Germany threatens to jail Carl Malamud for making the law available for free - Boing Boing

abernard102@gmail.com 2013-11-23

Summary:

"Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes, 'One of the most important public safety laws in Europe is Dir. 2001/95/EC which regulates general product safety. Public.Resource.Org, in our ongoing quest to make legally-mandated public safety codes available, purchased the German instantiation of 40 of these essential codes and made them available on the Internet. Every country in the EU is required to implement and publish these standards. Imagine our surprise when we were served notice to appear in Hamburg District Court in Germany' ...  'You can read the docket here, but some of the highlights are that not only is Public.Resource.Org being sued, but 'the person of' Carl Malamud is being sued in an individual capacity. The code people are asking for €50,000 in damages. Additional fines of €250,000 are being requested and, if I can't pay, a maximum total period of detention of two years is possible. I am very pleased to say that the premier German public interest law firm,iRights.Law, will be representing us. The iRights.Law group, and their affiliate iRights.Info, play a similar role to that of EFF in the United States and I'm very grateful for their help.  The code people picked 4 specific standards to sue on, including—believe it or not—the EU-mandated standard DIN EN 1400-1, 'Child use and care articles - Soothers for babies and young children - Part 1: General safety requirements and product information.'  That's right, we're being sued for the .DE standard for the safety of the Binky® and other brands of baby pacifiers. Before we posted this important safety standard, you could only read the document if you spent €103.90 for the.DE Binky Code, £140.00 for the .UK Binky Code, or €90.26 for the .FR Binky Code ..."

Link:

http://boingboing.net/2013/11/21/germany-threatens-to-jail-carl.html

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.europe oa.standards oa.litigation oa.germany oa.law oa.irights.law oa.government oa.pro

Date tagged:

11/23/2013, 08:08

Date published:

11/23/2013, 03:08