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Originally Posted by Robotech_Master
It wasn't necessary for Project Gutenberg to have servers or advertising in Germany. It's making books available in Germany, just as surely as if it sat just outside the German borders and flung paper copies over the wall by catapult.
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But it's not. People in Germany are visiting an American site (located in America, with no direct connections to Germany) and then importing books from there. It's like having a book store set up in Minsk that complies with local law, which German people are getting books from and then driving home.
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Why should the German publisher have to go to the expense of traveling all the way to America to litigate against this? The harm to that publisher's German sales is happening in Germany.
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This is a strawman; there are remedies available within Germany without putting undo burden on an entity who doesn't operate in Germany and isn't under German jurisdiction. The publisher could sue in German court to have German ISPs block Gutenberg (entirely or the offending books) at the border: essentially an Internet equivalent of Customs for physical goods. Or they could recover damages from the individuals who violated German copyright legislation.
Moreover, as a matter of public policy it seems eminently reasonable to allow non-profits or startups to connect to the Internet without needing to understand and comply with 197 different, possibly conflicting sets of laws in countries they have no affiliation with.
Note that the publisher hasn't even proven that any German citizens actually downloaded the books in question; they attempted to force Gutenberg to do that accounting for them, but it turns out that (for privacy reasons, some similar to things mandated by the EU) Gutenberg doesn't keep logs of personal information that might be useful to find out how many such downloads there were (if any).
This is different from something like Amazon selling books, where they are actually doing business in Germany (including taking payment from Germans and often delivering physical goods, operating warehouses, etc); once you've established a presence or business relationship in the country then it's entirely reasonable that you should know and comply with their laws. And if that tiny startup takes money from someone in Kiribati to deliver a product there, then they'd better know and comply with Kiribati's laws.