[HN Gopher] Project Gutenberg is no longer fully blocked in Germany
___________________________________________________________________
Project Gutenberg is no longer fully blocked in Germany
They settled their 2015 lawsuit and will only be blocking these
specific works. More information and Background:
https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html
Author : Vespasian
Score : 388 points
Date : 2021-10-28 09:28 UTC (13 hours ago)
| dtech wrote:
| Absurd that there are lawsuits from 2015 about 110 year old
| books.
| thayne wrote:
| > 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 judgment.
|
| ummm, what? Imagine if the UK, or US claimed jurisdiction over
| any website that published content in English.
| nikanj wrote:
| The US has been happy to claim jurisdiction when- and wherever
| they damn well please
| germanier wrote:
| That's only half the story. The court based it on the following
| facts:
|
| * The website was accessible from Germany
|
| * The website was partly translated into German
|
| * The website offered German-language content
|
| * The explicitly offered worldwide service ("anyone anywhere")
|
| * There was a disclaimer directed at people not located in the
| US
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Project Gutenburg was blocked in Germany ? news to me, weird..
| especialy considering the torrents and spy action that has
| happened in the same 25 years, while this token effort protects
| companies formed in the 1950s.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Not only in Germany. Also in Italy, as of May 2020 (those
| hardly definable beasts that carved their way into the state
| made a bunch of targets associating Project Gutenberg with
| pirate sites).
| pgeorgi wrote:
| In this case Project Gutenberg blocked German IP ranges to try
| to avoid legal issues (and since they wanted to make a point
| didn't only block the material under debate but their entire
| site). That overblocking approach seems to be what they changed
| now in favor of a targeted block of just Thomas Mann's work or
| whatever it is the German publishers have been complaining
| about.
|
| Why would a torrent site do the same?
| miki123211 wrote:
| What would have happened if Gutenberg had ignored the German
| court's ruling?
|
| Does Germany have any leverage over an institution that is fully
| based in the US?
|
| If so, does it mean that, as a hypothetical website owner, I need
| to understand and be compliant with every law in every possible
| country, or risk fines / imprisonment?
| Mindwipe wrote:
| > If so, does it mean that, as a hypothetical website owner, I
| need to understand and be compliant with every law in every
| possible country, or risk fines / imprisonment?
|
| This has literally always been the case. Some nations have
| legal statutes that they will not enforce a foreign judgement
| against their own citizens (such as the US shield against UK
| libel judgements) but you're on your own if you leave your
| country of residence. Plenty of US newspapers still block
| access to the UK of stories they feel legal risk from for
| example, because their owners would like to go on holidays
| sometimes.
|
| Extra territorial enforcement is a lot more muddy than people
| think, but it's never, ever been the case that you're fine if
| you're incorporated in a different territory. If they can
| demonstrate that there's a body of people in their country
| accessing the site, then generally you are liable. It's just if
| the legal system considers that to be too much of a pain to
| worry about.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| My understanding is it's complicated in the US, but between
| most other western countries there are treaties allowing
| foreign judgements to be enforced domestically.
|
| >If so, does it mean that, as a hypothetical website owner, I
| need to understand and be compliant with every law in every
| possible country, or risk fines / imprisonment?
|
| By the letter of the law, yes. The idea of a borderless
| internet never had specific legal standing, it's just largely a
| convention on non-enforcement.
| cl3misch wrote:
| I guess maybe, iff you host content copyrighted in Germany?
| pavon wrote:
| I'm curious as to what changed PGLAF's mind. Blocking those
| specific works was all that the court ordered 3 years ago.
| Blocking everything was PGLAF's own decision based on perceived
| risk of further lawsuits about other works. Nothing has really
| changed to decrease that risk. The plaintiffs may have agreed
| that those are the only works they own that were in violation,
| and won't sue about anything else, but any other German who hold
| the copyright to works are still valid there but not the US still
| could.
| voidpointer wrote:
| What I'm not getting: If Project Gutenberg is US based, how can
| they be dragged in front of a German court at all? How could a
| German court enforce anything on a US based entity? So couldn'd
| PG's response just have been to ignore the case? What would have
| happened then?
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Presumably, nothing could "force" them, but without cooperation
| they would simply be blocked forever in Germany.
| willvarfar wrote:
| Was there any general awareness in Germany the PG was blocked,
| and if so, did activism arise?
|
| Or did PG block, and mainstream Germany not notice? Or did
| Germans just shrug and use proxies?
|
| Personally I am a PG user but I'm not in Germany. And I've read
| several PG books. But I have also noticed that the download count
| for many of them is really really low, which is basically saying
| that PG doesn't have a lot or actual users :(
|
| Let's fix this! Everyone reading this post should go download a
| nice book from PG and actually read it! ;)
| pgeorgi wrote:
| There's a German-language "Projekt Gutenberg"[1] as well, a
| long time maintained by the publisher Spiegel. They're the more
| popular project of that kind in Germany, so people probably
| didn't notice what Project Gutenberg was doing.
|
| They claim some kind of edition copyright on the works as re-
| published by them[2] which is funny or sad, depending on how
| you look at it.
|
| [1] https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/
|
| [2] https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/info/texte/info.html
| weinzierl wrote:
| Yes, I was annoyed by it being blocked here.
| [deleted]
| zmix wrote:
| LOL, same here! But, AFAIK, nothing more happened, except us
| being extremely annoyed.
| rob74 wrote:
| There was no general awareness AFAIK. I'm from Germany and only
| learnt about it when I went to their site to download a book I
| was interested in (back in 2019 I think), found out it was
| blocked, researched the reason, found out that they didn't
| actually have to block everything, got angry (partly at the
| plaintiffs, but mostly at PG for their "overcompliance"), then
| shrugged and downloaded the book from somewhere else. So if
| this overcompliance was really intended to "instrumentalize"
| their readers, like the plaintiffs said, then I guess they
| unfortunately overestimated their impact.
|
| The news that the blocking has been removed was reported
| yesterday by IT news sites (e.g.
| https://www.heise.de/news/Literaturportal-Project-
| Gutenberg-...), but it wasn't exactly front page news either...
| earthboundkid wrote:
| It's too bad that PG is totally reader hostile. :-P It could be a
| great source for the readers of the world. Instead it's a bunch
| of unreadable text files that give "entrepreneurs" the raw
| material they need to put out a bunch of $1 ebooks.
| burkaman wrote:
| What are you talking about? You can download PG books in ePub
| and Kindle formats directly from the site. Are you thinking of
| a different project?
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Why would you say so? I think it is really good that they offer
| to view the book lots of formats. And they haven't came up with
| their own scrolling solution, still scrolling the full book
| HTML is faster than any modern site.
|
| Also, if I wanted to read a book to the full, I wouldn't have
| read it in their interface no matter how better they would be.
| So I like to quickly view text then download epub.
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| PG's goal is the digitization and long-term storage of public-
| domain written materials, and I'm glad that's all they're
| doing.
|
| I think you're looking for Standard Ebooks [0][1], which
| utilizes (usually) Project Gutenberg-sourced text, original-
| edition illustrations, and volunteer editors to create
| professional, free-as-in-beer ebooks.
|
| [0] https://standardebooks.org/
|
| [1] I tend to write, or only ever see, "eBooks", but Standard
| Ebooks styles it "Ebooks". That's the only thing I don't like
| about them, and I really really don't like it. Given my
| uncontroversial acceptance of the capitalization used when
| starting a sentence with the word "Email", I imagine I'll live.
| rsstack wrote:
| First: Browsing around the website, all books I could reach
| from the homepage or by searching for titles I could think of
| are available in multiple digital formats.
|
| Second: PG is older than PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and even HTML. It
| isn't too surprising to me that there are works there that are
| text only.
| splonk wrote:
| I remember reading plain text books from PG at work ~20 years
| ago. The network was monitored so I had to bring them in on a
| 3.5" floppy. Having probably read thousands of pages that
| way, it's a bit odd to see plain text described as
| "unreadable".
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| Maybe stupid question, if PGLAF is based in U.S.A., why not just
| tell plantiff to piss off and ignore any lawsuit in foreign
| jurisdiction? If no server is in Germany and no business is
| conducted in Germany why waste money on this instead of expanding
| project?
| ho_schi wrote:
| I want state here on fact, the "copyright" is an rather new
| anglon-saxon invention and was only later imported to Germany[1].
| Interestingly, the era of the "land of poets and thinkers" and
| the economic rise of Germany was boosted by the fact - that there
| were no copyrights laws which hindered. Authors had to publish
| good and more work.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Background
|
| Quote from Wikipedia
|
| _Printing brought profound social changes. The rise in literacy
| across Europe led to a dramatic increase in the demand for
| reading matter. Prices of reprints were low, so publications
| could be bought by poorer people, creating a mass audience. In
| German language markets before the advent of copyright, technical
| materials, like popular fiction, were inexpensive and widely
| available; it has been suggested this contributed to Germany 's
| industrial and economic success. After copyright law became
| established (in 1710 in England and Scotland, and in the 1840s in
| German-speaking areas) the low-price mass market vanished, and
| fewer, more expensive editions were published; distribution of
| scientific and technical information was greatly reduced._
|
| And from the history arctile
|
| _Heinrich Heine, in a 1854 letter to his publisher, complains:
| "Due to the tremendously high prices you have established, I will
| hardly see a second edition of the book anytime soon. But you
| must set lower prices, dear Campe, for otherwise I really don't
| see why I was so lenient with my material interests."_
|
| It is not okay to claim other works as yours, publish private
| material or just don't give you a fair share upon your work.
| Probably we should have opted for another approach than
| "copyright" or "patents". Luckily the US at least got "Fair Use"
| and maybe the idea of a "Culture Flatrate" from Germany is also a
| good idea.
| phrz wrote:
| Copyright is, probably, very Continental. In the late 15th
| century, before the arrival of the printing press to England,
| Venice had become the "capital of printing," and the Venetian
| Cabinet granted the first exclusive right to publish a
| particular book to Daniele Barbaro for a term of ten years.
| Christopher May (2002) The Venetian Moment: New Technologies,
| Legal Innovation and the Institutional Origins of Intellectual
| Property, Prometheus, 20:2, 172, DOI:
| 10.1080/08109020210138979. It was only later that England
| codified the concept of copyright.
| Igelau wrote:
| > the "copyright" is an rather new anglon-saxon invention and
| was only later imported to Germany
|
| Hmm... it's not exactly "new" if it's older than the unified
| German state...
| linspace wrote:
| When you feel you are not doing anything useful think that maybe
| at least you are not doing anything harmful. What an incredible
| waste of money and time to avoid culture distribution, their
| authors long ago dead.
| NoCanDo wrote:
| Fischer being the cunts they are.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Scummy corporations are gonna be scummy if the law lets them do
| it. If it's not Fischer, it's gonna be someone else. This is
| more of a failure of the legal system which enable such
| behavior.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Better submit an URL and your post as a comment :)
| Vespasian wrote:
| Thanks. I'll keep it in mind for next time :)
| heisig wrote:
| This is great news! This is a wonderful project, and the fact
| that it wasn't accessible from Germany made me profoundly sad and
| angry.
|
| I hope the responsible copyright lawyers have a hard time
| sleeping because of this and consider changing their line of
| work. If you are blocking people from reading books in the public
| domain, it is a good indication that you are one of the bad guys.
|
| Even worse, they only blocked people from Germany that didn't
| know how to use a VPN. German courts really don't get how the
| internet works.
| IanSanders wrote:
| >I hope the responsible copyright lawyers have a hard time
| sleeping because of this and consider changing their line of
| work.
|
| Risking going off tangent, I highly doubt that would happen.
| When you work in a domain, your entire life becomes _it_ , you
| slowly lose wider context and alternative perspective. I doubt
| there are many people who purposefully want to be the bad guys,
| it seems more like "learned indifference". Just like many
| people who eat meat on a daily basis but would be uncomfortable
| with a thought of a chicken being killed in a process (and some
| freak out from a sight of a live lobster in a restaurant tank).
| Maybe it's a negative side of the "flow" - losing some degree
| of empathy.
| gusennan wrote:
| I agree it's good news that the project complied with the
| original court order from 2018, which was to block the works on
| German IP addresses that are still under German copyright law.
| Why would American copyright law apply in Germany? It's a bit
| disingenous of Project G that, instead of blocking access to
| just these books in Germany, they blocked access to the all the
| books. That was project G's, and not the German court's,
| decision. I'm glad they've changed their minds.
| mannerheim wrote:
| > Why would American copyright law apply in Germany?
|
| It doesn't. Project Gutenberg is an American entity, and
| operated entirely in the US. This is like asking why should
| American free speech laws apply in Thailand in regards to
| Thailand enforcing lese-majeste laws on an American website.
| Archelaos wrote:
| > and operated entirely in the US.
|
| The problem is that it sent copyrighted files to Germany
| (outside the U.S.). The court order only demands to stop
| this.
|
| I doubt that the order is enforcible on U.S. soil. But if
| individuals associated with an uncomplying organization set
| foot in or have assets in a territory where the order could
| be enforced, they risk real consequences.
| mannerheim wrote:
| US websites which insult the Thai monarchy also send
| illegal files to Thailand.
| phicoh wrote:
| Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.
|
| If you look at it from an EU perspective, if you download a
| book that still falls under copyright in the EU (without
| permisison) and the server is in the EU, then obviously this is
| a copyright violation and the person who makes the work
| available on the server has a problem.
|
| If the server is not in the EU, then the person downloading the
| book is essentially importing a copyrighted work into the EU
| without permission of the owner. Which is also a copyright
| violation.
|
| Then the question becomes to what extent the person who makes
| the work available has ties to the EU. The stronger the ties,
| the more effort can be required to avoid such illegal imports.
| For example, if there would be ads targeted at the German
| public, then courts would be very quick that this falls under
| jurisdiction of German courts.
|
| So people in German who would use a VPN to get around the
| block, who still violate copyright law in Germany.
| germanier wrote:
| > Even worse, they only blocked people from Germany that didn't
| know how to use a VPN. German courts really don't get how the
| internet works.
|
| German courts are aware of the existence of means to circumvent
| such a block but don't see that as a reason to not even try.
| See e.g BGH, 26.11.2015 - I ZR 174/14
| SapporoChris wrote:
| I ran into the site being blocked a couple of weeks ago.
| Changed VPN settings to a server in another country and had
| access without issues.
|
| Just saying, the blocking was rather trivial to bypass.
| chronogram wrote:
| The German copyright law doesn't seem unnecessarily vague,
| simply life+70 years, which is why there are now two authors
| blocked (3 at the time of the link). If you have a problem with
| Germany's life+70 years then you shouldn't be upset with the
| lawyers, you should be upset with your government to change
| your government's copyright laws to match whatever the US does.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| It's a bit more complicated: The US adopted[1] the
| international regimen (life + 70) with an exception that US
| statute of limitations from before 1978 continue to apply to
| works published in the US before 1978.
|
| So the US adopted everybody else's rules but has an escape
| hatch for older works - that only applies in the US and this
| is where the contention over these 3-5 works comes from.
|
| The US later extended the "70 years" rule for anonymous,
| pseudonymous and work-for-hire works to cover 95 years since
| publication or 120 years since creation (whatever happens
| first) because The Mouse squeaked[2].
|
| I'd prefer Germany not to adopt that one.
|
| [1] https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html
|
| [2]
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
| [deleted]
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| > you should be upset with your government to change your
| government's copyright laws to match whatever the US does.
|
| Why should every government copy what US does?
| Mindwipe wrote:
| At least in this case the US copied Europe with it's term
| extensions (Disney certainly weren't unhappy about it but
| the notion that Disney drove this is a bit of a myth). And
| Europe set that term length when the EU unified terms
| because it set it at the longest length from the member
| nations at the time, which was Germany's life+70 years.
|
| It's pretty interesting but the current global norm for
| copyright duration is, due to circumstance, almost entirely
| based on German norms.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > the notion that Disney drove this is a bit of a myth
|
| I thought it was Elvis Presley.
| mantas wrote:
| Looks like OP wants German laws to match US laws in this
| department. So he should be angry at lawmakers, not at
| lawyers.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Sssh! If you tell foreign courts and litigants about VPNs,
| they'll stop accepting "we'll block it in your country if you
| get off our backs" and start demanding international
| jurisdiction.
|
| At that point "it's legal in my country" will no longer suffice
| for anything online (which is basically everything). Everyone
| will need to be in compliance with the most restrictive subset
| of the law. Just in the realm of copyright, the public domain
| would be dramatically curtailed. All you would need is one rich
| country with strong legal ties to other nations and an appetite
| for perpetual copyright, and you would have a judgment mill by
| which you can make using any public domain content extremely
| risky.
|
| The current status quo of country-by-country blocking may seem
| silly to people who know how to evade those blocks, but it
| makes courts happy and walls off the worst effects of copyright
| maximalism.
| myohmy wrote:
| Hell will freeze over before we get an international court.
|
| The US literally has a law on the books to invade the
| International Criminal Court in the Netherlands if GWB is
| ever held trial for war crimes (wars of aggression have been
| a war crime since the end of WW2).
| ren_engineer wrote:
| >The US literally has a law on the books
|
| laws can change, I'd personally love to see some of our
| politicians and military leadership get punished for lying
| to the American people and the damage they did to entire
| nations around the world. A lot of people my age feel the
| same, some of these people better hope they croak before a
| younger generation can hold them accountable
| kmeisthax wrote:
| I'm not sure that's relevant, since the Hague Invasion
| Act[0] only applies to war crimes. There's all sorts of
| other cases in which the US is perfectly happy with other
| countries asserting jurisdiction over it's own citizens.
| The US has signed plenty of extradition treaties that allow
| other countries access to US citizens who commit acts which
| are crimes in both jurisdictions[1].
|
| Furthermore, copyright is usually treated as a civil tort;
| and the US also has processes to domesticate and enforce
| foreign court orders under US jurisdiction should someone
| decide to play scofflaw. There's _plenty_ of international
| cooperation that makes the whole concept of "jurisdiction
| ends at national borders" null and void.
|
| [0] Not the real name of the act, but this is funnier.
|
| [1] If you're curious, there _are_ countries that object to
| criminal extradition. Notably, France considers French
| nationality to constitute immunity to any extradition
| treaty it signs. Though, they haven 't promised to invade
| countries over it like the US did.
| consumer451 wrote:
| While extremely significant, I don't think that's the only
| reason. It is possibly even worse and the blame sometimes
| even falls outside of US borders.
|
| We live in a world largely run by multinational
| corporations who would prefer to continue operating in a
| world devoid of multinational jurisprudence.
| winstonewert wrote:
| Where can I read more about this?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_Inter
| nat...
|
| "In 2002, the U.S. Congress passed the American Service-
| Members' Protection Act (ASPA), which contained a number
| of provisions, including authorization of the President
| to "use all means necessary and appropriate to bring
| about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being
| detained by, on behalf of, or at the request of the
| International Criminal Court""
| zmix wrote:
| In Germany, the concept of "Public Domain" does not exist.
| (EDIT: It may exist 70 years after the authors death). IANAL.
|
| Besides that, even if it would, the books would not have been
| in the Public Domain. From the announcement:
|
| > In Germany, they are copyrighted based on "life +70 years" of
| copyright protection (so, copyright will expire after 2020,
| 2025 and 2027, respectively).
|
| From a legal and business perspective, neither German
| legislation nor the Fischer Verlag are at fault here. It's just
| the way it is (in Germany): Creators hold their intellectual
| property for life and can make sure, their heir profits from
| the work of the (grand)parents, as well (+70 years after death
| of copyright holder).
|
| And while I understand, that Project Gutenberg has limited
| resources and may have no desire to do the extra work of
| blocking works on a case by case basis, it would not have been
| difficult. Instead, they have chosen to collectively punish all
| people from Germany, which resulted us to be seven years
| without access, at least as long we did not utilize a VPN.
|
| I am very happy, that this has been resolved now. All the legal
| hassle has cost (non-profit) money and was worthless, because
| the solution is the same now, they could have implemented seven
| years ago.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| > In Germany, the concept of "Public Domain" does not exist.
| (EDIT: It may exist 70 years after the authors death). IANAL.
|
| Works are "gemeinfrei" (approx. "public domain") 70 years
| after the author's death, or 70 years after publication for
| non-natural persons holding a copyright (e.g. corporate
| copyright).
|
| What you might think of is that there's no official way for
| an author to release works into the public domain in Germany.
|
| That, and the life+70 idea, comes from the personality rights
| angle that underlies German (and other European) copyright:
| Personality rights are protected for 70 years after death,
| probably under the assumption that everybody who cares deeply
| about a person (instead of being potentially offended in some
| abstract sense) is also gone by then. Works are considered an
| embodiment of the personality of their author, and so they
| receive the same kind of protection. Just as you can't give
| away your personality rights, you can't give away all rights
| to your work[1]. Their commercial value, while more important
| these days, played a secondary role in the creation of this
| concept.
|
| In comparison, the Anglo-Saxon copyright tradition (based on
| Statute of Anne of 1710[2]) cares primarily about protecting
| the commercial value and exploitation rights of the works,
| with little concern about how "remixes could attack the honor
| of the author"[3] or anything like that.
|
| [1] Of course you can trade away commercial exploitation
| rights.
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne
|
| [3] To paint the German position with a very broad brush
| orra wrote:
| I know Germany doesn't do legal precedent, but is there
| actually any case law demonstrating works can't be put into
| the public domain?
|
| The idea it can't be done is a trope at this point, but I
| am frankly skeptical.
|
| Moral rights to recognition aside, copyright can be sold,
| like any other property. Why do we think it can't be
| abandoned, again like any other property?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Richard Hipp has had to gin up a license for SQLite
| because of this.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| SS42 UrhG (https://www.gesetze-im-
| internet.de/urhg/__42.html, english translation
| https://www.gesetze-im-
| internet.de/englisch_urhg/englisch_ur...) is probably
| core to what an author can do about their personality
| rights in relation to their works:
|
| ---
|
| Section 42 Right of revocation for changed conviction
|
| (1) The author may revoke a right of use vis-a-vis the
| rightholder if the work no longer reflects his conviction
| and he can therefore no longer be expected to agree to
| the exploitation of the work. The author's successor in
| title (section 30) may exercise the right of revocation
| only if he can prove that the author would have been
| entitled to exercise this right prior to his death and
| that he was prevented from exercising the right or
| provided for its exercise by testamentary disposition.
|
| (2) The right of revocation may not be waived in advance.
| Its exercise may not be precluded.
|
| ... (more stuff that is about compensation and how you
| can't use this clause to just start to exploit the works
| on your own after taking it out of circulation, but not
| relevant here) ...
|
| ---
|
| Putting stuff into the public domain would either mean:
|
| - that an author waives their right to revocation in
| advance (that "rightholder" would be the public, I
| guess), but that's explicitly forbidden by (2) or
|
| - that they can claw back the work from the public
| domain, which keeps the work in some weird state where
| it's PD-unless-the-author-objects.
|
| The only way to put a work into something that is
| somewhat similar to the public domain under German
| copyright (without dying and waiting for 70 years) is to
| publish it anonymously with a dedication to the public,
| so that redistribution etc is clear, and then remove all
| traces that you authored it (e.g. drafts, notes, ...) -
| and even then it falls back to you if somebody starts
| digging and finds proof of authorship (SS66 (2)
| https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__66.html,
| english translation https://www.gesetze-im-
| internet.de/englisch_urhg/englisch_ur...). Any legal
| conscious redistributor wouldn't touch something like
| that with a 10 foot pole.
|
| Just use CC0, it's cleaner.
|
| As for
|
| > Why do we think it can't be abandoned, again like any
| other property?
|
| You can't sell yourself into slavery. That's the category
| personality rights operate in. Does it make sense for
| copyrights? -\\_(tsu)_/-
| pbininda wrote:
| Small addition: the UrhG mentioned is the
| _Urheberrechtsgesetz_. Translated to English you would
| call it the "Law of rights of the originator". It is not
| just about "the right to make copies".
| kps wrote:
| The English term is 'moral rights'.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| Urheberpersonlichkeitsrecht (what is called "moral
| rights" in English) is a subset of Urheberrecht.
|
| UrhG covers copyright and moral rights, some stuff at the
| intersection, and then some, but on the other hand
| lacking a few bits covered by US copyright.
|
| 1:1 mappings between legal regimes seem to be quite rare.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Just use CC0, it's cleaner.
|
| Which is probably fine for most text. Although note that
| CC0 was withdrawn from consideration by the OSI as a
| software license primarily because of issues around the
| patent language. (Basically the license does not grant
| patent rights which, depending on one's position about
| implicit grants, may or may not be an issue.) MIT-0 may
| be a better choice for software as a result.
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| > And while I understand, that Project Gutenberg has limited
| resources and may have no desire to do the extra work of
| blocking works on a case by case basis, it would not have
| been difficult. Instead, they have chosen to collectively
| punish all people from Germany, which resulted us to be seven
| years without access, at least as long we did not utilize a
| VPN.
|
| They explain their rationale for this and it is a very sound
| one, it is not about the difficulty to block, it is about
| opening themselves to lawsuits. Here is the relevant quotes:
|
| > 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.
|
| > [...] 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 agree with their assessment, once the German court decided
| that all international treaties and public domain basically
| don't exist, and decided that German courts have jurisdiction
| over the US, it means that ALL works on the project are
| equally "illegal" (or at least many, they can't know which
| ones), and therefore nothing on the whole site is safe to be
| accessible in Germany. Their only option was to block the
| whole site or open themselves to uncountable other lawsuits
| (and limitless amount of punitive damages).
|
| As to how they reopened the site for Germany now, I can only
| speculate, but I imagine that in the settlement they somehow
| got some kind of assurance from the big publishers that they
| won't sue and seek punitive damages for other works. With
| that the project decided that the risk of lawsuit is now low
| enough to allow for opening for Germany.
| germanier wrote:
| Which international treaties were ignored by German courts
| in these cases?
| ma2rten wrote:
| The OP writes: "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. Plaintiff managed to find a German Court, and
| some precedents from Germany (and, after the lawsuit was
| filed, from the EU), which were willing to flaunt
| international treaties by developing a theory that PGLAF
| is under jurisdiction of the German Court system."
| germanier wrote:
| That's the biased interpretation of the PGLAF. Framing
| the whole thing as "unambiguous", "managed to find a
| German Court" and "some precedents" is disingenuous.
| There is a reason they don't refer to any precedent
| supporting their position: there is none. How can you say
| with a straight face that the issue is unambiguous when
| in fact there is precedence pointing in the other
| direction?
|
| Note that the courts didn't ignore those treaties and or
| somehow ruled they weren't enforceable. They just have a
| different interpretation of the legal contents of those
| treaties than the PGLAF does. Law is often not black or
| white and anyone who claims there is just one true
| position doesn't tell you the whole truth. The issue is
| actually pretty interesting legally and there is a lot
| more subtlety to it than the claim that courts are
| somehow bending the law.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| > ALL works on the project are equally "illegal" (or at
| least many, they can't know which ones)
|
| Those whose authors aren't dead for 70 years (because we
| don't have the "pre-1978" loophole the US has). Probably
| (but here things get vague) even limited to stuff
| originating from German authors, even if it was also
| published in the US pre-1978.
|
| > limitless amount of punitive damages
|
| Punitive damages? In Germany?
|
| > I imagine that in the settlement they somehow got some
| kind of assurance from the big publishers that they won't
| sue and seek punitive damages for other works.
|
| Project Gutenberg tried to make a stand and then found out
| that practically nobody bothered to notice their protest.
| Now they stop making an ass of themselves. Good on them.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > From a legal and business perspective, neither German
| legislation nor the Fischer Verlag are at fault here. It's
| just the way it is (in Germany): Creators hold their
| intellectual property for life and can make sure, their heir
| profits from the work of the (grand)parents, as well (+70
| years after death of copyright holder).
|
| I don't follow. Aren't you describing German legislation's
| choice to have extremely long copyright periods? How do you
| conclude that German legislation not at fault here?
| [deleted]
| Archelaos wrote:
| The incompatiblity of U.S. and German copyright law is not so
| much in the momentary duration, which in both jursidictions
| is 70 years after the author's death (exceptions apply to
| anonymous publications). The major incompatiblities arise
| from the regulations which were in place before the durations
| were harmonized (for the U.S., prior to 1978).
|
| On an international scale, the situation is more complicated.
| Rougly speaking, the range for the duration of copyright is
| from "life + 50 yrs" up to "life + 100 yrs". Wikipedia has a
| list of these.[1] There are many countries where works from
| up to the early 1970s are already in the public domain that
| are still under copyright protection in the U.S. for up to
| the next 20 years. In principle, problems may arise if the
| country in which a work is published in the Internet sets a
| shorter term of protection than the maximum term in this
| list.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyri
| ght...
| dmos62 wrote:
| Nitpick. German intellectual property laws are part of German
| legislation. Legislation is a body of laws. Maybe you meant
| the German legislative community. Well, it's their
| responsibility to maintain the legislation. Laws are not
| immutable.
| riedel wrote:
| I think our legislative has better things to do than to
| adopt US copyright law before 1978. Although it seems
| unpopular IMHO it would have caused project Gutenberg no
| harm to remove this few items until copyright is expired.
|
| We are always complaining about China that they do not
| fully honor IP. I believe it is an ethical thing to do to
| honour the laws of the country were sth was originally
| created even if strictly legally speaking I can move around
| the world to circumvent unpleasant jurisdiction.
| dmos62 wrote:
| I've very little respect for intellectual property. I
| don't see it as much more than a way to stifle culture
| and innovation in the sake of greed. You could have a
| sensible implementation of IP where an intellectual
| product can be considered your property for some short
| duration. Not decades though.
| themitigating wrote:
| Why isn't the legislative not at fault if they have the power
| to change but won't? The reasons you cite for having this
| long copyright could apply anywhere. So what's the difference
| between Germany and the US. Shouldn't we want this changed
| everywhere.
|
| I'm really trying hard not to whatabout this but tone of
| understanding at the copyright laws in Germany just got to
| me.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Even worse, they only blocked people from Germany that didn't
| know how to use a VPN. German courts really don't get how the
| internet works.
|
| I wouldn't make that assumption at all. As with many other
| examples, such as GDPR-related geofencing, a good faith attempt
| to restrict access usually goes a long way even if it's
| possible for a savvy user to get around the blocks.
| [deleted]
| tpush wrote:
| > If you are blocking people from reading books in the public
| domain [...]
|
| 'Public domain' doesn't exist in Germany.
| Vespasian wrote:
| 70 years after the last authors death it becomes public
| domain.
|
| You cannot give up all rights voluntarily.
| arturh85 wrote:
| see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29025058
| [deleted]
| detaro wrote:
| For the purposes of the discussion here, "Gemeinfreiheit" is
| basically the same thing.
| hnbad wrote:
| An important caveat is that in Germany (and Austria, I
| think?) you can't legally dedicate a work to the public
| domain, but you can surrender most of your legal rights to
| a work. This is why international public domain dedications
| often include a fallback public license.
| easytiger wrote:
| I had forgotten about this. Absurd it went on so long.
|
| As it happens I'm currently reading Thomas Man's English
| translation of Death in Venice from Gutenberg.
|
| That doesn't seem to be included in the embargoed texts.
| avalonpark wrote:
| At Brigade Komarla Heights, the residential units are designed to
| have good inflow of natural light and fresh air.
|
| https://www.brigadekomarlaheights.org.in/
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Weird how they apparently have agreed to block access to books by
| the three authors until the copyright expires, while one of them
| died in 1950 so for that person the copyright term of life+70
| years, which this was all about, has already expired.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| What's the status of works by Heinrich Mann, who seems to have
| died in 1950? Shouldn't those have entered the public domain in
| Germany on Jan 1, 2021? If so, will PG be making those works
| available to German users?
| yorwba wrote:
| The message displayed when you try to access a blocked work
| https://block.pglaf.org/germany.shtml states:
|
| _The block applies to seven books by author Thomas Mann (until
| January 1, 2026) and five books by author Alfred Doblin (until
| January 1, 2028). No other Project Gutenberg eBooks, by any
| author, are blocked in Germany._
|
| I can confirm that works by Heinrich Mann are accessible.
| wortelefant wrote:
| Waldorf Frommer is the lawyer firm that represents the publishing
| house S Fisher Verlag who brought project Gutenberg to court, WF
| are also notorious for mass-sending letters to supposed
| torrenters, threatening them with a lawsuit and asking for money
| ("Massenabmahnungen"). Glad that they lost.
| https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frommer_Legal
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