gutenberg.org blocks access to all German IP-addresses

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by crich70

I just went there and found this message:
So maybe part of it is a glitch in the software from an encoding error.

No, that's something different. That's what I often get when I use a VPN. What I get without a VPN is this:

Your IP Address is Blocked from www.gutenberg.org
We apologize for this inconvenience. Your IP address has been automatically blocked from the address you tried to visit at www.gutenberg.org. This is because the geoIP database shows your address is in the country of Germany.

...

Why did this block occur?
A Court in Germany ordered that access to certain items in the Project Gutenberg collection are blocked from Germany. Project Gutenberg believes the Court has no jurisdiction over the matter, but until the issue is resolved during appeal, it will comply.

For more information about the German court case, visit PGLAF's information page about the German lawsuit.

For more information about the legal advice Project Gutenberg has received concerning international issues, visit PGLAF's International Copyright Guidance for Project Gutenberg

How can I get unblocked?
All IP addresses in Germany are blocked. This block will remain in place until legal guidance changes.

[Gardenman]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

No, I completely disagree. It is not a matter of simple or not simple. It is a matter of principle. You don't give in to terrorists that you don't believe are right.


Absolutely not. In the case that PG loses on the highest level of appeal I hope they will flip them a bird and remove all restrictions including the 18 books in question. Good luck enforcing it.

I was wondering the same thing. Why don't they just do nothing.

[Robotech_Master]

Originally Posted by Gardenman

I was wondering the same thing. Why don't they just do nothing.

Well, in an email from Dr. David Newby, administrator of PG, to David and myself at TeleRead, he noted that the German court could use the US District Court to force PG to abide by its ruling. Presumably, it was simplest to avoid trouble and expense by going ahead and complying pending the appeal rather than making that necessary.

Incidentally, if these works are indeed still under copyright in Germany, I think the German publisher was within its rights to ask that Project Gutenberg not make these works available there. Posting works to the entire Internet and just asking people not to download them if they're still in copyright where they are might have worked back when Gutenberg was founded, when the Internet was smaller, non-commercial, and largely US-only. But now that the Internet is a global, commercial network, it's a different story. If commercial ebook stores can restrict ebooks' availability in places where they don't have the rights, public-domain ebook sites are going to have to figure out a way to do so, too.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

Well, in an email from Dr. David Newby, administrator of PG, to David and myself at TeleRead, he noted that the German court could use the US District Court to force PG to abide by its ruling. Presumably, it was simplest to avoid trouble and expense by going ahead and complying pending the appeal rather than making that necessary.

Under what legal basis, treaty, or agreement does the US District Court becomes the enforcer in this matter hypothetically?

Incidentally, if these works are indeed still under copyright in Germany, I think the German publisher was within its rights to ask that Project Gutenberg not make these works available there.

Sure they can ask nicely, but legally doesn't mean anything. Only because Germany decides that the crime happened at both PGs place of business and where the illegal downloader resides, doesn't make it so.

But if that is what you believe in, then I am surprised you are not asking for PG to block all access to every country in the EU just in case. That is what you want, right?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

But if that is what you believe in, then I am surprised you are not asking for PG to block all access to every country in the EU just in case. That is what you want, right?

They can block everybody except the US to avoid all risk and the cost of compliance.
Gutenberg isn't obligated to serve anybody; it is strictly a paying-it-forward volunteer operation hosted by an American University.

Ridding themselves of free riders makes plenty of sense if the alternative is more grief like this. (And there will be more. There's quite a few PD 50's-60's books, SF and others, from the old 28 year regime that failed to renew that are PD in the US and are commercial at other locations.)

There is a slippery slope principle at play: If enough countries seek to apply local law globally the result will be a balkanized internet. Which quite a few governments (China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, among many others) would welcome.

What I wonder is how many german readers actually downloaded those books.
And how much money Holtzbrink spent attacking Gutenberg.
Seems like a pretty low return on investment.

[crich70]

It sounds like part of the problem is that there is no standard length of copyright term. One country says 50+ another 70+ etc. which only complicates things. Of course then there are businesses like Disney who go to court and get copyright extensions which create even more chaos as well.

[Robotech_Master]

We've already got a "balkanized Internet." Just try buying an ebook or watching a Netflix show from a county where it's not licensed and see how far you get.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

We've already got a "balkanized Internet." Just try buying an ebook or watching a Netflix show from a county where it's not licensed and see how far you get.

And countries like China restrict access to sites/pages that they feel are critical to the government, etc.

[Robotech_Master]

Commercial ebook stores were required to begin honoring territorial licensing restrictions starting in 2009. They weren't able to say "Oh, but we're on the Internet in the USA, we can sell to anyone as if they're in the USA, just like Amazon can ship paper books from the USA to anywhere in the world." With the Internet, it was ruled that the "location" where someone bought the ebook was considered to be where the computer that bought it was, whereas for dead trees, the location was the warehouse the paper book shipped from.

Even though the methods of territorial restriction on the Internet are rather leaky (as the existence of all those VPNs for Netflix proves, and as PG argued unsuccessfully before the German court), that doesn't excuse the ebook site from trying.

And that cuts both ways; the other day I saw a news story in which a suit by the owners of The Cosby Show against a British documentary on the downfall of Bill Cosby for using footage from it was thrown out of a US court because the documentary had never been made legally available in the US, so the suit would need to be filed in the UK. The Cosby Show people tried to argue that it could still be viewed here due to VPNs, but the court found that wasn't enough for an American court to have jurisdiction.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

And that cuts both ways; the other day I saw a news story in which a suit by the owners of The Cosby Show against a British documentary on the downfall of Bill Cosby for using footage from it was thrown out of a US court because the documentary had never been made legally available in the US, so the suit would need to be filed in the UK. The Cosby Show people tried to argue that it could still be viewed here due to VPNs, but the court found that wasn't enough for an American court to have jurisdiction.

Some judges do get it.

The act has two components: publishing, which happens at the site of thhe servers and downloading/purchasing, which happens at the site of the consumer.

In the Cosby case, both took place in the UK, so the court correctly ruled it had no jurisdiction. The same applies to french courts trying to control what Google shows its users outside France in the "right to be forgotten" scams. Legal systems have borders even if the internet does not.

In this case, Gutenberg is in the US and what they published is legal where they published it.
The downloads are intended for the US, where they are legal.
Nothing they have *done* is wrong, much less illegal.

The proper place, and legal system, for the Cosby suit is the UK.
And the proper place to sue Gutenberg is the US, where their servers and data reside.
Now, if Holtzbrink has an issue with the downloaders, they should do what the RIAA did and sue *them*.

Project Gutenberg is being attacked over illegal actions they neither encouraged nor control, as they have no way to control who has access to specific titles. Nor interest in investing $$$ in such a system to solve somebody else's "problem".

And the issue doesn't stop with the eighteen titles currently at issue. Gutenberg carries dozens, maybe hundreds of books that are PD in the US and commercial elsewhere. As long as German law makes Gutenberg responsible for the actions of german citizens they are at risk of being sued by whoever holds the rights to those books. Even english language books.

If the principle is broadly accepted, they would be targets for multiple reasons lawsuits from multiple regions.

Pulling the plug is a reasonable, if hardcore, response.
They have no vested interest in providing "illegal" access, after all.

[Robotech_Master]

Unfortunately for Project Gutenberg, the principle pretty much already is widely accepted. Commercial ebook stores aren't allowed to compete with local license holders. Streaming video services aren't allowed to provide access to media except where it's been licensed. And now, Project Gutenberg is getting in trouble for putting stuff copyrighted in Germany up on the web where people from Germany can download it. It's become pretty much a fact of life now that the onus is on the provider of the media to make sure they're not providing it somewhere they're not supposed to. Trying to put the responsibility on the local rights holder to keep local users from downloading it is not really a realistic expectation on the modern Internet.

Ironically, this is basically the same reason that Amazon blundered so badly so many years ago, when it removed Orwell books customers had purchased from their Kindles. The Orwell books were in the public domain in the UK, but not in the US, so their sale in the US was illegal--so Amazon overreacted and got its fingers burned.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

Commercial ebook stores aren't allowed to compete with local license holders.

Not exactly.
Geoblocking of commercial products is driven by *contracts* not laws.
And Gutenberg has no contractual deals nor are they a commercial venture.
They are not competing with anybody and they're not bound by any commercial ties at all.

Very different scenario, so none of those precedents apply.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

And German courts always rule for Big Money.

Do you really believe this, or are you exaggerating for effect?

A German court did rule for the Goebbels estate over Random House in 2015.

[SteveEisenberg]

The root issue here is liable to heat up next year, when books published in 1923 are scheduled to enter the United States public domain no matter how recently the author died. One title sure to be of interest at Project Gutenberg, The Murder on the Links, by alleged best-selling author of all time Agatha Christie (1890-1976), enters the US public domain in 302 days. This is, if I calculate correctly, eight years before it enters the public domain in China (Life + 50), eighteen years before it enters the public domain in India (Life + 60), and twenty-eight years before it enters the public domain in Europe (Life + 70).

So what should Project Gutenberg do about that? Should they defy copyright in every country, except the one they are located in, by hosting one or two additional Agatha Christie books every year starting in 2019?

One consideration is that the United States claimed, in 1989, to have acceded to the Life + 50 minimum Berne Convention, and then promptly passed law inconsistent with it. If Project Gutenberg puts The Murder on the Links in their collection next year, they will be honoring this hypocrisy.

I suppose Project Gutenberg has already considered and dismissed my idea. But here it is: They should move to the most common international standard, Life + 50. This would require locating where there is Life + 50 copyright and a strong tradition of freedom to read. Excellent choices include Canada, New Zealand, and Japan.

In general, I believe in the system of having nation states. But I can't see eBook copyright length as an realm where it's practical to have different national standards.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

So what should Project Gutenberg do about that? Should they defy copyright in every country, except the one they are located in, by hosting one or two additional Agatha Christie books every year starting in 2019?

I would suggest they simply spin off a part of PG that is US geo restricted by blocking everybody else, and put all questionable new releases in as they enter public domain in the US.

E.g. full catalogue is in US part, and part of it is in worldwide part.