Issue #1 in Gutenberg-Holtzbrinck case: Push for max copyright everywhere, not U.S. vs. German law

ab1630's bookmarks 2018-03-22

Summary:

"Editor-Publisher’s note: Why aren’t library leaders and educators everywhere caring more about the legal assault on Project Gutenberg? Listen to Eric Hellman, an ex-OCLC director and master techie! The threat isn’t just to PG. D.R.

As if copyright law could be more metaphysical than it already is, German publishing behemoth Holtzbrinck wants German copyright law to apply around the world, or at least in the part of the world attached to the Internet. Holtzbrinck’s empire includes Big Five book publisher Macmillan and a majority interest in academic publisher Springer-Nature.

S. Fischer Verlag, Holtzbrinck’s German publishing unit, publishes books by Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann and Alfred Döblin. Because they died in 1950, 1955, and 1957, respectively, their published works remain under German copyright until 2021, 2026, and 2028, because German copyright lasts 70 years after the author’s death, as in most of Europe. In the United States however, works by these authors published before 1923 have been in the public domain for over 40 years.

Project Gutenberg is the United States-based non-profit publisher of over 50,000 public domain ebooks, including 19 versions of the 18 works published in Europe by S. Fischer Verlag. Because Project Gutenberg distributes its ebooks over the internet, people living in Germany can download the ebooks in question, infringing on the German copyrights. This is similar to the situation of folks in the United States who download US-copyrighted works like “The Great Gatsby” from Project Gutenberg Australia (not formally connected to Project Gutenberg), which relies on the work’s public domain status in Australia.

The first shot in S. Fischer Verlag’s (and thus Holtzbrinck’s) copyright maximization battle was fired in a German Court at the end of 2015. Holtzbrinck demanded that Project Gutenberg prevent Germans from downloading the 19 ebooks, that it turn over records of such downloading, and that it pay damages and legal fees. Despite Holtzbrinck’s expansive claims of “exclusive, comprehensive, and territorially unlimited rights of use in the entire literary works of the authors Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann, and Alfred Döblin”, the venue was apparently friendly and in February of this year, the court ruled completely in favor of Holtzbrinck, including damages of €100,000, with an additional €250,000 penalty for non-compliance. Failing the payment, Project Gutenberg’s Executive director, Greg Newby, would be ordered imprisoned for up to six months! You can read Project Gutenberg’s summary with links to the judgment of the German court...."

Link:

https://teleread.org/2018/03/21/issue-1-in-gutenberg-holtzbrinck-case-push-for-max-copyright-everywhere-not-u-s-vs-germany/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » ab1630's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.law oa.litigation oa.usa oa.germany oa.project_gutenberg oa.publishers oa.books oa.pd oa.digitization oa.green oa.repositories oa.copyright

Date tagged:

03/22/2018, 15:44

Date published:

03/22/2018, 11:46