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Project Gutenberg Blocks German Users After Outrageous Court Ruling (teleread.org)
Slashdot reader David Rothman writes: The oldest public domain publisher in the world, Project Gutenberg, has blocked German users after an outrageous legal ruling saying this American nonprofit must obey German copyright law... Imagine the technical issues for fragile, cash-strapped public domain organizations -- worrying not only about updated databases covering all the world's countries, but also applying the results to distribution.
TeleRead carries two views on the German case involving a Holtzbrinck subsidiary...
Significantly, older books provide just a tiny fraction of the revenue of megaconglomerates like Holtzbrinck but are essential to students of literature and indeed to students in general. What's more, as illustrated by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in the U.S., copyright law in most countries tends to reflect the wishes and power of lobbyists more than it does the commonweal. Ideally the travails of Project Gutenberg will encourage tech companies, students, teachers, librarians and others to step up their efforts against oppressive copyright laws. While writers and publishers deserve fair compensation, let's focus more on the needs of living creators and less on the estates of authors dead for many decades. The three authors involved in the German case are Heinrich Mann (died in 1950), Thomas Mann (1955) and Alfred Döblin (1957).
One solution in the U.S. and elsewhere for modern creators would be national library endowments... Meanwhile, it would be very fitting for Google and other deep-pocketed corporations with an interest in a global Internet and more balanced copyright to help Gutenberg finance its battle. Law schools, other academics, educators and librarians should also offer assistance.
Significantly, older books provide just a tiny fraction of the revenue of megaconglomerates like Holtzbrinck but are essential to students of literature and indeed to students in general. What's more, as illustrated by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in the U.S., copyright law in most countries tends to reflect the wishes and power of lobbyists more than it does the commonweal. Ideally the travails of Project Gutenberg will encourage tech companies, students, teachers, librarians and others to step up their efforts against oppressive copyright laws. While writers and publishers deserve fair compensation, let's focus more on the needs of living creators and less on the estates of authors dead for many decades. The three authors involved in the German case are Heinrich Mann (died in 1950), Thomas Mann (1955) and Alfred Döblin (1957).
One solution in the U.S. and elsewhere for modern creators would be national library endowments... Meanwhile, it would be very fitting for Google and other deep-pocketed corporations with an interest in a global Internet and more balanced copyright to help Gutenberg finance its battle. Law schools, other academics, educators and librarians should also offer assistance.
What a bunch of Copyright Naz......
Basically, there are a bunch of people who just want stuff for free.
* The Gutenberg crowd wants people to give them their books for nothing.
* The publishers want people to give them money for nothing.
You're all a bunch of wankers.
We should all be allowed to break the law if weâ(TM)re a âoecash-strapped organisationâ? That makes total sense!
I have seldom seen a more biased take on DRMs than this piece by David Rothman. Most of the anti-DRM-arguments are so twisted they don't deserve any attention. The mention of fair compensation is merely a token gesture, in vain hoping to make things look balanced.
First 20 years free. Then an escalating payment is required for each 20 year renewal afterward. Simply requiring a payment will solve the orphan works problem. This solution also lets Disney keep Mickey under copyright forever if they keep paying the escalating renewal fees. This is a simple solution to keeping commercially profitable works under copyright and letting everything else revert to the public domain.
America is the driving force behind copyright extensions and indeed copyright itself all over the world. This is just one of very few situations where works are locked away longer in a foreign country than in the USA.
The outrageous part isn't really the ruling... that's about access, and while it's problematic, the root outrage here should be the ridiculous length of copyright in the western world in general, companies still profiting or restricting access and it's decades after the author has passed
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
American courts were first to apply american rules to the whole world for their own benefit. Now when the role are reversed an american website tell us it's now all bad. I say at this point this is only justice an American organisation feel a bit of heat. Also, them thinking they are somehow essential to the whole world is typical american hubris.
*Shrug*
Tell that to Kim Dotcom, a German born New Zealand citizen and resident, about the US copyright.
The German decision that if a book is written in German means Germany has jurisdiction is the issue here. The courts told MacMillan that they should go to the US to sue because the web site has a physical presence there and so does MacMillan. MacMillan said no, we want to sue here because we may win due to EU copyright laws. The German court then had to come up with some reason to keep the suit because MacMillan couldn't show that the copyright was even infringed in Germany. They did and then came up with the language thing. Mostly from their bottom. This will now set precedence of language being the way to get companies to be sued in your country even if they don't have a physical presence. Look forward to companies getting dragged cross border for stupid shit now because.the manual for something was written in your local language.
Ask ze Poilish vhat happens vhen you mess with ze Germans, Herr Troublemaker!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Unless they have staff or an office in Germany, why do they care what the German courts say? What can the German government do besides putting blocks in place, which has the same effect anyway.
You should be able to break German law all you like if you don't have anything to do with Germany.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
No, the issue is that every outlying country shouldn't get to determine worldwide copyright law for everyone else on the internet. It's bad enough that the U.S. has such sway on internet copyright. Now Germany wants to take it even further?
So what happens when Botswana decides that copyright lasts forever, huh?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Fortunately we all speak World Speak (English) instead of those other, more obscure Indo-European languages in the future.
Fortunately we all speak World Speak (Mandarin Chinese) instead of those other, more obscure Indo-European languages in the future.
"While writers and publishers deserve fair compensation, "
But not their great grand-children.
I am all for shorter copyright and public domain, but everybody must obey the law. If you provide a service in a particular country, you must do that lawfully.
And, while it is true that corporations and lobbyists shape the laws in the US, that is much less so in European countries. So calling the court decision outrageous for insisting on this simple principle is counterproductive.
I agree that copyright terms are a problem, but as long as they're the law, I don't see the problem with forcing websites to conform to the standard, assuming that all they're being asked for is blocking by IP.
Project Gutenberg claimed that the German language works are for consumption of German readers in the US, so blocking German users seems to be in line with that.
Or what?
Except that the authors of the books are German, and under contract with German publishers. I would agree if this had nothing to do with Germany, but that would be really hard to argue in this case.
Not worried about Botswana copyright law.
But I'm more concerned about North Korea or Saudi Arabia copyright law. The former has nukes and soon means to put them close to anybody asses and the latter oil to pay for killing infidels.
And why, o enlightened slashdot poster, should the US have the right to determine internet copyright, but nobody else?
to those of you say "There ought to be a law..."
Once power is given to the state you get...well this
This is the law that got me to celebrate National Arbor Day.
If planting trees can destroy idiot politicians, let's plant a forest.
Celebrate National Arbor Day this Spring !
The authors of the books were also under contract to publish the books in the United States, and elsewhere, and in those jurisdictions the books have since entered the public domain. In the United States, from which Project Gutenberg operates, the books in question entered the public domain prior to the equivalent in Germany. If the authors had only published in Germany, the German court would clearly have jurisdiction. As they entered multiple agreements contractually, it's not so clear as the plaintiff claims.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
Because the books were published in both Germany and the United States. If they were published in Botswana, then your red herring would be relevant. The German court appears to be conflating distribution with publishing.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
The authors of these books have been dead for 60+ years. I don't they have valid contacts with anyone, not that the existence of such contacts has anything to do with the enforceability of copyrights.
In this particular case the authors of the books are dead, and have been pushing up daisies for a very long time.
It's ridiculous to keep copyright enforced so long after the authors are gone. Copyright should expire; it's a sad testament to greed that these ridiculous lawsuits aren't thrown out.
Gutenberg was german, he invented the printed press process with movable type, which effectively took literacy as a skill away from nobles and the church and started a revolution of book access to the masses. He died largely unknown and with merrits unrecognized.
You've got that the wrong way around...
Imagine having to obey Singapore's littering laws in the United States.
Suppose you bought a brand of tissue available in both Singapore and the United States.
The packaging has a label that contains English, Malay, Tamil, and Mandarin.
You then discarded it in a public area in the United States.
You post videos to Facebook and someone in Singapore notices you discarding a tissue.
You then receive notice that you have a trial date in Singapore because the brand of tissue is available there.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
You are supposed to turn to politicians and say THERE OUTTA BE A LAW! That's how it works in a democracy.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
What's more, as illustrated by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in the U.S., copyright law in most countries tends to reflect the wishes and power of lobbyists more than it does the commonweal.
In Europe there never was an idea to balance "commonweal" (I guess that should be commonwealth?) versus author rights.
Bottom line we have no copyrights but moral rights.
That means the "copyright" more precisely "moralright" or "authors right" sticks with the original creator. And he hands out licenses to publishers and similar entities to "copy" it.
And that is valid ... uh, roughly 70 years after the death of the author or something like that.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You've got that the wrong way around...
Imagine having to obey Singapore's littering laws in the United States.
The German court did not as Project Gutenberg to make any changes for users from the US. PG is only supposed to make works that are still copyrighted in Germany inaccessible for users with German IPs.
and in those jurisdictions the books have since entered the public domain.
No they have not. If at all the english translations "might" have.
The USA is a signer of the Bern Convention, hence the original German acts are still under copyright.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
it's a sad testament to greed that these ridiculous lawsuits aren't thrown out. :D
In this case, we have a law. So the law suit can not be thrown out
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Meanwhile, it would be very fitting for Google and other deep-pocketed corporations with an interest in a global Internet and more balanced copyright to help Gutenberg finance its battle.
Google has lost all interest in the original mission to which it once referred of making knowledge available to the world (along with its watch-phrase "Don't be evil").
The near-death of the Google Books project is the poster child for this. Google actually won the lawsuit that the Authors Guild had waged against it for putting books, with limited search of snippets, on Google Books, and Google has a millions of out of copyright, out of print books - virtually inaccessible to the world - that it has already scanned and can be put on Google Books in the entirety to make them available to the world any time it likes. But it has dropped plans to do that. Books are still being added I read, but at a slow pace - not a priority. There are an estimated 25 million such inaccessible books out there that could be scanned and added, doubling the size of Google Books.
Google losing interest in supporting public access to published works shows up in lots of ways. It stopped updated the Google Books history page in 2007, its books blog has disappeared, its really useful NGram viewer stopped updating in 2008.
(And lately it was one of the five principle corporate sponsors of the CPAC wingnut festival.)
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I think that both words 'author' & 'authority' are related...
Perhaps, initially. Someone that created something, was the only authority that could say if others used his invention correctly, or not. Or was responsible of any wrong use of his creation.
Then, when she sold her creation to other, the authority should extend to the new owner. But, in reality, depending on the complexity of the creation, the last word should belong to the creator.
Today, we might have missed the original point. And anyone that owns anything pretends to be as the creator. Extending eternally the rights of something that they might have bought but that they might not understand.
But who cares? It is now, only money...
Rwe obliged 2 save our future by choosing:O3 hole-greenhouse effect instead of accepting everydays gossip-nonsense chat?
However, Project Gutenberg does very very little to promote the fact that copyright terms are different in different countries. It would have been pretty trivial to set up the site with an awareness of international terms and dynamically generate correct copyright information for any users from outside of the US.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Nobody should attempt to run any kind of free-as-in-freedom enterprise like this these days, without having at least a mirror on the dark web. No excuses. For the night is dark and full of terrors. Predatory lawyers and rent seekers will eviscerate your little defenceless non-profit if it is even a smidgeon of a threat to corporate profits or if you can be extorted. Tor is basically God mode against these scumbags, and you should be using it. Sci-hub, Gutenberg, torrent sites..
20 years seems to be plenty of time for a creator to be fairly compensated for their work.
Ask Poe how that worked out.
There is nothing "outrageous" about the court ruling. Copyright was extended to 70 year after the author's death in Germany (and the entire Europe) in the wake of WW2 and the Holocaust. A lot of european literary authors and music composers, probably as much as 2/3rd of the posse, were ethnic jewish people and so many of them were exterminated by the nazis in concentration camps. Because of this, they died aged 20-30-50 something, instead of living until their biologically expected 70-80-90 year lifespan. (Note that ethnic jewish people are generally long-lived, even 90-100 years isn't rare among them, provided there is no Holocaust, of course.)
Thus, the extension of copyright from 50 to 70 years meant that at least the surviving relatives of "Shoah" victim authors receive royalties equally as long as non-jewish authors and their descendants, who havent been exterminated and lived to the full extent of their biological lifespan.
Therefore, those who condems the german court verdict are rightly called anti-semite!
Urheberrecht is not the same as copyright, no matter how much the Content Mafia would love it to be!
Urheberrecht is an AUTHOR's privilege, while copyright is a DISTRIBUTOR's privilege (at the expense of the actual author, mostly deliberately so).
Urheberrecht is NOT transferable, copyright IS transferable (and mostly is).
Urheberrecht is IMPLICIT, copyright is EXPLICIT. Meaning, you don’t have to add a stupid (c) everywhere. The only thing that matters is the treshold of originality ("Schöpfungshöhe").
This makes Urheberrecht a vastly different law.
Give it the short time frames of when it was new, and privileging people to enforce a monopoly to some record of information suddenly seems a lot more sensible, no? (Apart from the fact, that causality makes it impossible to enforce, its infinite no-cost abundance makes it worthless, and the fuckin' cokeheads should just do a proper service business contract in advance, like literally every other business since the dawn of the economy, instead of making up imaginary delusions of “owning” or "stealing" patterns/information/data, of course.)
Also, there was a time, when Germany had no such laws AT ALL, while the UK already had copyright. And as a result, the UK suffered what is now called an information dark age, while Germany got the name "the land of poets and thinkers" as a result. ... settles it, doesn't it?
what do you mean, even further? Germany wants their own copyright laws to be enforced in their own country. Is that too much to ask?
-- Cheers!
The authors of the books were also under contract to publish the books in the United States, and elsewhere, and in those jurisdictions the books have since entered the public domain
Um, gonna need a citation for that bit of convenient news. I read the court decision and nowhere in it does it mention the the German language works were published anywhere other than Germany. There were translations, but that's not what the court ruling covers.
That people follow the law, simple and easy. The internet is not outside the law.
Imagine if I’d do the same an the media industry / content Mafia:
They pay somebody $x to do some work. The work yields a result: an experience.
They put experience (so its information) on the copier, and "sell" you each mere copy as if it was a real good, like a chair, that took real work to make, and not just a copy.
When you don't want to give your real *actual* money for a mere copy, that *you* *actually* had to work for, for each goddamn $50 bill, they will literally openly call you a seafaring rapist thug, and terrorize you with laws that they literally bought, that allow me to do this otherwise criminal action!
Compare, the same story, with merely money substituted for:
I get paid $x by somebody, to do some work. The work yields a result: money.
I put the money on the copier, and "buy" work from you with each mere copy, as if it was real money, like a $100 bill, that took real work to make, and not just a copy.
When you don't want to give your hard work and expenses for a mere copy, that *actually* cost *you* expenses, for each goddamn hour, I will literally opnely call you a seafaring rapist thug, and terrorize you with laws that I literally bought, that allow me to do this otherwise criminal action!
Conclusion: Would I be a goddamned criminal, even if my law would make it legal? YES!
ARE they goddamned criminals, even if their law makes make it legal? HELL YEAH!
I'm sure they'll will try and find a final solution to this problem!!! They always do.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
You have literally no idea what you're talking about, do you?
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Yeah, except the internet isn't just in their country. It's everywhere.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The only correct statement you make about copyright is that it is transferable. It is a creator's right, and it is implicit as well, and it does not have to be stated or defended like trademarks. Unless a creator explicitly sells the copyright, it remains theirs throughout the term of the copyright. Yes, it's a lot easier to enforce a copyright that is registered, but failing to register does nothing to alienate the creator of his/her rights.
Imagine having to obey Singapore's littering laws in the United States.
Sounds good to me!
You then discarded it in a public area in the United States.
What a jerk.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It's a sad testament to a corrupt political system that allowed the Sonny Bono Act.
It doesn't have to be registered, but it does have to be stated.
Night of the Living Dead entered public domain the moment it was released because they never included the copyright notice on the title card.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Don't click on his homepage link! creimer is trying to get you to subscribe automatically to his youtube channel, force you to watch his digi-feces videos and make money off you!
CREIMER' SUBMISSIONS UPDATE: /. so make sure to go to:
Note also that creimer is trying to regain karma by getting his submissions published as articles on
https://slashdot.org/~crreimer
https://slashdot.org/~cdreimer
https://slashdot.org/~criss69
https://slashdot.org/~Anonymou...
https://slashdot.org/~FatCashe...
https://slashdot.org/~ILoveFat...
https://slashdot.org/~IHateFat...
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https://slashdot.org/~ITapeFat...
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https://slashdot.org/~IPrayFat...
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and mod down his submissions as well. The great thing is that you don't even need mod points to mod down a submission, just click on the "minus" icon!
Yes, believe it or not, creimer owns all the above sock puppet accounts. It is a mystery why Slashdot management tolerates it!
creimer wrote:
I don't bother with mod points. I'm doing something much more sinister. It took ten story submissions ? I'll have to double check the number ? to move cdreimer's karma from neutral to excellent without ever being exposed to the capricious mods. Mmmmmwwwwahahahahahahaha!
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! Creimy is posting more than 2 posts a day. Hurry! mod down otherwise /. will go to hell again!
Note: you can mod down even if already at -1 to lower karma and to prevent lost /. users to accidentally mod up.
creimer wrote:
All you need to do is find a website with a permissive TOS, say, Slashdot, create a Python script to scrape your own comments, sprinkle Amazon affiliate links in various posts, and then re-post past links whenever possible. Won't be long before you start making "coffee money" each month.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
C.D. Reimer is a renowned Slashdot collaborator, as he puts it himself; "Because of the quality of my posts and my article submissions, I'm a highly rated commentator and moderator."
But does anybody ever wondered what "C.D." stands for? Well, it stands for Creimy Dumpty of course!
Creimy Dumpty sat on the wall,
Creimy Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses
And all the king's men
Couldn't put Creimy Dumpty
Together again.
Creimy's siblings video and theme song, very realistic, especially the pants, just like Creimy's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
With "Vice President Pence Vowing US Astronauts Will Return To the Moon", we are sure they will need miracle workers up there, here is what it would look like. Note that Creimy takes care of bringing a lot of food to the moon as depicted below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Creimy's real pictures:
Before the sex change:
https://ibb.co/cc7Ddw
After the sex change:
https://ibb.co/gVad65
The Internet outside of Germany is outside of German law. If the books are public domain in the U.S. then Germany has no say in the matter, since Gutenberg is a U.S. based site. And if they want to find a way to keep their citizens from accessing these works for free, they will have to do so without infringing any rights outside their borders.
This space unintentionally left blank.
[i]f they want to find a way to keep their citizens from accessing these works for free, they will have to do so without infringing any rights outside their borders[/i]
Which is exactly what they did. They found that PG violated whatever copyright-like law it was, and was liable if they distributed those works in Germany. PG could in theory restrict German access to only those files that were the subject of the court action, but may not have a system that's easily capable of restricting access at such a fine-grained level. So the obvious immediate response is to avoid infringing German rights in Germany (in any of the books PG distributes) is to cut off German access, to anything written in German or even, possibly, to everything.
Presumably, Germans who want to read the books can gain access via a VPN with an exit node in the US. Unless PG finds people reading a lot of German books from, say, VPNBook's US nodes, in which case they may have to disable all VPN access. That would be a bigger problem. Ultimately, the technological solution is that PG (and others who publish stuff on which copyright might be claimed) need to be able to disable access on a country basis to any object in their system.
Of course, when the US extends copyright to the longest period available to anybody anywhere in the world, PG simply goes offline along wth the Internet Archive and Youtube.
Won't anyone think of the great-great-great grandchildren? They are getting enough in the estate to purchase a hot beverage once a week on the works of their great-great-great grandfather! Its a moral obligation that their works must be tied up well beyond when anyone even remembers their names or that they were authors. I'm sure they published their works with the sole idea that their great-great-great grandchildren should be able to purchase said hot beverage once a week based on their works, and its absolutely illegal and immoral for anyone to use their works in a modern context or setting. Sure one might argue, these works predated television, but that's no excuse. They must be removed from the public good till past the time when its not worthwhile keeping them in digital storage, and all paper copies have turned to dust. Even if all of the authors descendants should die off, then think of the multinational corporations. If these works were to be placed in the public commons, who would they sue? These works must be kept away from prying eyes, so that if someone tries to use them, or even if someone creates something even similar, the copyright holder can use electronic scanning, and make a claim of similarity, hopefully destroying the works of modern authors. Its how copyright is intended in the 21st century.
Why can't they just give Germany the middle finger? What are they going to do about it? Send gun boats?
No it isn't. It's ridiculous how long copyright continues for books after authors' deaths, but it's not at all ridiculous that it continues at all.
Otherwise, why would anyone pay an author for a work after they've reached an age that actuarial tables suggest is close to the end?
... American nonprofit must obey German copyright law...
lol nein
Wrong. The US didn't join the Berne Convention until 1989. All the books in question entered the US public domain due to time-since-publication in the 1960s and 70s. Once a work has entered the US public domain, it stays there even if copyright periods are later lengthened. You can't lengthen a public domain book's copyright retroactively.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Like we obey copyright law bullshit anyway... Get a clue asshats.. We obey life. We hang together or surely we hang like stupid bitches. Or not... Whatever.. We as human beings live and die based on information. Just like all the rest live and die based on self vs universe. If no human has access to human knowledge, we all die very quickly. If we share knowledge, we as individuals (and as a sum) gain. No, immortality is a myth, even the universe as we know it doesn't live forever, and subsequently neither do we. However, we CAN do the best can with it.. Live as long as we can... And try to have a good time doing it. As for the rest trying to use knowledge as a tool for enslavement? Fuck you... Bring it on! Wait.. . Just a moment... On the ..... Can... Ahhhhhhh.. O....k.. Now you can bring it on...
I see we're not even giving the whole "bias" thing any space even though its what we CONSTANTLY complain about around here. Hypocrites.
What is it we all want? Most of us want to live forever.. and die of a terminal orgasm. Copywrong is just a method of ensuring that don't.
Not true.
It *did* have to be stated, but that is no longer the case. Inclusion of notice per regulations precludes certain infringement defenses (e.g. innocent infringement), but no notice is required by U.S. law.
Posterized.
What?? Prokofiev's works were in the public domain because they were published under communism, but now are under copyright in the US because Russia signed all the necessary treaties. Numerous works were brought out from public domain and back into copyright when copyright was extended, not to mention original terms lengthened.
Huh. TIL. Thanks!
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
German users, go here:
https://archive.org/details/gutenberg
You can't lengthen a public domain book's copyright retroactively.
Oh yes you can. The case is Golan v. Holder, another terrible Ginsburg copyright ruling (she and her daughter, a law professor, are notorious copyright maximalists). The key language:
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
> follow the law, simple and easy
You forgot the IANAL, as anyone stating that the law is "simple" and "easy" obviously isn't a lawyer.
It should be for the same reason you pay anyone at any age: because they are performing the work you are paying them for. They stop working, you stop paying.
These dead authors are not working and should not be paid.
Strangely the very words you quoted would seem to agree with the GP, in this particular instance anyway, as the authors are deceased. Of course, this being /. I didn't read your linked case, so I have no idea the details of the case those muppets were ruling on.
So the books are public domain in US, and available in the US, but *not* available in Germany. What's the problem? Different states in the US have different liquor laws, with different permissions for selling on Sunday; when you walk into a store you are subject to whichever laws cover the location you are in. This is no different.
Which part of: it is a work in german language written by german authors did you not get so far? ...
It can't be in US "public domain"
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
This thread, like so many, is infested with creimertards talking to themselves. I used to think it was just some self-righteous progressive sleazebags hazing a kinda clueless loser.
But it's gotten to the point where that hypothesis no longer fits the data. There's just too much of it, it's too pointless, no one cares but they just keep posting again & again.
Oh my brothers, the creimertards are not some smug cowards taunting a fellow nerd. They are a forum disruption operation. Creimer himself is probably a fictional character.
The creimertards' inane and repetitious hate posts are meant to disgust and annoy real users, thereby discouraging public participation. Slashdot in one of the last (mostly) uncensored American sociopolitical discussion forums. Its cultural importance far exceeds the size of its userbase.
Free discussion has many well-financed enemies, foreign and domestic alike. So its interesting to speculate on who hired the creimertards, and out of what troll farm they operate. The writing has a tone of smarmy self-satisfaction typical of Hillaryists, but the content of the messages has no strong political slant.
Now get ready for the stock talking-points reply about how Slashdot isn't important enough to have trolls. Despite the fact we can all see /. has become a significant memetic warfare battlefield.
Language and author's residence are not relevant to US copyright law. The rights in the US are separate from the rights in another country. The US copyright, public domain, and fair use rules will be applied to sales and distribution of any work in any language in the US.
You fool. No man can kill Disney. Buy now.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The German court did not as Project Gutenberg to make any changes for users from the US.
No, they just asked Project Gutenberg to change their perfectly legal US-based operations to suit German law. Where the user is located is irrelevant; the copy was made in the US, by a US organization, not in Germany or by a German citizen. Germany is attempting to restrict foreign citizens from acting in ways which are legal for them according to the laws in effect where the actions occur. There is no reason that a US-based organization with no presence in Germany should have any reason to care about German law. More generally—the mere exchange of information with an individual in another jurisdiction is not sufficient grounds to subject oneself to the other party's jurisdiction.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
So the books are public domain in US, and available in the US, but *not* available in Germany. What's the problem?
The problem is that Project Gutenberg isn't making the books available in Germany. Project Gutenberg is making the books available in the US—that is where their operations are, and where the copying occurs. Germany is attempting to enforce German copyright law on actions by non-German citizens which take place outside of Germany.
... when you walk into a store you are subject to whichever laws cover the location you are in.
The "store" in this case is located in the US. Germany wants the US "store" to change its behavior toward the customers who walk into the store based on their country of origin.
Imagine if your store was located in a state which allowed liquor sales on Sunday, but a neighbouring state charged you with violating their state liquor laws because one of your customers had traveled across state lines on a Sunday to buy liquor from your store. This is no different.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
The German court did not as Project Gutenberg to make any changes for users from the US.
No, they just asked Project Gutenberg to change their perfectly legal US-based operations to suit German law. Where the user is located is irrelevant; the copy was made in the US
I see. So there's no copy on the German user's computer?
Your notion of what is a copy is about 50 years out of date.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
So there's no copy on the German user's computer?
What if there is? Project Gutenberg did not make a copy on a German user's computer. If such a copy exists, the German user placed it there. Project Gutenberg is not German and did not take any action in Germany, including but not limited to making copies of items covered by German copyrights.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat