Danish File-Sharers Not Responsible For Wi-Fi Theft
Written by enigmax on September 06, 2008Two Danish women taken to court by IFPI affiliates for sharing music were found to be innocent. The two claimed they were the victim of WiFi theft, had no knowledge of the alleged infringements and therefore shouldn’t have to pay the damages. The court agreed and acquitted them of all charges.
Some time ago, two women from Denmark, both of which later admitted to having P2P software on their computers, received letters from IFPI anti-piracy affiliates Antipiratgruppen, claiming that they had been engaging in the unauthorized uploading of copyrighted musical works. According to reports, the letters demanded compensation - $30,000 and $32,000 respectively respectively.
The cases went to court and were heard this Friday, and to the file-sharing masses of Denmark, it turned out to be a very important day. The women did not deny the claims that unauthorized file-sharing had taken place on their Internet connections but stated clearly that they were not the ones carrying it out.
They claimed that their Wi-Fi had been piggybacked by persons unknown but the music industry didn’t care. Rather like the lawyers chasing the UK’s alleged pinball pirates, they asserted that an Internet subscriber is responsible for what others do on their connection, and it was up to the women to prove that they had not shared music with others. The court didn’t agree and acquitted the women of all charges.
Lawyer Per Overbeck told Ritzau: “It is an unusually clear and precise judgement. It is the plaintiff, who has the burden of proof. Many who have received letters with claims have been given the impression that they were required to pay. But we now have the court’s word for that, they do not [have to pay]. It is not enough to say that you are guilty of piracy due to owning a particular Internet access point.”
Piratgruppen, a pro-sharing group and antithesis of Antipiratgruppen, was delighted with the verdict, with spokesman Sebastian Gjerding inviting the anti-piracy outfit to drop all claims of compensation against file-sharers.
“They can not continue to send these demands to people. Antipiratgruppen and the IFPI should send an apology instead. It is an absurd claim that an Internet subsciber must take responsibility for the actions of others. Many networks can be attacked and abused.”
Antipiratgruppen, on the other hand, thinks this is a bad decision by the court and refuses to send out apologies. Their lawyer, Torben Steffensen, says this is a matter for the Supreme Court to decide. “We do not believe that this law is appropriate and we disagree with this decision,” he said. “There should be a law that protects artists from losing income due to piracy. Therefore we would like to have the Supreme Court deal with the issue.”
However, lawyers for the two women doubt the case will end up in the Supreme Court, since a lower court and now the High Court has ruled in the same way - it is the plaintiff who has the burden of proof.
There was a similar decision in Germany recently, and if Topware Interactive and Davenport Lyons have the guts to take on a defendant in the UK who actually fights back with a ‘wireless defense‘, there could be one there too:
“The onus is on the party bringing the action to convince the court on a balance of probabilities that the person being sued is responsible for the infringement,” says Struan Robertson, a technology lawyer with prominent law firm Pinsent Masons. “The legal wrong isn’t that you left your network open, it’s the file-sharing.”
Previously: isoHunt Sues the CRIA to Legalize BitTorrent Sites
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36 Responses
Yeah!!!
Even the music and movie industry have to bow before the law.
Admitantly this is nessecary… I managed to crack a wifi point recently and it takes zero effort if there’s wep encryption.
People are ignorant to computers in general, which basically makes it sueing people for there ignorance as they won’t keep up to date on whos breaking into their network.
“an Internet subscriber is responsible for what others do on their connection”
BS, If someone steals my car, drive like a maniac and kills someone, would that be my fault!?
Yeah c#cksuckers! Choke on that!!!
These women are heroes! Nice job of kicking them in the nuts ladies!
“There should be a law that protects artists from losing income due to piracy”
There IS a law in Denmark doing just that. You MAFIAA ass-tunnelers just failed to prove that the law was broken by the people you claim .
Now why don’t you lawyer-weasels go get a real job where you produce something useful ?
wifi 4 the epic win !!!!!!
Shove that UP ya asses MPAA/RIAA.
Hey davenport i opened my wifi to let sum 1 else use it, then locked it back down & changed my MAC address on the LAN!
Still wanna go to court ? i`ll see u there :)
BTW i kept the sniffer logs of sum 1 else using it ;)
Epic fail davenport, lets see who`s better technically !
Calling it “Wi-Fi theft” isn’t very accurate. Nothing has been taken away. Any ideas on a better term?
QUOTE: “We do not believe that this law is appropriate and we disagree with this decision,” he said. “There should be a law that protects artists from losing income due to piracy…”
Correct, we do need laws to protect artists, as well as consumers, from the greedy people who run the MAFIAA using piracy as an excuse to rip everyone off.
http://digg.com/tech_news/Pirate_Bay_refuses_to_remove_autopsy_pics_of_dead_kids
lael
“… $152,000 and $160,000 respectively.”
This i wrong. It is Danish KR and NOT $.
So it will be around $30,000 and $32,000
Hope you will edit the article ;)
@ no4, i couldn’t of put it better myself!
@9
from TFA: The photographs of the dead children are part of a large collection of material from the police’s investigation of the case which can now be found on the site, reports TV4.
—
change of tactic by sweden autorithies? looks to me they uploaded the stuff by themselves and then warned the father about it… So now Peter Sunde can be pictured as a necrophile or something, now we are talking!
Lets hope that this verdict proves that all of us that have any kind of WiFi AP simply *must* make it totally open with no WAP restrictions or other shitty stuff whatsoever.
Totally open WiFi is indeed the civil disobedience that we all have to adhere to if we eventually want to be able to make that blasted **AA monster go away!
Great now if RIAA comes knocking on my door I can just claim someone else was stealing my WiFi…
Great info, I might just open up my wifi :)
BTW, Demonoid has opened registrations, get an account while you can…
@7: wifi-transpassing? :9
this prove that even company like mediasentry couldn’t prove that which machine is actually doing filesharing
if someone would like to check this post’s ip address, i am currently ’stealing wifi’, the network is called TalkTalk520 and i’m doing all sorts of illegal shit on it. Who is responsible? Me!! Of course???!!
https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4335897/
ROFL take that up your fucking ass IFPI!
At 8: call it what u like, its a defence whichever way u approach it!! Theft is ok but unauthorised access might be better. Shame it doesnt make a good title :(
“At 8: call it what u like, its a defence whichever way u approach it!! Theft is ok but unauthorised access might be better. Shame it doesnt make a good title :(”
yes, theft sounds better in a title but it isn’t accurately describing what is happening.
@ 20
lmao :) terrible … ! lol !
Kids Ball parks have nice open wifi ;)
yes yes everyone get wifi
no no no one get wifi
Fuck the Law
@23…someone paid for bandwidth and someone else took it and now the buyer is getting less than he paid for. The wifi ‘thiefs’ didnt take a copy of the bandwidth, they took the actual bandwidth. If the victims paid by the megabyte my point would be much easier to understand
Courts don’t find people innocent. They find people not guilty.
As much as I like to see us win against MAFIAA, the “wi-fi defence” is not good enough. It doesn’t sound logical. The only way one CAN use “wifi defence” is if they do not actually KNOW the difference between open and closed access over wi-fi. Thus if someone wins a case because they didn’t actually know that difference - good for them, but it doesn’t apply to you and me, because we actually know that someone might abuse the connection for “illegal” purposes (mind that I’m taking “illegal” as the current situation - which is exactly the part that we need to battle - filesharing should NOT be “illegal”).
Think of “wi-fi defence” as something like you being the last to leave the office and NOT setting the alarm on. It IS your fault if someone breaks in and steals everything from said office.
It would be great if someone could hack Torben Steffensen wifi router and do lots of uploading knowing that MPIAA etc would be looking for thwese files and thenTorben Steffensen, would have to go to prision. Like he said “it’s the owners of the wifi that must be responsible”
@30 - I think the idea behind the defense is that even closed wifi is possible to hack open. For instance, if the password is set to the default, or something easily guessed.
I don’t agree that you can only play the wi-fi defence if you can claim ignorance to the technology
Why can’t I just have open wi-fi if it’s not against my ISPs terms and conditions? That’s my perogative, surely?
Until a court says; “actually, intentionally leaving your WI-FI open is negligent, and you are responsible”, then that defence stands. Is it illegal to leave your car door open all day long with the keys inside? of course not
i shall open up my wireless to the locals and let them download whatever they like…..
themore the merrier
I agree that “wifi defense” isn’t only usable by people who know little about computers.
I guess if “wifi defense” becomes very common and accepted defense by the courts, it might get easier to get search warrant.
Then you might get caught for more that the stuff they saw you share.
Burnt DVDs, hundreds GB of data and so on.
There should be a law that protects artists from losing income due to piracy. Therefore we would like to have the Supreme Court deal with the issue.
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