Quote:
Originally Posted by sjfan
That doesn't become true simply because you repeat it over and over again.
It's like saying the bookshop in Minsk is making a book appear on a German's bookshelf in Berlin.
I understand that the German courts find it expedient to try to shift enforcement outside their jurisdiction, but it's a pretty major shift in international sovereignty that shouldn't happen lightly.
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The courts have said that it is true, so it is true unless Project Gutenberg wins on appeal. The Minsk example is also a reach since the German citizen would have to physically go to Minsk & clear Customs to get back into the EU(Belarus is not an EU member). I'm pretty sure if that Minsk bookshop where doing a mail order business to Germany & selling public domain Thomas Mann books (since Belarus is Life + 50), the German courts would frown on that.
In the US and Germany's case, both are parties to copyright treaties and also mutual judicial enforcement treaties. If this were German court ruling on a hate speech issue, I could see your point. But this is clear. PG was violating German copyright law by making these still-under-copyright works available to German users. I feel for PG, I do. I don't like the precedent this makes, but this is the nature of the global Internet.