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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......
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.
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.
"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 don't know what to think because the article doesn't even describe what enforcement options are open to Germany in this case. Of course Germany can claim whatever jurisdiction they want. They could claim copyright protection on Jupiter's moons for all I care. The only thing that matters is what enforcement options the US government provides Germany based on our trade agreements and other arrangements.
The article seems to say that there isn't anything Germany can do other than pressure the US government to do something, so if that is true I could hardly care less about this ruling. China and Russia and Europe (and wherever) can make whatever crazy rules they want as long as the US government doesn't allow US companies and citizens to be restricted by them while operating outside of those countries.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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.
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.
And why, o enlightened slashdot poster, should the US have the right to determine internet copyright, but nobody else?
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.
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.
The US Constitution grants the power to the Government "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Note "for a limited Times". It's the right of the creator of a work to get paid for it for awhile, but after a time it is owned by Humanity and yes, everyone should be able to copy it for free. All Project Gutenberg seems to want is for the "limited Times" to not keep getting extended indefinitely, and to be judged under the Constitution of the country in which they live and operate.
E pluribus unum
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.
Read this image and realize the fail of your "fix". The reality is, you cannot graduate high school, enter college, or even apply for the vast amount of white-collar jobs in China without at least a moderate level of English mastery. China wants to learn English - desperately - because it IS the de-facto International language.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
Mandarin is Sino-Tibetan, not Indo-European.
Also, while the People's Republic of China's international influence is growing, their language is not growing similarly. Few people are learning Mandarin in order to better speak with Chinese people - rather, Chinese people are learning English in order to better speak with the rest of the world. The only real growth area for Mandarin comes from displacing other Sino-Tibetan languages within PRC borders - trying to displace Cantonese from Hong Kong, or exterminate the regional languages of the provinces that aren't very happy being in the PRC. In fact, Mandarin is probably in net negative growth right now - you can wander the halls of a Chinese university and overhear people conversing in English, because all the academic publications are in English and they learned all their terminology as English.
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.
Why should Project Gutenberg have to block German users? If Germany wants to go to the expense of building a Great Firewall, let it do so.
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.
In Europe the times don't get extended indefinitely.
They are like this since hundreds of years. ~70 years after the death of the author.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Blocking Gutenberg is really the only thing that Germany could actively do in such a case. And Germany has no leverage here, because Gutenberg is not dependent on doing business with Germany. And as far as I know American companies also do hold the rights for the titles that are published there, hence it's not an actual case of copyright infringement if they choose to reduce the prices to 0. So Gutenberg went ahead and blocked them - good move Project Gutenberg. And I say that as a German.
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
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'
Yup... latest EFI proficiency stats had 5 countries trending up, 44 slightly up, 24 slightly down and 0 trending down. And of the 80 countries they measured China was #36 between Costa Rica and Japan rising quickly (50.94 -> 52.45 in rating), one place from being in the "medium proficiency" group. They're considerably higher rated than Mexico at #44 now. And the age distribution trend is quite clear, English proficiency is in clear growth. I think the biggest reason is the Internet, I remember when I grew up calling long distance was expensive and international like super expensive. English language newspapers were a rarity. Movies and series had subtitles, books had translations. I learned English, but the only real practical application I had was on the computer because software was in English. It was all pretty theoretical until you suddenly could browse/download/chat with people from all over the world.
And I think the rest of the world is pretty much in agreement too, even though the US is invaded by Spanish it's a pretty obvious second choice for Spanish-speaking. Europe is clearly English-aligned (96% now learn English, with Chinese not even in the top 5), so is Australia, India and much of Africa as former colonies. To the degree that anyone is learning a second language in South America it's also English. That kinda leaves the Middle East - which mostly speak Arabic and very little else - and the rest of Asia. But the Russia-China relationship is only lukewarm with few bi-lingual, with Japan it's on the freezing point, Pakistan is in the Arabic camp... even if Chinese is seeing a little bit of spread in SE Asia it's not gaining any global influence whatsoever.
P.S. Don't get me wrong there's a lot of mono-lingual or who speak one of the "smaller" world languages, so it's not like English is universal or anything. The highest estimates are 1.5 billion, which means 80% of the world doesn't speak English. I mean you can do just fine living in Japan and only know Japanese or Thailand and know Thai or Russia and know Russian or Brazil and know Portuguese. But they're not really in the running for global language.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
When i was a kid, it was Russian because of the Cold War.
I must have missed that chapter - not the Cold War but the part where teaching Russian in the U.S. was ever a "thing" (my dad was taught Russian - by the NSA, on behalf of the Air Force). The rest of us? Spanish, French, Latin, German (likely in that order) with Japanese becoming popular in the late 80's and Chinese following a decade after.
You were very much an outlier.
20 years seems to be plenty of time for a creator to be fairly compensated for their work.
Ask Poe how that worked out.
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!
That people follow the law, simple and easy. The internet is not outside the law.
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.
Extradition treaties do still hold some meaning. If Kim Dotcom had fled to a country that doesn't hold extradition with the US, there would have been nothing they could do.
Maybe because the people running the site don't want to worry about being extradited, or arrested every time they enter an airport.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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."
Leaving aside the obvious truism that by definition *modern* anything didn't exist in the 18th century, corporations certainly existed long before - notably the British & Dutch East India Companies.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
True, it happened to one of my old school classmates.
Which was pretty harsh given that she was a dentist.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
Why can't they just give Germany the middle finger? What are they going to do about it? Send gun boats?
You can only be extradited for a crime in a foreign country that is also a crime in your own country.
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...
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.
Huh. TIL. Thanks!
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
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.
You must be new here!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Project Gutenberg PRESERVES literature and makes it accessible. They focus on titles that are to be considered public domain. Publishers want to milk as much money as they can without generating new content or paying authors. This is typical for for-profit corporations.
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.
Medieval universities were definitely corporations AFAIK. Corporations go way, way back.
Ezekiel 23:20
Oh, and BTW, 18th century is already modern, isn't it?
Ezekiel 23:20
Bullshit. The law is a whore. The rich make the laws, the poor are forced at the point of a gun to obey. "Consent of the governed" is an obvious lie.
Go because to Reddit, Ivan.
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.
You fool. No man can kill Disney. Buy now.
In a sense yes, because it's not medieval (ends at 1453 or 1485 depending on who you ask).
On the other hand, would expect surgery without anaesthetics & antiseptics in a modern hospital? Would you expect to see a modern democracy where only men (and usually only wealthy ones at that) can run & vote?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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
What? How do you click on a medieval university?
Ezekiel 23:20
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