Project Gutenberg Blocks German Users After Outrageous Court Ruling (teleread.org) 265
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.
Germany.... (Score:5, Funny)
What a bunch of Copyright Naz......
... HAS NO COPYRIGHT LAW! We have Urheberrecht! (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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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.
Re: ... HAS NO COPYRIGHT LAW! We have Urheberrech (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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Huh. TIL. Thanks!
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naz...guls?
Escalating renewal fees (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Escalating renewal fees (Score:5, Informative)
Also note that the payment database creates an authoritative record of what is protected and what isn't.
This 150 years automatically for free is ridiculous. Copyright works turn into culture after a while. We can't have our entire culture being owned. Consider that photos and recordings of WWII will be under copyright until after most of us are dead.
Re:Escalating renewal fees (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't end up fabulously rich & famous in the free 20 years it must not have been the best story ever.
Re: Escalating renewal fees (Score:2)
If your story was so good, people would be happy to pay you to read it.
But it isn't. I doubt you have ever made any literary contribution to humankind.
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By making the content available for viewing, you inherently agreed to your country's social contract that it would become public domain after a limited period. Don't like the terms and conditions? Then you can always find another country to emigrate to that does have copyright laws more compatible with your wishes.
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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.
I have argued a variation on this here before, although 20 years will simply never work in the USA. My proposal is that we support the Bono Act, as bad as it is, and then make copyrights renewable for 10 year increments for massively increasing fees. Anybody who won't pay the fee sees their stuff go into public domain. You could start at $100,000 for the first renewal and then multiply each subsequent renewal by 10. The renewal after $100,000 is $1 million, then $10 million and so on. If somebody is ac
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I would prefer to see a short 20 years period which would quickly separate out public domain stuff that people don't care about. That's the whole orphan work problem -- after a work is 50 years old it becomes almost impossible to track down the copyright holders and ask for permission.
Then maybe move to 10 year renewals at something along the lines of $1000, $5000, $10000, $15000, etc. Note that Disney probably has 100,000 works they want to keep protected. They are going to have to pay a renewal fee on ea
Re:Escalating renewal fees (Score:4, Insightful)
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Even IF "Steamboat Willie" became public domain tomorrow, all that would REALLY mean is that you could scan & digitize the original & put it on Youtube without risking Disney's wrath. Attempting to create NEW works involving Mickey Mouse based upon Steamboat Willie would be nearly impossible... 99% of what we think of as canonical "Mickey Mouse" came LONG after Steamboat Willie, and the majority of it will be protected by trademark law as long as Disney's army of lawyers keep up with their paperwork
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Even Disney wouldn't pay $1 billion to renew Steamboat Willie - their shareholders would riot.
As long as they make more than $1B in revenues, of course they will pay.
And particular will throw law suits against infringers.
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But it's not just the Disney shareholders behind this.
America considers Finance, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley as three of their rock stars in a balance of trade war that isn't going any better lately than that little skirmish in Afghanistan.
Nationalistic American elites would sooner cut off a hand than hobble any of these industries.
Perhaps Big Pharma belongs on this list, too, but I don't track the ups and downs
Re:Escalating renewal fees (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Although this is better than the current system, I don't see why we need to allow extensions at all. Patents don't allow extensions. 20 years seems to be plenty of time for a creator to be fairly compensated for their work. Most people who do work for hire only get compensated when they actually do the work. Residual income is great but it makes no sense to have indefinite residual income for something you created 2 decades ago.
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20 years seems to be plenty of time for a creator to be fairly compensated for their work.
No, usually it is not.
Most musicians don't even make a single buck in that period. Or look at eBook authors. Why the funk would you restrict an ebook author to 20 years of selling his book? Or in other words allow his competitors to sell it, too?
I would add a kind of blockchain to digital goods. If the good gets transferred all in the blockchain get a fraction of the "profit".
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Why would I restrict an eBook author to 20 years of selling? Well, I wouldn't. I'd restrict them to 20 years of copyright monopoly. They can still sell to anyone who will buy after the eBook is in the public domain, they just can't stop others from
Re:Escalating renewal fees (Score:4, Interesting)
they just can't stop others from using the content as they please.
And exactly this is wrong in my opinion.
Why feed a disney with free material to exploit to make movies? Sorry, if they want to use a book, and make a movie from it, they should pay.
If you can't make money off of an artistic work within 20 years, there's a strong chance that your work simply sucks or you suck at marketing it.
Of course. But what has sucking me in marketing to do with your idea that you can exploit my work for free?
you'll be further compelled to make something that's newer and better instead of trying to sell your sucky eBook for your entire life.
Are you really such an idiot?
How exactly does one make a living, by working 40h the week, to pay his rent and feed the kids, and spend another 20h to write his eBook? And then you come and say: hey if he can not market it, it must suck? And now as he spent so much time for a work that sells bad at the moment he should write a new work?
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The united states should just switch to the german/european model. And then you for funk sake ask the original author or his heirs for permission and let them participate on the profits you make. I'm funk tired about this free rider attitude when it comes to copyrights in the US. You can not feed your poor, because you don't want higher taxes ... or what ever. But then again you want everything for free someone else made. Just because of "copyrights are to long" ????
Tolkien made nearly no money at all during his life time. Sure, his works sucked in some way, but now they are world literature. And the movies brought in billions.
Do you really think it is fair to not have the family participate in the revenue LOTR made?
I don't.
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> How exactly does one make a living, by working 40h the week, to pay his rent and feed the kids, and spend another 20h to write his eBook?
The same way as someone working 40h/week, to pay his rent and feed the kids, and spend another 20h learning to become a dentist ?
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Do you really think it is fair to not have the family participate in the revenue LOTR made?
Yes, I really think it is fair that the family not receive money for what granddad did. They should make their own way in the world, not ride on the fruits of his labor. It's fine to give your descendants a leg up in the world, but not to support them for generations. Yes, I'm also in favor of steep estate taxes.
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Of course. But what has sucking me in marketing to do with your idea that you can exploit my work for free?
The deal is this: for "20 years" (or whatever) you are granted a monopoly on the reproduction of your works. The government will spend time, money, and effort, to the extent of imprisoning or even killing violators of your monopoly, during that term.
The exchange for that protection is that after the term is up, anybody can use it. According to popular legal theories[2] 'the government' is really jus
Poe (Score:2)
20 years seems to be plenty of time for a creator to be fairly compensated for their work.
Ask Poe how that worked out.
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Is this Poe as in Poe's law? I honestly can't tell.
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A rich public domain is a critical component of society. Don't believe me? Most of Disney's most popular works are ripped off
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Americans don't have the high ground (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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You lying sack of shit.
The Berne Convention established life-plus-50 in (among other countries) Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom in 1887. The US didn't match that term until the Copyright Act of 1976, just short of ninety years later.
Then? The EU (including, of course, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom) extended copyright to life+70 in 1993, and the US didn't match that until 1998, five years later. The EU extension, incidentally, didn't merely e
The outrageous part isn't really the ruling... (Score:5, Insightful)
American courts do the same (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Tell to Kim Dotcom (Score:3, Insightful)
*Shrug*
Tell that to Kim Dotcom, a German born New Zealand citizen and resident, about the US copyright.
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*Shrug*
Tell that to Kim Dotcom, a German born New Zealand citizen and resident, about the US copyright.
Anger the Oligarchs of The Hegemony and you will pay the price.
Strat
Perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
"While writers and publishers deserve fair compensation, "
But not their great grand-children.
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
"While writers and publishers deserve fair compensation, "
But not their great grand-children.
Exactly. And furthermore why should certain activities have longer protections that others? If I do a work for hire whether it is building a deck or writing an app, I get paid and that's it. If I create a new product, I get patent protection for 20 years and that's it. Why is copyright protection so much longer than other activities? If you publish a book or movie then you should be able to sell it for 20 years and then it should immediately go to the public domain and people should be allowed to make derivatives, stream it, etc... free of charge. 20 years exclusive rights for something you create is plenty fair and is much longer than most other forms of work.
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If I do a work for hire whether it is building a deck or writing an app, I get paid and that's it.
If you do a work for hire, there's one person who's paying you. If you are an author, there isn't one person who just pays for everything -- you actually need to sell the book again and again to make back the time you spent on it.
If I create a new product, I get patent protection for 20 years and that's it.
There's a huge difference between copyright and patent.
Patent law was designed to prevent factory machinery designs being kept secret. Factory owners were inventing better and better machines, but keeping them secret so that they would retain competitive advantage. Some designs d
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"While writers and publishers deserve fair compensation, " But not their great grand-children.
Exactly.
Pray tell, what to do about the impending impending human/computer convergence - The Singularity [singularity.com], when you don't die, you're still around and you kinda ARE your own great grandchild?
Plant your brain in a new body? Clone yourself with DNA? How old fashioned, move on up to The [recode.net] Cloud [xkcd.com] and use CloneZilla, snapshots, or just start yourself up (!!) another Docker Personality Instance. Gives a who new meaning to schizophrenia [nih.gov] or to Dissociative identity disorder [psychologytoday.com].
At that point money will stop being the in-g
Re: Perhaps (Score:2)
You really need a sharp stake driven through your ass.
Perhaps you should leave aside your thoughts re: penetrating his ass...
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Seems reasonable (Score:3)
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.
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As I mostly download english versions, I don't care.
Project Gutenberg claimed that the German language works are for consumption of German readers in the US,
Then the next law suit will be in the US. US has signed the Bern Convention, hence the European copyright rules hold for european works, even in the USA.
Sucks that so many people here talk trash who never even bothered to learnt the basics about copyright how greatly it differs in other countries from the stupid american idea of "work for hire".
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I don't see how the language affects how easy they are to colour in.
Re:Seems reasonable (Score:4, Interesting)
US has signed the Bern Convention, hence the European copyright rules hold for european works, even in the USA.
No. We signed it but don't take it seriously. The Berne (there's an extra 'e') Convention has no independent legal effect here. Copyright is fundamentally national law; each nation might be obligated under the treaty to pass particular laws, but they're meant to do it themselves.
In the US we even have a law that says that Berne is not a law that people can enforce. It's 17 USC 104(c), if you're curious.
We also don't comply with it. Our "moral rights" statute at 17 USC 106A is mere lip service and our infamous exceptions to copyright at 17 USC 110(5) (allowing for public performance of certain works without a license) not only violates it, but there was a lawsuit against the US at the WTO, we lost, and we still haven't done a damn thing about it because we don't care.
Sucks that so many people here talk trash who never even bothered to learnt the basics about copyright how greatly it differs in other countries from the stupid american idea of "work for hire".
I'm a lawyer, practiced copyright law for years, not only did I study it in regular law school, but also got a master's degree in it. I'm reasonably familiar with how it differs. I also know that the US has the best fundamental principles of copyright law, even if our implementation is lacking, and that the entire European copyright model is crap. Knowing more than the basics helps me talk a higher level of trash.
Huh, interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Well, more interesting is the synergy between Martin Lutter who translated the Bible into german.
The books Lutter distributed were mainly printed by Gutenberg.
commonweal(th?) versus authors (Score:2)
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 pu
Yeah, It Would Be Fitting, But... (Score:2)
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
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Google is notorious for its lack of an attention sp- LOOK A SQUIRREL!
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Google never had plans to do that. From the outset, Google always said it was just scanning the books to make them searchable, not downloadable (save for works in the public domain).
Making orphan works available was the Authors Guild's idea, but it was shot down by the judge because the AG didn't have sufficient authority to make that kind of deal.
Waaaa!!! Leave the Germans alone!!! (Score:2)
I'm sure they'll will try and find a final solution to this problem!!! They always do.
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Middle finger? (Score:2)
Why can't they just give Germany the middle finger? What are they going to do about it? Send gun boats?
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You should be able to break German law all you like if you don't have anything to do with Germany.
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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.
Re:Won't somebody think of the organizations (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Won't somebody think of the organizations (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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You can't lengthen a public domain book's copyright retroactively.
Oh yes you can. The case is Golan v. Holder [supremecourt.gov], another terrible Ginsburg copyright ruling (she and her daughter, a law professor, are notorious copyright maximalists). The key language:
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Re:Wonâ(TM)t somebody think of the organizati (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Wonâ(TM)t somebody think of the organizati (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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And why, o enlightened slashdot poster, should the US have the right to determine internet copyright, but nobody else?
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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?
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Yeah, except the internet isn't just in their country. It's everywhere.
Re:I don't know. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:I don't know. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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You can only be extradited for a crime in a foreign country that is also a crime in your own country.
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You are supposed to turn to politicians and say THERE OUTTA BE A LAW! That's how it works in a democracy.
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Re:I don't know. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Re:I don't know. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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That's not the way copyright law works. If I write a book in the U.S. and somebody in India makes copies of it illegally, I can't sue for violation of U.S. law, because a person in India is not bound by U.S. law. I would have to sue for violation of India's copyright law. International treaties (Berne et al) provide a set of guiding principles for how the laws in India must be written. However, if India's law is more lax than U.S. law, I don't get to apply U.S. law to an action that happened in India.
S
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If I write a book in the U.S. and somebody in India makes copies of it illegally, I can't sue for violation of U.S. law, because a person in India is not bound by U.S. law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The map in the upper right corner shows you where it is valid. I guess you can recognize Africa and Australia? The country in the middle of it, looking like a V poking its nose into the Indian Ocean, that is India. It is blue isn't it?
So yes, you can sue and get your claim recognized in India. No idea if y
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You have to sue where the violation took place, and it has to be based on violation of the law where the violation took place. Which is exactly what I said.
The Berne convention requires that a country extend their own copyright law protections to works made in other signatory countries, ensuring that they are treated with the same amount of protection that they would have if they had been made l
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The Berne convention requires that a country extend their own copyright law protections to works made in other signatory countries, ensuring that they are treated with the same amount of protection that they would have if they had been made locally
Unfortunately wrong.
See:
However, if the identity of the author becomes known, the copyright term for known authors (50 years after death) applies.[7]
However it varies on the type of work. As I'm only interested in software and books, I don't know the details :D
h [wikipedia.org]
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I said nothing about pseudonymous works, but if you read the very next line on Wikipedia after the bit you quoted, you'll see that I am correct:
Notice that "the country where copyright is claimed" is contrasted with "the
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As of February 2018, there are 175 states that are parties to the Berne Convention. This includes 172 UN member states plus the Cook Islands, the Holy See and Niue.
That's a creative way of dancing around the fact that the United States is not a party to it.
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Nothing you just said counters anything I said in any way. No one is questioning whether the works in question are governed by Berne Convention copyright requirements, which U.S. law greatly exceeds. The Berne Convention does NOT give you the right to apply copyright law in one country over people over another. Rather, it prescribes a minimum level of copyright enforcement that each country's laws must comply with. U.S. law goes way beyond those min
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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 gre
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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 exterminat
Re: Let me fix that for you (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
True, it happened to one of my old school classmates.
Which was pretty harsh given that she was a dentist.
Re:I'm Shocked (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
You have literally no idea what you're talking about, do you?
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
That people follow the law, simple and easy. The internet is not outside the law.
Re: (Score:2)
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.