And German-language content can only be directed at German citizens or residents? There are five other countries which have German as their official language, and many more where German is spoken. It's ridiculous that the court would consider this sufficient to grant them jurisdiction.

> The website was accessible from Germany

That's something Germany could control much more easily on its own by putting firewalls at their borders. There is no reason for the site to go out of its way to block access from Germany, even assuming that they could do so reliably, which they can't.

> The explicitly offered worldwide service ("anyone anywhere")

Just like most web sites are available to "anyone anywhere". That's how the Internet is meant to work.

> There was a disclaimer directed at people not located in the US

Which is a very large group of people, most of whom are not in or from Germany. They're seriously complaining that the site reminded people that they need to take their own local laws into account before importing content from elsewhere?

I'm not taking a stance, I just try to represent the argument fairly - whether one actually agrees is another thing. Misrepresenting arguments as the PGLAF does is lazy.

According to German legal rules you always have to take an overall view into account, not only to each argument on its own. In this case, whether they intended to also(!) reach German users.

Anyway, 2016 the highest German civil court ruled in accordance to precedence from the European Court of Justice that copyright infringement on websites fall under German jurisdiction as long as 1) the website is accessible from Germany without circumventing any blocks 2) it's infringing according to German law. Showing that the website operator actually intends to reach German users is no longer necessary.

That sort of ruling reinforces the dominance of large megacorporations on the internet. A big company like Google or Amazon might be able afford to keep track of laws like that in every country, or at least countries with enough international influence, but a donation backed site like Gutenberg probably doesn't, much less a website run by a single individual.