SoylentNews

FakeBeldin [soylentnews.org] writes:

Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.org] is a well-known repository for e-books that are out of copyright.
Recently, a German subsidiary of an international publisher started a copyright case against the project concerning 18 books, for which it claimed copyright. Read Project Gutenberg's summary of the whole mess here [pglaf.org]. The trick here is that the books in question were officially out of copyright in the USA, but still within copyright in Germany. In Germany, copyrights are "life + 70 years", meaning the copyrights to these books will expire in 2020, 2025 and 2027.

There's some interesting details (claims of copyright transfers during the trial), see Gutenberg's statement.

The long and short of it: the judge rules in favour of the plaintiffs, and ordered Project Gutenberg to cease distribution of the books. The project will file an appeal, but while that is pending, they chose to comply with the ruling (even though they feel that the project should fall wholly under US law or WIPO arbitration). To comply with the order, and likely to prevent further claims, the project decided to block Germany entirely.

</report>

<opinion>
While that may seem draconian, I fully support this move. One case concerning 18 books highlighted that there are different interpretations of copyright law between Germany and the US. Now that this is known, it is an open invitation to further litigation - while Project Gutenberg may not be infringing US copyright laws, they may be infringing German copyright laws, for which they could be slapped with fines.

The (very) chilling side effect of this is that I can easily envision this concept sliding down the slippery slope.
Germany is a western-alike country, signatory to most trade agreements, conventions (such as the Berne convention [pglaf.org] governing copyright), and part of the EU. If Project Gutenberg falls afoul of German copyright law, then it most likely falls afoul of most copyright laws in the EU. And those are (by the Berne Convention) more or less aligned with other countries... so if that fails, then it probably fails in many more countries than just the EU.

If the final judicial conclusion is that Project Gutenberg was in the wrong and therefore liable for damages, I would recommend them to block everywhere but the USA. Even though I would hate losing access to Gutenberg (living outside the USA), for this non-profit initiative to expose themselves around the world to court cases is a tremendously bad idea.
</opinion>

(for added irony: the project is named after Johannes Gutenberg [wikipedia.org], the German who more or less invented the printing press.)

Original Submission