1. There are plenty of German-speakers not living in Germany.
2. Is that organization somehow affiliated with project gutenberg? Or did it simply use the name, which gutenberg probably doesn't care to trademark and wouldn't have the funds to legally enforce anyway.
3. You must know that hardly anyone uses .us.
4. So all it takes to be subject to a country's courts is for that country's media to bring up your activities?
If you think those points create any sort of legal nexus in Germany, that would also imply that most activism and protest against authoritarian countries' laws should be illegal, with those responsible subject to the authoritarian regimes' legal systems. That is untenable if you have an ounce of respect for free speech or liberal values or a free internet.
Apply the reasoning to the laws of certain Middle Eastern countries. China. North Korea.
The failure to protect their trademark in Germany would actually demonstrate that they are not operating in Germany.
> If you think those points create any sort of legal nexus in Germany, that would also imply that most activism and protest against authoritarian countries' laws should be illegal
illegal where?
> 3. You must know that hardly anyone uses .us.
I really didn't know. .de is very common in Germany.
Others are doing a fine job of taking apart the specifics, but it's important to understand why this form of argument is itself a fallacy.
Inference works by taking into account new evidence and using it to adjust the probability with which you believe something to be true. So if you see Bob wearing a red shirt, you are more likely to believe that Bob owns a red shirt. Could still be that he has borrowed it or something, but it's now more likely he owns one than it was previously. By contrast, if you go all through Bob's bedroom and find zero red shirts, that makes it less likely, even though it's still possible he owns one that isn't in his bedroom.
The problem with allowing plaintiffs or prosecutors to play this game is that they can take the list of everything you've ever done, ignore everything that makes what they're trying to prove less likely and present only the list of things that make it more likely. If you look only at that evidence then each piece of it increases the probability that you believe what they want you to believe, regardless of whether it's actually true. How guilty they can make you look is directly proportional to their level of resources in finding things that make you look bad, independent of your actual guilt.
> I really didn't know. .de is very common in Germany.
Most countries have .co.uk, .org.uk, .net.uk, etc. The US doesn't have those. US companies use .com, .org, .net, etc. regardless that they're nominally not US-specific.
Isn't there a defence? I also don't believe the court would like to find out that the prosecutor lied.
There is, but it's a resource battle. Governments and large corporations can spend a hundred times more hours on something than regular individuals and small nonprofits. If they both had the same resources there might be a 90% chance the defendant wins, but create a large enough resource asymmetry and it flips the other way.
This is one of the main reasons for the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard in criminal cases, but that doesn't apply to civil cases even when the plaintiff is 10,000 times the size of the defendant, and isn't enough in criminal cases where the defendant is relying on a criminally over-worked public defender and everything is greased to mass-produce guilty pleas and discourage trials.
> I also don't believe the court would like to find out that the prosecutor lied.
It isn't strictly lying, it's just not pointing out inconvenient facts.
Prosecutors can get into trouble for this when it's really damning, like not disclosing a witness who says it was somebody else, but that's separate from all the banality like the number of man hours they spent investigating you without finding anything before they could come up with what they're presenting.
On the internet, where project gutenberg is located. The argument put forward, that you repeated, implies just as much that someone could be prosecuted in a Chinese court for publishing a harsh (to the point of being illegal in China) criticism of China named freexinjiang.com, at least if the site included a Chinese version. And that, since it refers specifically to a Chinese province/area, would have at least some nexus to China, whereas Project Gutenberg has zero connection to Germany.
Arguing the connection by language (the fact that German-language books of note exist to be digitized does not imply a connection to Germany the country) or Gutenberg's biography (what does the nationality of Gutenberg the historical person have to do with anything? Is shakespeare.com subject to uk laws?) is insanity.
> I really didn't know [.us isn't commonly used]
I didn't realize how this might not be intuitive to people in other countries, so...
The U.S. mostly invented / was the testbed for the internet. It's standard in the U.S., and for almost any English-language website that's not seeking to be tied to a specific country of origin, to use .com .net or .org. I get that people in countries where English isn't official or where they're targeting the country's population as visitors will prefer .cc tlds either to indicate that their site targets that country's residents, or targets people who speak that country's primary language, but .us is not at all the norm in the USA; .com .net and .org generally serve that purpose, and .us is a distant fourth [1].
But, supposing .us were the primary domain used by U.S. organizations, even if Project Gutenberg didn't use .org but instead used a generic TLD, it would still have zero to do with Germany.
[1] It's actually 6th, behind .xyz and .info, but those two probably have a higher percentage of spammy junk websites and email domains, so .us might be fourth in domains that aren't junk ecommerce advertising sites.
You can be. A US court would be pretty reluctant to enforce it, but you can and always could.
I still don't understand what that means exactly.
> whereas Project Gutenberg has zero connection to Germany.
I disagree.
> what does the nationality of Gutenberg the historical person have to do with anything? Is shakespeare.com subject to uk laws?
There's a lot inbetween of
zero connection with country X
and
subject to it's law.
So regarding shakesbear.com: No, not necessarily.
No, there isn't. Or are you saying Austria could have a greater claim of jurisdiction over Tesla because of its name?
Germany has no more "ownership" over the German language than England has over English.
a) anything in the German language falls under the jurisdiction of the German government, and that
b) a relationship bearing on legal jurisdiction between two otherwise completely unrelated entities can be created by otherwise unrelated third parties?
Nope:
"In order to determine whether such a controller or processor is offering goods or services to data subjects who are in the Union, it should be ascertained whether it is apparent that the controller or processor envisages offering services to data subjects in one or more Member States in the Union. (...) the mere accessibility of the controller’s, processor’s or an intermediary’s website in the Union, of an email address or of other contact details, or the use of a language generally used in the third country where the controller is established, is insufficient to ascertain such intention" (emphasis mine)
As long as German is used in the country where PG is located - and it is - then it's not enough to show that they're targeting German citizens.
b) What do you mean exactly?
2) So they should sue to block that one if they believe it is doing something wrong.
3) Huh? What possible difference does it make what country someone born in 1468 was born in? And, apparently it's a sad state of affairs in Germany today compared to the time of Gutenberg who actually did something to increase access to written materials.
4) So they should sue the German media for mentioning it. I'm pretty sure that the Project Gutenberg team can't stop the German media from mentioning their web site.
It's a US-based web site, with US-based staff, with no Germany-based connections or business. It's clear that it is outside the proper jurisdiction of German courts and that the only reason for reaching this decision is economically-driven corruption. The whole thing is embarrassing.
Or, you could ask every Germany-based web site to obey all the laws of every country in the world.
"Alternatively, international treaties - notably the Berne Convention and related treaties - provide mediation processes through the World Intellectual Property Organization. PGLAF offered to undergo this mediation process, and Plaintiff declined."
2. Similar projects are not the actual project in question.
3. ICANN is not a governmental agency; filing for a particular TLD is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for belonging to a particular country's jurisdiction. Being named after a 15th century German is not an argument worthy of response.
4. Popularity in a country is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for that country to have jurisdiction over an organization.
And in any case are we now assigning global trademark rights to cities / countries for names used in their jurisdiction? To give an example, Budweiser would be subject to Czech jurisdiction, since it is named after a Czech town. This is not much of an argument.
And once again we get this lie being said around here. You should really just be honest with your political comments and come out with what you really want to say.
There are roughly 200 million German speakers in the world, but only 82 million residents of Germany.
Surprisingly then, why Doitsche Welle still exists without any lawsuit from abroad.
What?
No. If you read the court order, they are arguing, that gutenberg.org is targeted at Germans. There are a few reason:
1. there's a link on the front page to view the site in German
2. there's a similar German project: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/
3. Gutenberg was after all German and .org isn't .us
4. gutenberg.org was mentioned quite a lot in the German media
Also, let's not forget, that gutenberg.org was contacted about this in advance, multiple times.
So yeah: If you do a website and target a different country, ignore emails about legal issues from citizens of that country for months, you should start to think about respecting the laws of that country.