Maybe somebody can explain why this US-based project has to respond to German court rulings in any way. Is there any reason not to just toss any scare letters in the trash can or say "Jump off a bridge, we're not in Germany"?
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.
In addition, PGLAF has pointed out that German 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, and never did.
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Essentially, this is similar to taxation, once you have certain business related activities in a country / region you become liable for taxes.
In this case German copyright for these books is relevant 70 years after the death of the author, one may not like it, but it's the local law
But what businesses does Project Gutenberg have in Germany? Not actively barring German visitors counts as doing business?
If I spin up a random web server in the United States which so happens to be connectable from German IP addresses, but I don't do any actual business in Germany and I've never been to Germany, shouldn't Germany have zero jurisdiction over me?
What if it was China or North Korea instead of Germany? I definitely don't want to follow their laws!
again, one can like it or not, but the US practices similar court orders, even with magnitudes more impact on the responsible persons claimed to infringe the copyright
I understand that German courts claim to have jurisdiction, and have some kind of specious explanation for why that is. But why does the project have to entertain the fact that they do? What can a German court do to them?
Put another way, if I start sending you "decrees" written in crayon from "The Royal High Court of CamTin," there's no harm in ignoring them. It certainly seems overkill to hire highly-paid experts to represent you in front of my imaginary court. Why does it make sense here? Can the German judges issue rulings to e.g. arrest Gutenberg officers if they ever find themselves in the EU? That's the only thing I can think of that might compel them to even take it as seriously as they have.
Alternatively, they may just be good guys who are willing to fight this to establish some kind of legal precedent that will help others in the future. Perhaps it's a little bit of both.
"The view of PGLAF is that it is up to the rights owner in Germany to identify people there who are infringing on its copyrights, and pursue remediation there. It is not up to PGLAF to police or defend the rights of entities in different countries. Because PGLAF operates as a legitimate non-profit organization, however, it is appropriate to act as the German Court ordered - pending appeal - even though it disagrees with the order."
This explains that they decided to comply because they are operating a "legitimate non-profit organization," which isn't a satisfying reason. Legitimate non-profits outside of Germany, with no business in Germany, which are 100% based in the US, and have received no orders from American courts should be happy to ignore foreign courts.
Again, I'm not a lawyer, but even paying someone to translate a German court order, let alone paying German lawyers to represent you, would seem like a very generous thing to do in the face of "orders" from a court that can't punish you for noncompliance. If I received a German court order, I would throw it away as an obvious mistake, since there's no reason on Earth why I should need to read it.
In any case, the specific question I was curious about is not addressed in the page. If nobody else knows, then speculation probably isn't needed, but it's fun!
Wow, this is weird. I'm from Switzerland and I'm getting blocked since "I'm from Germany". They say to check Maxmind's DB and it clearly says Switzerland too.
This reminds me of services blocking Switzerland because of EU regulations, even though it's not part of the EU. But country-specific blocking and misreading Switzerland for Germany, that's a new level.
* it says they update the DB every month, so that could be an issue. It just seems a bit too wrong for me.
It's a bit of a pity, especially when the law firm, Waldorf Frommer, doesn't seem to respect GDPR on their staff listing page: https://www.waldorf-frommer.de/team/
This is about just a few publications from just three authors. The irony ist that it should be easy to get at least some of the books get blocked in the US as well. Not for copyright reasons, but because of the content. I think it's getting harder and harder for organizations like Project Gutenberg to do this kind of work - it's just too easy to get into trouble.
> The irony ist that it should be easy to get at least some of the books get blocked in the US as well. Not for copyright reasons, but because of the content.
Can you elaborate? Because as far as I'm aware, thanks to the 1st amendment, not a single book is banned in the US. At most they're removed from public or school libraries.
That article lists four incidents that took place outside the U.S., plus one instance of what turns out to be the book's author arguing that its publisher should voluntarily stop printing it. No U.S. government censorship.
Obviously there've been cases in the U.S. that came closer to government censorship of literature than this, but in general it remains the case that it's nearly impossible to get a book banned in the U.S.
I meant blocked by search engines, social media and parental control services whose algorithms and employees wouldn't necessarily consider the cultural context. If we leave out the context some of the works could be considered text book examples for content that is blocked.
