03-06-2018, 04:22 PM | #46 | ||
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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. Last edited by sjfan; 03-06-2018 at 04:27 PM. |
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03-06-2018, 04:40 PM | #47 | |
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03-06-2018, 04:55 PM | #48 | |
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Kiribati is a Life + 50 country, and if they had a publisher who was within their rights as the German publisher was, then PG would have to comply. |
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03-06-2018, 05:39 PM | #49 |
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International treaties are about signatory countries agreeing to common terms and roghts, not about giving foreign courts arbitrary authority over their citizens and institutions.
Gutenberg's "crime" is supposed to be unauthorized publishing. Well, the ebooks were published in the US. That germans could use the internet to pull the files from the American servers is in no way Gutenberg's doing. The plaintiff is demanding that Gutenberg anticipate illegal behavior outside its control and expend time and money to protect them from the actions of third parties. Given that American companies (and others) are routinely sued in the US for actions in the US with repercussions elsewhere (FIFA) this case smacks of venue shopping. |
03-06-2018, 05:59 PM | #50 |
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No, the plaintiff is demanding that Gutenberg stop its illegal behavior: making still-copyrighted books available in Germany, where it doesn't hold the copyright to them.
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03-06-2018, 06:25 PM | #51 |
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No one has yet said if Project Gutenberg should lose in German court. How the court is going to enforce their order.
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03-06-2018, 06:38 PM | #52 | |
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03-06-2018, 06:42 PM | #53 | |
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If a German user downloads from a US site, they're making a series of connections through various ISPs before finally obtaining the book in the US, and then importing it into Germany over another series of connections. It's like driving from Berlin to Minsk to buy a book and then driving home, but much faster. You don't sanction the Minsk bookseller, you stop it at the border or sanction the individual bringing materials back into the country. And you don't argue that the Minsk bookseller is doing business in Germany because they're connected to Berlin by a series of roads that makes it easy for Germans to buy things there. The proper German response should be either a) Require German ISPs not to connect to sites that infringe on German copyrights; or b) Sanction the users who are importing material from the US that is still under German copyright. Or something else targeted at the actual infringers, rather than trying to push the problem off to someone operating legally in another jurisdiction. It's different from something like Amazon, where Amazon actually is operating in Germany. |
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03-06-2018, 06:59 PM | #54 |
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You're quibbling over semantics. It doesn't matter where the file comes from. The law doesn't care. It only matters that it is made to appear in Germany, on the computer of a German citizen, through the action of Project Gutenberg's server making it available for that person to download. So they sued to require Project Gutenberg to stop making that possible.
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03-06-2018, 07:00 PM | #55 | ||
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This year, compliance is fairly easy for the American Project Gutenberg site because they are only facing one lawsuit, and little on their site isn't public domain almost everywhere. That changes next January when the US starts having an annual public domain day with unique rules leading to many books becoming public domain in the US last, while others go to US public domain first. |
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03-06-2018, 07:03 PM | #56 | |
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The problem, of course, is databases like this are rarely designed for easy modification. In fact, databases built for many not for profit projects aren't designed at all, but are haphazardly slapped together over time by people with minimal knowledge of what good database design actually is! I don't know anything about Project Gutenberg's database, but based on my experience of 30 years, I suspect it is closer to the latter than the former! All it will take to fix this, is time and money! |
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03-06-2018, 07:16 PM | #57 | |
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Agatha Christie (died 1976) Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) The Secret Adversary (1922) Both of those are available on Project Gutenberg US. Other authors & books on Project Gutenberg that a European publisher can sue over: Georgette Heyer (died 1974) The Black Moth (1921) Aldous Huxley (died 1963) Chrome Yellow (1921). Next year, 1 Christie(Murder on the Links), 3 Heyer (The Great Roxhythe; Transformation of Philip Jettan/Powder & Patch; Instead of the Thorn) & 1 Huxley (Antic Hay) become public domain in the U.S. |
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03-06-2018, 07:27 PM | #58 | |
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Which is what some other countries do in law, the UK included, to stop their inhabitants accessing sites that serve what is in copyright material to them. While I can understand German politicians shrinking from accusations of limiting access to the internet, it is the correct solution rather than leaving it to corporates to fight minnows not even domiciled in Germany in court. |
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03-06-2018, 07:31 PM | #59 | |
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It was started at a time when organizations could be smaller on the Internet, because the Internet itself was smaller, and mostly limited to the USA, without any business interests involved. It's continued on in pretty much the same vein while the Internet has grown up and become more global, commercial, and complicated all around it. Unfortunately, that small size and simple operating strategy that served it so well back in the early days of the Internet just isn't going to work as well now. It's no longer really feasible to make material available but tell people not to download it if they shouldn't. Gutenberg's original reaction to the suit--telling the publishers that they need to police offenders locally and not bother them because they were providing content from the USA with a disclaimer on it--bespeaks a hope that they could just carry on operating the way they always had. The court was not impressed. I'm not a lawyer, but this seems to be one of those cases where the Internet runs into the real world and comes off the loser. Those foreign businesses, and the law that protects them, don't care that an Internet file comes from somewhere far away in the real world. They just care that it pops up in a physical location in their part of the world, and that's a no-no. I can't imagine that the courts are going to be that willing to entertain the idea that a foreign entity should be excused for local effects on their business just because those effects come from a server that's nowhere near there. Project Gutenberg is probably going to have to make some changes to how it operates in order to get along in today's globalized Internet world. Hopefully it can figure out how to do that with little enough additional time, effort, and money involved to be able to continue providing its core services. |
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03-06-2018, 07:34 PM | #60 | |
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It is also possible for a German tourist physically visiting the US to purchase something that is illegal in Germany and take it home. It is not the seller in the US that is responsible for preventing that. If Germany thinks the internet is too open, and other countries should have to enforce Germany's laws, then they will probably find that is a futile path to go down. They can hold their own people prisoner from the internet if they think that is necessary. They can probably buy the software to do that from North Korea or Iran. |
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