12,000 German Filesharers to be Sued in 2007
The IFPI announced that they will sue at least 1000 people per month in the upcoming year. These yet to be identified pirates will face fines between 2,000 and 15,000 Euro.
Peter Zombik, CEO of the German IFPI said that they will drastically increase the number of lawsuits against filesharers in 2007. They started their war on music piracy in the beginning of 2004, and have sued 20,000 people up until today. Zombik estimated that they will take at least 1000 pirates to court every month in the upcoming year, an increase of 20% over this year.
P2P traffic, especially BitTorrent related traffic, is still on the rise in Germany. A recent study conducted by Ipoque found that P2P traffic accounts for 30% of the total Internet traffic in Germany during the daytime, and 70% at night.
The IFPI will have a hard time tracing the IP addresses back to the filesharers, especially because the higher federal court in Germany has ruled that ISPs are not allowed to keep IP-logs without a legal reason (billing for example). This means that users with a dynamic IP address cannot be tracked down if their IP address has changed.
