Sorry too hear that unfortunatly it seems to be the normal thing these days, I stopped using the service when they wanted to charge for free downloads some years ago...
"I do hope that isn't Ironsides' native tongue...."
Charlie you better hope not
Gutenberg is not currently available in Germany due to a legal dispute with a publisher, rather then just restricting the books in question whilst the issue is settled which can take years and probably will, Gutenberg decided in their wisdom to have a hissy fit and block the entire country from viewing the site.
Essentially this is a test case for international copyright as it applies to the internet.
Of course its always possible to use a VPN to get round this, but then you would also need to find one that wasn't trying to rip you off.
95% of the files are already on available on the Internet, the archive started a project to collect files from all over the Web into one place. the files are currently on a external hard drive and are about 25gb in total and unfortunately are currently just in one folder as I had previously separated into subjects on Scribd