According to the letter of the law, yes. The idea of an Internet without borders has never had a specific legal status, it is just largely a convention on non-application. To protect Project Gutenberg-tm`s mission to promote the free distribution of electronic works, you agree to abide by all terms and conditions of Project Gutenberg`s full license, available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license. Due to various copyright laws, Project Gutenberg has received a number of cease and desist letters from authors` estates whose works are in the public domain in the United States (and therefore hosted on Project Gutenberg), but not elsewhere, and vice versa. Project Gutenberg evaded its legal liability by hosting its servers only in the United States and not being directly connected to any of its foreign partners. 1.F.6. INDEMNIFICATION – You agree to indemnify the Foundation, the trademark owner, any representative or employee of the Foundation, any person who provides copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works pursuant to this Agreement, and all volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, from any liability, costs and expenses, including attorneys` fees, to indemnify and hold harmless. arising directly or indirectly from any of the following events you make or cause: (a) the distribution of this work or any Project Gutenberg-TM work, (b) alteration, modification or additions or deletions of Project Gutenberg-tm works, and (c) errors caused by you. Michael Hart said in 2004: “Project Gutenberg`s mission is simple: `To promote the creation and distribution of e-books.` His goal was to “provide as many e-books in as many formats as possible so that the whole world could read them in as many languages as possible.”[2] [3] Similarly, one of the project`s slogans is to “tear down the beams of ignorance and illiteracy,”[20] because its volunteers aim to spread public literacy and appreciation of literary heritage, just as public libraries began to do in the late 19th century. [21] [22] At this point, “it`s legal in my country” won`t be enough for anything online (which is basically it).

Everyone must comply with the most restrictive subset of the law. Particularly in the field of copyright, the public domain would be considerably restricted. All you need is a rich country with close legal ties to other nations and a perpetual appetite for copyright, and you would have a judgment mill that would allow you to make the use of public domain content extremely risky. The choice of available works (and editions) was determined by popularity, ease of digitization, non-copyright and other factors. This would be hard to avoid in any crowdsourcing project. In the mid-1990s, Hart directed Project Gutenberg at Illinois Benedictine College.[32] Other volunteers had joined the effort. He entered all the text manually until 1989, when image scanners and optical character recognition software became improved and more available, making scanning books more convenient. Hart later struck a deal with Carnegie Mellon University, which agreed to manage the finances of Project Gutenberg.[9] As the volume of e-texts increased, volunteers began to take over the day-to-day operations of the project managed by Hart.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER – Except for the “right to replacement or refund” described in Section 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archives Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this Agreement disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including attorneys` fees; From. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDY FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT, EXCEPT AS SET FORTH IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT UNDER THIS AGREEMENT, THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR SHALL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark of the organization, and the mark may not be used in commercial or modified redistributions of public domain text of the project. There is no legal barrier to reselling public domain works if all references to Project Gutenberg are removed, but Gutenberg contributors have questioned the appropriateness of direct, commercial reuse of volunteer-formatted content. There have been cases where books have been released from project attribution and profitably sold in the Kindle store and other booksellers, including the 1906 book Fox Trapping. [24] Under German law, it is always necessary to consider the big picture, and not just each argument in isolation. In this case, if they intended to reach German users as well (!). I agree with their assessment, once the German court ruled that not all international treaties and the public domain exist in principle, and ruled that German courts have jurisdiction over the US, this means that ANY work on the project is also “illegal” (or at least many, they can`t know which ones), And so nothing on the whole site is certain. to be accessible in Germany.

Their only option was to block the entire site or expose themselves to countless other lawsuits (and unlimited punitive damages). That has literally always been the case. Some countries have legal provisions that they will not enforce a foreign judgment against their own citizens (such as the US Shield against UK defamation judgments), but you are alone when you leave your country of residence. Many American newspapers still block access to the UK of articles that make them feel legally threatened, for example because their owners sometimes want to go on holiday. 1.E.6. You may convert and distribute this work in any binary, compressed, marked, non-exclusive, or proprietary form, including word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or any other format used in the official version published on the official Project Gutenberg-tm website (www.gutenberg.org), you must provide a copy at no additional cost to the user. a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining, upon request, a copy of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or in another form. Any other format must include the full Project Gutenberg-mc license as specified in Section 1.E.1.

How they have now reopened the site for Germany, I can only speculate, but I can imagine that in the settlement they have somehow obtained some kind of assurance from the major publishers that they will not sue and demand punitive damages for other works. Thus, the draft decided that the risk of a lawsuit is now low enough to allow an opening for Germany. We always complain about China not fully respecting intellectual property. I believe it is an ethical thing to abide by the laws of the country where sth was originally created, even if strictly legally speaking, I can travel around the world to circumvent an unpleasant jurisdiction. And if you`re in Canada, check out gutenberg.ca that has a lot that are in the eyes of the Canadian public (i.e. author`s life plus 50 years) The foundation`s headquarters are located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and staff are scattered in many locations. Its principal place of business is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up-to-date contact information can be found on the Foundation`s website and on the official website in www.gutenberg.org/contact In March 2004, an initiative was launched by Michael Hart and John S.