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Here's an ironic discovery I just made: Germany blocks Project Gutenberg! Whut?!??
Yep:
"We apologize for this inconvenience. Your IP address has been automatically blocked from accessing the Project Gutenberg website, www.gutenberg.org. This is because the geoIP database shows your address is in the country of Germany."
"Project Gutenberg believes the Court has no jurisdiction over the matter, but until the issue is resolved, it will comply."
http://www.gutenberg.org/ 60,000 free eBooks
in reply to Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK

Thanks. I suspected it would be something like that and i was going to use that browser to trigger the block again to find out for sure.
These zombie copyrights are BS.
in reply to Kermode

I had to crack the protection against printing for a load of telecoms training textbooks from DBP-Telekom, as for some obscure reason the copyright was owned by a firm of German accountants or lawyers who allowed PDFs to be distributed but not printed (which isn't ideal when they are image scans with no OCR and German is your 3rd language).

And these are resources the German taxpayer paid for in the 1980s, so surely *should* be in public domain? >>
in reply to Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK

For decades, a Munich music publisher owned the rights to the tube for the Internationale, & charged the DDR 50 000 marks a year to use it (while allowing everyone else in the world, including the UdSSR, to use it for free).
in reply to publius

It's a long and nasty rent-seeking list isn't it?
How much did WB (and others before it) bleed people and companies for singing the birthday song they had no right to?
How about the ransom for the Hockey Night in Canada theme song? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_Night_in_Canada#2008:_CBC_loses_rights_to_The_Hockey_Theme

@vfrmedia
in reply to Kermode

Nah, Project Gutenberg blocks German IPs.
They were told to not offer books in Germany that were in the public domain in the USA but still under copyright in Germany, so they went and blocked the whole site for German IPs.
in reply to Anke

I knew someone would make that point right after I hit 'post' ;-)
Still, the german court is the proximate cause of the block. How it's applied is another matter.
in reply to Kermode

Avviso contenuto: Personal opinion on Project Gutenberg vs Germany

in reply to Anke

Avviso contenuto: Personal opinion on Project Gutenberg vs Germany

in reply to Anke

Avviso contenuto: Personal opinion on Project Gutenberg vs Germanyp

in reply to Beko Pharm

Avviso contenuto: Personal opinion on Project Gutenberg vs Germanyp

@Anke
in reply to Kermode

Avviso contenuto: Personal opinion on Project Gutenberg vs Germanyp

in reply to Beko Pharm

Avviso contenuto: Personal opinion on Project Gutenberg vs Germanyp

@Anke
in reply to Kermode

Avviso contenuto: Personal opinion on Project Gutenberg vs Germanyp

in reply to Kermode

Weird. I'd been connecting to Canadian Gutenberg from the US for a long time. Canada's got less strict copyright laws, so some stuff (like all of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels) is PD there but not here.
in reply to Rev. Big John :vepi:

yeah. I'm actually in canada. I often stumble over stupid restrictions b/c of licensing or copyright. I sometimes have to proxy through a shell account in the usa to access things. Sometimes canada doesn't work and germany does...
PITA all around.
in reply to Kermode

Could you kindly provide more background to the blocking?
in reply to Ian Kenway

Sorry, it was mostly discussed in that thread. Basically, German copyright law granted a longer period of time for some works than in other places and the German publisher appealed to the courts.
The GB project complied by blocking ALL access to German IP addresses.
It's a mess because of our ridiculous copyright laws.
This is their apology:
https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html
in reply to Kermode

Thank you for coming back to me about this. I was on the right track but hadn't the details. I shall share this with a German friend of mine who lives on this island and has an interest in the subject. Thanks!
in reply to Ian Kenway

The block should not effect your friend - the same as it normally does not effect me here in Canada.
I just happened to want to look up the available audio books on Project Gutenberg in my morning while I was proxied through Germany and got quite a surprise!
in reply to Ian Kenway

Oh. Then yes, he will be blocked.
Is he geeky at all? He could get a free shell account and use that to proxy via ssh instead.
in reply to Ian Kenway

Of course, he could just not use his vpn when he wants something from the gutenberg project ;-)
in reply to Kermode

Of course - or he could point his VPN to Ukraine or Japan etc.
in reply to Ian Kenway

I've never used one and don't know what choices he has. I suspect they all offer a different mix of end points.
I only proxy to places where I have shell access (and permission to use -D )
in reply to Kermode

There are also dumps with a *lot* of gutenberg contents for the kiwix offline reader; you can search gutenberg in the content page to find them (divided by language; English is a 54G download.

I don't know whether it's the full gutenberg archive or just a selection, but it works nicely and from the reader you can β€œdownload” an epub version of the book, in case you want it on an ebook reader.
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

also, lol, I've opened my bittorrent client to check what version I had, and gutenberg_en_all_2018-10.zim is one of the few currently active files :) speak of the devil...
in reply to Kermode

Indeed, that page is pretty horrible!

I have the wikipedia dumps (and a few other wikimedia projects), gutenberg, and stack overflow, just in case :)

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