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Project Gutenberg: Court Order to Block Access in Germany

Die Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (PGLAF) sperrt jetzt den Zugang zu allen Büchern des Project Gutenberg für IPs die Deutschland zugeordnet sind, aufgrund eines Gerichtsurteils das in Deutschland ergangen ist, weil Werke von Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann und Alfred Döblin in USA zwar bereits gemeinfrei sind, aber noch dem deutschen Urheberrechtsschutz (Tod + 70 Jahre) unterliegen.

Es lohnt sich, die Q&A im PGLAF statement zu lesen. Money quote:

PGLAF's legal advisors disagree that any foreign Court or entity has jurisdiction over its actions regarding copyright. The Court in Germany has promoted a theory that it has jurisdition, mainly because the site has some content in the German language. The view of PGLAF is that it is up to the rights owner in Germany to identify people there who are infringing on its copyrights, and pursue remediation there.

Q: So the court thinks that the presence of content in German means that courts in Germany have jurisdiction, regardless of the fact that PGLAF is entirely in the US?
A: Yes, that was the original basis of the claim for jurisdiction, which the Court accepted in their judgement. Since then, there some more recent decisions in the European Court of Justice, and other German courts, that support this theory based on a Web site being accessible from a country.

Wenn ich irgendwelche Abos beim S. Fischer Verlag, GmbH oder anderen der Verlagsgruppe Georg Holtzbrinck GmbH (Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC) hätte, würde ich die jetzt kündigen, und zwar mit Angabe genau diesen Grundes. Wer derartigen kulturellen Kahlschlag auslöst verdient es nicht anders. Auf jeden Fall werde ich in Zukunft vermeiden Bücher von angehörigen Verlagen zu kaufen. Obwohl das schwierig werden könnte, denn es sind eine ganze Reihe von Verlagen unter Holtzbrinck: Macmillan Publishers mit den deutschen Publikumsverlagen S. Fischer Verlag, Rowohlt Verlag, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Droemer Knaur, Argon Verlag, [Quelle Wikipedia]. Leider sind die Dieter von Holtzbrinck Medien (DvH Medien), denen der Zeitverlag gehört, der Georg Holtzbrinck GmbH eng verbunden.

Gerüchtehalber gibt es wohl einige Unstimmigkeiten bei der Geo-Zuordnung von IPs bei verschiedenen deutschen Internet-Providern und ob IPv4 oder IPv6.

Germany is still an underdeveloped digital country on 4G mobile networks

15GB per month for €25, while in the neighbor country Denmark you get Unlimited GB for the same price..

One tariff with €199.95 for Unlimited GB in Germany btw... statistics of Nov-2017 with data of 2016.

Upgrading Digikam from 4.x to 5.x and wrong AlbumRoots

(Not so) recently I upgraded a Debian system from Jessie to Stretch. Along with that came an upgrade of the Digikam photo management application from version 4.x to 5.3. After starting that the first time the albums were empty. WTF? Putting the modified digikam4.db aside, creating a fresh one and restoring the old one and comparing those revealed that they differed in how the AlbumRoots path was stored. Digikam 4.x stored it as volumeid:?path=%2Fhome%2F... (with URL encoded %2F as / slashes) where Digikam 5 stores a literal / slash. Changing that to what Digikam 5 expects did the trick and the albums were there again. So when upgrading, before you start Digikam 5 for the first time, do the following (assuming the database is /home/you/Pictures/digikam4.db)

  • backup your original digikam4.db file
  • install the sqlitebrowser package if not installed yet
  • on a terminal command line invoke: sqlitebrowser ~/Pictures/digikam4.db &
  • go to the Browse Data tab
  • Table: AlbumRoots
  • select (click into) the identifier field
  • in the right edit field change its content from volumeid:?path=%2Fhome%2Fyou%2FPictures to
  • Write changes and exit

Start digikam. All good (hopefully ;-)

Update 2017-11-27T14:50+01:00
Forgot to mention that when starting Digikam 5 the first time a dialog appears offering to migrate from version 4, it advises to not do so but has migration preselected, do not migrate there or it will mess things up. You may lose some existing personal preferences, but the migration for me at least simply did not work.
Related seems to be KDE bug 364258 though claimed to be fixed.

International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women

Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

At the Rome Conference venue was a seat in the front row of the audience reserved for women who have been victims of violence and were killed.

Posto Occupato
Posto Occupato, Detail
SAVE SEATS (Posto Occupato) is a strong gesture dedicated to all women who have been victims of violence. Before they were cruelly killed by a husband, partner, lover or complete stranger they were all able to sit in a seat, on a bus, on a train, in the theatre, at school, in the subway, in society. We want to reserve this seat for them, so in day to day living they will not be ignored. POSTOCCUPATO.ORG


Tooting at

Not been much active there, but is down since days (weeks?) without any sign of life. So I revived my @erAck﻿ account (

Update 2018-07-14: For the records, time ago I decided to focus on my @erAck﻿ account (