's order on February 28, 2018 by blocking all access to www.gutenberg.org and sub-pages to all of Germany.
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.
> 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.
> Afaik there's no legal framework to support anything like that,
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.
I missed that, somewhat recent, development thank you for pointing this out.
Still, as you said, this is legally murky and I wouldn't be too surprised if this turns out to be overturned again by a higher court. Some German courts have a reputation for quickly and easily siding with copyright claimants, just to have it overturned later by a higher instance.
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.
The EUGH link does not work, but the Vodafone case was a decision by a Munich court, which could still be overturned if somebody bothered going all the way up to the BVerfG.
I'm getting a pretty weird CVRIA specific 404 (Page does not exist), in English and French when trying to access the link. Googling for "Telekabel Wien vs. Constantin Film" gives the same top result, but going through there also just gives me the same 404.
Rights owners in Germany would request the blocking to the Justice system, due to theirs rights being violated
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
The legalities behind this are mostly based on civil law and not as straight as some people here seem to think because German ISPs to have a certain level of protection, I can't remember the exact name of said legality (just imagine yet another very long German word, people familiar with Freifunker-Netz probably know this better), but it's pretty much a constant back and forth struggle.
That’s just not how it works by any standard. Target users in a country, be subject to laws in that country. Basically all courts will assume jurisdiction by that rule. See for example the Mega case: Kim dotcom was a NZ resident, he was still prosecuted in the US.
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.
Does project Gutenberg identify their German based volunteers? Are they going to respond to a German order to identify them, assuming they're not responding to a German order to suppress books in the first place?
Up until now it was a no-brainer to identify with project Gutenberg, so the volunteers might have exposed themselves already. It probably still is, since the project complied with the court order. It’s mentioned in the plaintiffs argument which at least raises the possibility. So they might or might not be identifiable, but that question only matters for enforcement, not for the question of jurisdiction.
First, I did not say they are not subject to German law.
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.
PGLAF thinks that the German court is wrong. 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. Thus, they are fighting it in German court. In order to raise chances of winning, they choose not to openly flaunt German court decision - which they can always do later if it turns out resolving it within German justice system is a no go. 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> The best way to not have a German court decision would have been not to ask for one.
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.
Seems punitive to me, rather than 'fair'. US copyright law has no jurisdiction the same as German copyright law, other than by coincidence of geography/volunteer base. I think Project Gutenberg is doing the best thing it can for itself. I associate the project with doing the best thing it can for people.
In general, we're going to run into increasing numbers of cases like this.
Can someone in Germany confirm this block is actually in place?
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?
Interesting, thanks. I wonder if the block was more localized then all of Germany, if it was simply misconfigured, or if they just decided to stop blocking the traffic.
I'm on one of the biggest German ISPs (Deutsche Telekom) and I can access front page and books just fine.
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.
Certainly, given that each ebook could be a static hash. But you'd need to revise index pages periodically. And I'm not sure how search could be implemented. Except through Google, which does index pages from https://ipfs.io/ipfs/ . However, I gather that IPFS respects take-down requests, so you might need to use another gateway.
I can still open the full text of the offending books as html and as plain text. The EPUB and Kindle files are blocked, however. Maybe that's why there are conflicting reports.
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.
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.
> A Court in Germany ordered that access to certain items in the Project Gutenberg collection are blocked from Germany... until the issue is resolved during appeal, [Project Gutenberg] will comply.
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.
I disagree - it's not at all clear. Most people reading the statement would assume that the book they were trying to access was among the 'certain items' blocked by the court.
This is answered in the FAQ at the bottom of the article. Essentially because this sets a precedent that Germany believes it can sue over anything in the german language and other items in the library might potentially cause the same kind of lawsuit it's better to just block everything instead.
> Germany believes it can sue over anything in the german language
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.
Why doesn't Austria have jurisdiction for German content, do they not speak German in Austria? Do UK courts have jurisdiction over companies which produce content in English? It's absurd to think that an element to establishing jurisdiction is the language content is produced in.
They said they have jurisdiction because the contents is directed (also) to users in Germany. They said nothing about exclusive jurisdiction or exclusively directed to Germany. They also ruled that access to the average user in Germany must not be easy (acknowledging that the user decided to download can circumvent it.) There was not a word about making the contents available to users in any other country.
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?
As you surmise, I have not read the ruling. I was basing my understanding from the following in the article:
> 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.
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.
>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.
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?
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.
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.
It says "ordered that access to certain items..." I don't see anything misleading, or any implication that the court ordered the whole site blocked. I think it is obvious that only a few items were ordered to be blocked but they decided to block the whole site
As the block page states, the court order states that certain items must be blocked - it does not specify the means by which it must be accomplished. Blocking German IPs is the simplest way to achieve that.
Based on how media companies sue German torrent sharers (it's a cash cow for the law firms, like the one that is involved here, Waldorf Frommer), they sue individuals for making copyrighted content available on the internet -- because when you're torrenting something other people can get the completed parts from your computer, so if you run a mirror which is accessible from Germany, you will probably get a letter from the above law firm.
> if you run a mirror which is accessible from Germany
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.
Now we're mixing up 2 issues... torrents of copyrighted content with German seeders, and e-books of copyrighted content (at least copyrighted in Germany) with a website provider.
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.
Yep, they are serious business, not one of the dodgy ones that send out as many threatening letters as possible and hope that a few pay. They'll actually go to court, or did so in the past, with a huge army of lawyers. When the "fliegende gerichtsstand" was abolished they got more selective with which cases they actually took to court, depending on the city they'd have to go to. Before, all cases were handled in Munich, and the judges there were pretty much rubber-stamping the cases in favor of WF.
I've seen them squeeze 1000 Euro out of so many people (usually the sum they go for, making it a tad more expensive than a defence lawyer would cost you). It's a sad state of affairs.
Hi! Thanks for the service you do for others by mirroring this content - what's involved with being a mirror? I'm not sure if it's something I have the means or skills to do, but Project Gutenberg (and information projects like it) are the key part of the internet — the parts that deserve to be reserved and accessed freely by all. I'd love to see if there's anything I could do to help out!
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:
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.
The block is indeed in place, but trivially circumvented using a VPN.
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.
The German copy right law was quite noticeable written with companies in mind, and had originally a right to private copies to get private people out of the reaches of the law. You could copy an entire book, or a movie, give it to a friend and that would be perfectly legal. (As long as you are clearly not doing that in any kind of commercial fashion.)
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.
The explanation is at least slightly dishonest (hopefully not intentionally) in claiming that jurisdiction was established due to content being available in German, which makes it sound like a whacko court claiming to own a language. Reading the decision one learns that some of the volunteers involved in running PG and posting these materials were residents of Germany.
This is kinda the same tactic that was used by YouTube to block videos in Germany, blocking them with a message about to the GEMA issue.
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.
I thought so too reading the first couple of pages of the decision, but in the judicial conclusion section, the jurisdictional issue is squarely resolved on the "targets German users" issue, which the court bases on
1) Partial translation of the website
2) The availability of German language works
3) The "anyone anywhere" language on the website
4) A disclaimer that people should check their local laws (implying in the opinion of the court that they knew non-US persons were accessing their material and intentionally targeting their offering to such people).
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.
This legal theory is completely nuts. This means if I write something in, say, Russian on my website, and it's accessible to people from Russia, I am now considered to be obliged to follow every whim of Putin regarding my site's contents, even if I don't ever step my foot in Russia and don't want anything to do with it? Hopefully this is just plain old corruption and not idiotic legal theory that language you use makes you subject to whatever laws any state using the same language invents, even if you reside on the other side of the planet and want nothing to do with that country.
The language is one factor of many used to determine if you're doing business in Germany. Otherwise you have loopholes where German language websites advertising in German, to Germans, accepting Euros, and shipping to German addresses, is somehow not considered to be "doing business" in Germany simply because their offices and servers happen to be hosted in the US.
> where German language websites advertising in German, to Germans, accepting Euros, and shipping to German addresses, is somehow not considered to be "doing business" in Germany simply because their offices and servers happen to be hosted in the US
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?
That is indeed a defect of US system, and one that people should account for when they make their choices. I wish US stopped doing that (especially that the tax treaties in many cases lead to the fact that US doesn't even see any money anyway, it just produces tons of paperwork for expats).
UK courts have always held that US based publications/websites commit libel in the UK if they have a readership in the UK, irrespective or the location of the publisher.
The US doesn't enforce those judgements any more, but the UK still holds the principle.
> 4) A disclaimer that people should check their local law
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".
I think you're misinterpreting it. The courts mean that this is an implicit acknowledgement that the contents featured on the Gutenberg website isn't necessarily legal everywhere in the world, and that local laws may apply. If this website was aimed solely at Americans, this notice would be moot.
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.
It's a reminder to _users_; the implication is that whilst there is no legal impediment to them hosting the files, a user accessing them make violate local laws. It's an acknowledgement that PG cannot know the laws of every jurisdiction as they apply to every user - I'm not sure how it could be seen as suggesting those laws directly bind PG.
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.
I'm not claiming that just the disclaimer is sufficient to establish jurisdiction. Far from. But courts have a tendency to attempt to take every little detail into regard, even if it weighs very lightly in the presence of other arguments. In this case, having German language options and German volunteer staff is to me, personally, enough reason to state that the website is targeting Germans and that this requires compliance with German laws. If it weren't, it would be too easy to skirt jurisdiction and violate all kinds of laws.
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.
That seems like especially bizarre reasoning considering that Germany isn't even the only country that speaks German natively. Why do they get jurisdiction instead of Austria?
> Why do they get jurisdiction instead of Austria?
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.
I hope frivolous lawsuits such as this further inspire non profits to take their hosting to decentralized providers such as zeronet and ipfs. There’s almost no need to host these projects centrally anymore, and it seems to only invite attacks such as this one.
It’s not frivolous, almost by definition, if you win a lawsuit. You can disagree with this court’s judgement on all sorts of issues, but Germany isn’t usually known to be a banana republic with corrupt and/or completely incompetent judges.
It's false though. The court says German law applies because German users can access the site. German language is only briefly mentioned, but not the argument of the court.
In Sweden you have to follow swedish law if you target your business towards swedes. If you use swedish language, sell directly to swedes and so on. I'm sure Germany has something similar.
Swedish is a bit more rare in International linguistics, but German is not. There is an entire population in the American mideast that learn and speak German as just an example of a very far off population of non-German speakers of the language.
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.
I can't think of a single US-specific website that has a German language option for German-speaking Midwesterners. There probably exist some, but their German language option will be very clearly described for this purpose when this is the motivation.
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.
This is an extremely short (and misleading) summary of the courts argument. Among the reasons for assuming jurisdiction is the assumption that project Gutenberg targets users in Germany and part of that assumption is Project Gutenberg’s statement that the goal is to make the works available globally (thus including germany) (quote: “anyone anywhere”). The fact that content and at least parts of the page is available in Germany adds to that assumption. It’s been established that websites targeting german people (also) fall under german jurisdiction.
So no, not an extraordinary or new theory of international law.
No, that’s not the effect. If you make a website in the US hosted on US servers that does not obviously target german customers then you don’t fall under german jurisdiction. It’s not sufficient that your site is generally accessible from germany.
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.
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?
Which is, btw., entirely covered by the license as long as you allow redistribution and have proper attribution. Wikipedia is mostly covered by CC-BY-SA.
This might be helpful. When I got randomly blocked for 24 hours (in the US), recently, some of the mirrors still worked. You can find them here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/MIRRORS.ALL
I’d be interested to see if they work in this case.
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.
Perhaps if that’s the only action they ever take. In the short term, it’s possible it’s the only action they can safely take, if they want some time to analyze the situation.
I dont say that such interpretation of international law over web content is practical, reasonable, etc, but it is as it is. Better be aware of this if you publish anything not trivial, otherwise your US (for example) lawyers will be happy to work on your hopeless case.
> If germany doesn't like that they are now being blocked, then they should change their laws.
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.
Then Germany as an entity can deal with the results of their society being structured in a way that allows those special interests to have that level of control. America has the same problems as well but it's be unreasonable to expect people in other sovereignties to make special accommodations for me just because my government is making me follow a different set of rules
> it's be unreasonable to expect people in other sovereignties to make special accommodations for me
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.
There is nothing in the decision about "German access".
"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 fact that they are talking about Germany is self-evident because it's a German court and they even wrote it out plainly, if you'd bothered to read further than the part you quoted:
"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".
Your expectation is that PG is going to go and add extra features and work to turn off specific items to comply with other people's rulesets. Why is PG expected to modify their behavior? It's certainly acceptable for Germany to not allow what PG does in Germany, but they don't get to pick and choose what's allowed if PG also doesn't want to play ball. PG is allowed to say it's a package deal
The Störerhaftung is not a special interest law for copyright. The idea is that you are at fault if others use you (/your stuff) to violate rights of a third party. For example if someone were to spray paint "freeflight sucks" on my house you could ask me to remove it and if I didn't, you could sue me.
Its interpretation in regards to online access is (was) very much special interest for copyright claimants and one of the major hurdles for getting free WiFi coverage in Germany.
Totally agree that bulk of the copywrite laws are unreasonable and unfit for the digital age. However, for me more interesting question is why they even went into the German court. In theory Germany could issue international warrant, but I doubt if they do it for minor cases, think of e.g. Snowden, Assange and Polanski cases. So at most they could have ordered blockage of the site/IP in their side, as long as book-specific ban is probably technically not doable. Also they may blacklist the offending persons from entering Germany/EU. Maybe US lawyers just saw big case with revenue and gave 'good' advice to go to the fight?
So if someone sues me due to this post, then good luck with that, unless you figure out where I am.
But they are not publishing content in Germany? German citizens are contacting and downloading content hosted in US servers, aren't they? This is like saying HN is publishing in Spain and has to obey Spanish laws just because I'm connecting from here.
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."
> With publishing content in Germany (or whatever country) over Internet (or otherwise) they have crossed physical and legal borders.
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.
The crux of the argument seems to be whether German copyright applies to US websites served to German users; Project Gutenberg's view and the Court's view are below.
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.
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.
Is it so uncommon for big companies to evaluate the performance of various divisions independently? If Holtzbrinck recognizes that S. Fischer's activities have caused that subsidiary to start losing money, they will probably modify their opinion. Why would they want to subsidize a losing bet using the profits from other divisions? The fact that two companies are owned by the same holding group does not really mean they are the "same" company, any more than two companies which are majority owned by the same private investors are the same company.
S. Fischer isn't just a independent subsidiary. The company is run by Monika Schoeller (born Monika von Holtzbrinck). She and her brother own large parts of Holtzbrinck and she's listed as a partner and member of the supervisory board on Holtzbrinck's website. (Her brother, Stefan von Holtzbrinck, is the CEO.)
> 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.
The author probably got paid an amount for writing the book and then hands all rights over to the publisher. The publisher then prints it forever and takes the income from that. This is a guess based on working with other publishers though. Individual companies may differ.
No matter how much propaganda has told you otherwise, copyright violation is not theft.
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.
That makes it easier to make an impact. Now that they own a considerable portion of the market, next time you're gonna buy some Macmillan book, just don't buy it, and instead find pdf through genlib or pirate bay.
But did they do the right thing by participating in a court that has no jurisdiction? Why would they participate in that? Doesn't participating extend legitimacy to the claims, and make one subject the outcome (including paying the legal fees when losing)?
No more so than if they didn't participate. It's generally suggested that if someone sues you in a jurisdiction that you care about, you show up to defend yourself. Otherwise you'll simply have summary judgement entered against you. Now, in this case since the plaintiffs won, it probably wouldn't have been any worse—and likely cheaper due to lower legal costs—but they couldn't know that going in.
> But did they do the right thing by participating in a court that has no jurisdiction?
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.
Ignoring the order could result in personal liability of people involved in the project (as this is now a willful violation). Those people can then strike off Germany (and likely the EU and other countries) from the list of places to ever visit.
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.
I just donated $100 to PGLAF because they are fighting the good fight. Their donation page [0] includes "Think of this as a contribution to your grandchildren." However in this instance I think of it as a contribution against publishers (ab)using the justice system much like so-called patent trolls.
> 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.
I hope you don't mind that I take this opportunity to tell about he GFF, because it is very much related.
If you are European and care about freedom rights, there is now an equivalent to the EFF/ACLU, called the "Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte" (short GFF), which translates to "Society For Freedom Rights".
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.
European Digital Rights EDRi is the closest equivalent to the EFF in Europe. EDRi is an association of civil and human rights organizations from across Europe. It has existed since 2002.
I'm somewhat hesitant to post this as I don't condone online bullying, but if you wish to send a polite message explaining your opinion about this, here are some contacts:
Phones are pretty personal and threatening. It'd take a very experienced person to call them and be polite and not come over as threatening and be productive all at once.
Maybe they deserve it, or maybe it's the best way forward for society but be aware of what you are calling for.
> However in this instance I think of it as a contribution against publishers (ab)using the justice system
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.
> 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?
> 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.
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg was a German citizen, certainly any site that takes his name submits to German laws!
I am completely confused by how this court order even works.
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?
Isn’t publishing content over web to the public “activity in this country”? I think it is. The magical Internet allows actions in other countries without physical presence.
>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?
> 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?
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.
DMCA, computer fraud have been and are used to extradite non-US citizens to put them in front of a US court for crimes under US law. Regardless of it being a crime in the country where the suspect lives/did the hack.
I feel if the countries of the parties involved were reversed, it would be a much different situation. Although the content could be hosted in Germany, and aimed at a German audience, other parts of your infrastructure (e.g. domain names, SSL certificates, CDNs) are most likely controlled by US companies, so you do not have much choice in whether you follow US law.
FACTA, the dreaded E-8BEN form that I get to fill in every time I happen to have a US customer, copyright, see Kim Dotcom, access to emails stored by Microsoft Europe (though MS is fighting that).
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.
It's pretty common for US copyright law to be enforced outside in the EU as the term can be longer (the US term can occasionally be longer if the author died at the correct time).
You said it yourself: the Berne Convention allows US police to honor international court orders. US still has soveriegnty over people residing in its jurisdiciton.
The Berne Convention is a treaty and doesn't work that way. (IIRC, it defines the periods in question; by putting the treaty, Germany is obligated to honor the (BC) copyrights on US-copyrighted works, but can apply its own to German copyrighted works.)
The US would not ratify a treaty that works the way you describe. One hopes.
In the US, copyright protection is based on the number of years since publication.
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.
> "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"
Why do German courts think they can overstep jurisdictions?
> 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.
>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.
The pglaf document isn't the most accurate in general (eg. claiming that Germany has "life + 75" terms, while correctly calculating life + 70 right in the next sentence; or discussing that the 56 years rule will end in the US in 2034, since books published after 1978 are subject to life + 70 as well - I guess Gutenberg won't be able to publish a single new book between 2034 and 2048), so I guess the claims made were only about damages (even if pglaf might consider them "punitive") and fines.
Considering how much US patent law has been enforced abroad: most governments.
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.
I hope that countries other than America still get to have their own court system. I certainly don't want America to have final say over everything in the world.
The company that's suing them operates in the US, so it would be subject to US law. From the article:
"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.
528 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 198 ms ] threadI 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].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegel_Online
[2] http://projekt.gutenberg.de/autor/heinrich-mann-1637
> 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.
In general, we're going to run into increasing numbers of cases like this.
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.
[1] https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html
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.
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.
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.
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?
[1] https://www.holtzbrinck.com/
[2] http://www.hvventures.com/
[1] https://translate.google.com/#de/en/Verlag
(There are two publishers going by "Springer" though, you were referring to J. Springer, not A. Springer)
I’d be interested to see if they work in this case.
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...
[1] https://www.rockit-internet.de/en/what-is-an-impressum/
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.
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.
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.
> 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://edri.org/
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.
Fischer Verlage:
Twitter: @Fischer_Presse
Phone: +49 69 6062-0
Fax: +49 69 6062-214
Fischer Verlage, Sales: https://www.fischerverlage.de/kontakt/verkauf_vertrieb
Fischer Verlage, Legal and Licenses: https://www.fischerverlage.de/kontakt/rechte_lizenzen
Holtzbrinck:
Phone: +49 711 2150-0
Fax: +49 711 2150-269
E-mail: info@holtzbrinck.com
Phones are pretty personal and threatening. It'd take a very experienced person to call them and be polite and not come over as threatening and be productive all at once.
Maybe they deserve it, or maybe it's the best way forward for society but be aware of what you are calling for.
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?
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg was a German citizen, certainly any site that takes his name submits to German laws!
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.