[mannerheim]

No, I think countries should not be allowed to bully people who have no presence in their country under threat of extradition or arrest if they ever happen to step foot in their country.

Project Gutenberg ended up complying with German copyright law even though they have zero presence in Germany precisely because they were bullied in this fashion.

[zaarn]

They complied to german copyright law in germany. They didn't block anything in outside countries so I wouldn't call that bullying. The other option is being blocked in or blocking germany.

[mannerheim]

PG initially blocked Germany in order to appease the court (defying a court order may have affected their case). They repeatedly asserted, however, that the German courts did not have jurisdiction over them since they had zero presence in Germany, and only fought the case because of the various punishments the German government could have meted out otherwise. Germany blocking PG was not something the court had presented as in the cards, and obviously PG would have found that acceptable since they blocked Germany themselves.

The onus should have entirely been on Germany to block PG if they didn't comply with German laws, not on PG to block Germany so that users in Germany couldn't violate German law.