Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany
I would second the motion that copyright laws are a f*ing joke.  But given that laws are the way they are, there isn't clearly a good guy and a bad guy in this story.  I really don't think it's wrong for German courts to intervene when German laws are broken in the way that a U.S.-based party facilitates a German-based party (who reads copyrighted material without paying for it) infringing on the rights of another German-based party (who authored or otherwise acquired rights in the material).<p>I think it's wrong for the U.S. to be a "safe haven" for people whose attitude towards the rest of the world is "screw you and your laws."  That's exactly Google's legal strategy with privacy laws: They make sure everything they do when they violate E.U. privacy laws somehow comes under U.S. jurisdiction, which says something to the effect of "...well U.S.-based persons have a right to privacy, but, as for the rest of the world, dear Google, you hereby have permission to do whatever you want".  (At least that's my non-expert understanding of U.S. privacy laws.  Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).<p>I'm a huge fan of PGLAF and the work it's doing, but I'm sorry to say that, in blocking all of Germany for everything, I do see a little bit of a reflection of this "screw the rest of the world" notion.  Of course I do recognize that it's probably not borne out of pure bad attitude, but rather limited resources.  When they clear works to be published, their clearance process is probably based only on U.S.-laws, and then they put it up globally.  The solution would have to be to clear the rights on a matrix where every work needs to be looked at from the point of view of every jurisdiction, and access-controlled accordingly.  Obviously that's a resource-intensive task, and I totally respect that PGLAF says they don't have the resources for that.<p>So really, what this is probably driving towards, is that every jurisdiction needs its own Project Gutenberg, with access restricted to that jurisdiction, and clearing rights according to its own laws.  If a German legal expert reading this is interested in taking on such a task, please do get in touch.  I'm up for the role of being the techie in this operation.