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from the Project-Gutenberg-sind-nicht-seht-gut? dept.
Project Gutenberg Public Domain Library Blocked in Italy For Copyright Infringement:
Project Gutenberg, a volunteer effort to digitize and archive books, is sometimes described as the world’s oldest digital library.
Founded in 1971, Project Gutenberg‘s archives now stretch to a total of more than 62,000 books, with a focus on titles that entered the public domain after their copyrights expired. The library does carry some and in-copyright books but these are distributed with the express permission of their owners.
The project has an excellent reputation and its work is considered a great contribution to education and culture. However, it now transpires that the site has been rendered inaccessible by ISPs in Italy under the instructions of the Public Prosecutor at the Court of Rome.
[...] The seizure/blocking notice states that all of the targeted domains “distributed, transmitted and disseminated in pdf format, magazines, newspapers and books (property protected by copyright) after having illegally acquired numerous computer files with their content, communicating them to the public, [and] entering them into a system of communication networks.”
[...] “The investigation, conducted by a special unit of the Guardia di Finanza, has been developed in the context of monitoring the targeted Internet networks to combat economic and financial offenses perpetrated online.
“In this context, the operators identified some web resources registered on foreign servers which make content and magazines available to the public early in the morning, allowing users to view or download digital copies,” the court document reads. (translated from Italian)
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Friday June 05 2020, @09:40AM (1 child)
You are already modded up fully, just want to say I share your opinion. Some call it cynicism, I call it realism.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Unixnut on Friday June 05 2020, @03:46PM
> You are already modded up fully, just want to say I share your opinion. Some call it cynicism, I call it realism.
I also agree. except I will say its been the case for years now, and already well on its way to completion. There are local businesses that are now unavailable to me because they only have a FB presence (not even a normal phone number anymore), others require me to agree to Google's terms if I want to use their services, which I refuse to do.
There are siloed "playpens" all over, each with its own echo chamber of self righteous morons screaming about something. The ability to silence dissent (either via "ignore" options, or banning), means that only conformity is tolerated.
Then you have regional divisions, almost all countries have implemented some sort of IP banks/great firewalls, etc... which selectively ban online websites that they deem inappropriate.
The one silver lining to all this is that with all the masses fenced into their little corners, the eternal September may actually come to an end, and the internet may return to its roots (even if it is over Tor/I2P or non-http communication). I think most of the partitioning will remain virtual, at least for now, because of the impressive economies of scale you can achieve with a physical global internet.