German Court Decision Hands Big Win to File-Sharers
Written by enigmax on March 20, 2008The Federal Constitutional Court in Germany has ruled that the identities of file-sharers must remain private and can no longer be revealed to media companies who accuse them of copyright infringement. In future, only those accused of ‘heavy’ crimes such as murder, child pornography or kidnapping will be revealed.
Germany has some of the toughest copyright laws and it’s thought that as many as 200,000 German file-sharers have had their identities revealed to entertainment and media companies, so that they may be threatened with legal action.
According to Christian Solmecke, a lawyer defending file-sharers in Germany, the system typically operated like this: “Based on the data provided by Logistep and other P2P tracking enterprises, an offense is reported. The public prosecution service is obliged to investigate because a copyright infringement is a criminal offense in Germany.” This would then force an ISP to hand over the identity of an alleged file-sharer and they would be threatened to pay up - or else.
Not any more.
In what could be a landmark victory for file-sharers, the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) in Germany has just issued a ruling. With it comes a new level of privacy to protect personal data and communications and, fortunately for file-sharers, this enhanced privacy is good news for them.
No longer will it be possible for media companies to force ISPs to give up the identities of its subscribers who they accuse of copyright infringement, which will undoubtedly be a huge relief to the ISPs too. After all, these are the ISPs biggest customers we’re talking about. For Germany at least, it seems like 3-strikes-and-you’re-out schemes, could’ve been ruled out.
In future, it will only be possible to get an identity behind an IP address if dealing with a ‘heavy’ crime, such as terrorism, murder, child pornography or kidnapping.
A German law student told TorrentFreak: “At the moment, I cant imagine any realistic way file-sharers can be caught. It’s possible lobby groups will try to make file-sharing count as a ‘heavy crime’, but I doubt they will have much luck. The German criminal justice judicial system is quite overextended, and the people are overworked. Public prosecutors and judges alike were quite pissed off that they had to invest time in the many file-sharing cases, which were obviously irrelevant in a criminal law sense. The public interest to put file sharers in prison is simply not there.”
This ruling will stand for 6 months, after that, the main decision will be made final. The common consensus among legal commentators is that the Federal Constitutional Court is extremely unlikely to change their decision on this matter.
The privacy issue is becoming a hot topic in the file-sharing world. Just this week, anti-piracy company Logistep was told that it had been acting illegally by spying on Italian file-sharers.
‘The European Right to Pirate in Private’ - who would’ve thought it?
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78 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
I’m glad the worlds courts are getting the idea, and by the way, GO TANYA ANDERSON, you rock baby.
Yeeesss…it is good to be a German!!!!!
Good news. I really believe that piracy isn’t that big of a crime!
http://pccurb.com
Sorry, the information in the article are wrong. The Court ruling only affected the so called “Voratsdatenspeicherung” which forces the ISPs and any other communication Provider to save all contact information for 6 month.
This means that the everything is back to what is was until January 1 2008.
Not really a big win if you ask me…
LOCK EM UP
LOCK EM ALL UP
awesome
joe ist right.
@4:
Not quite. This would be the case if the FCC kicked the new law about data retention. What they did do in fact is, that they made a preliminary ruling to allow the data retention for 6 months, but to disallow the use of data, unless its for clearing up cases of “heavy crime”, like the article stated.
So in reality, we have a worse situation data retention wise than before January 1 2008, but a better situation for file sharers.
awesome, we need to see this type of thinking extend all across europe… and the world
I smell pwnt toast.
It is definitely a good answer and I hope the ruling has precedent character for other countries. However, the case was not about file sharing. The issue goes much deeper.
In an age where children grow up with all their identity saved on their hard disk it would completely undermine the right for informational self-determination.
Lets hope the upcoming case against data retention in front of the german FCC will be successful too.
[quote comment="315081"]Sorry, the information in the article are wrong. The Court ruling only affected the so called “Voratsdatenspeicherung” which forces the ISPs and any other communication Provider to save all contact information for 6 month.
This means that the everything is back to what is was until January 1 2008.
Not really a big win if you ask me…[/quote]
Sorry, the information in your comment is wrong.
A really big win if you ask me…
TYPO.
>>>must remain private and can longer
must remain private and can NO longer
Good for Germany.
Well… it’s very bad news for Anti-Piracy companies.
They can’t make $ from one country only.
Anti-Piracy, don’t worry, still lots of countries kissing your feets, you can make good $ from those countries, ignore one country only! LoL
Germany = Real Man !
Don’t fuck with Germans LoL else they will fuck you deeply.
Poor Anti-Piracy companies running in white house for help LoL
I think the author draws wrong conclusions here.
The situation is better than it was since the beginning of 2008 but worse then before 2008. Since January 1 every ISP in Germany has to collect “Verkehrsdaten”. (I don’t know if there is a English word for that…) In the case of file sharing “Verkehrsdaten” is - among other things - the information which IP address the user had at a given time. Before 2008 it was only allowed to collect such data if it was needed for billing purposes or if it was deleted after seven days.
The FCC now ruled that the ISP are not allowed to give these “Verkehrsdaten” to anyone, unless it’s about heavy crimes. (Like it says in the article.) But media companies get the IP address form P2P tracking enterprises. They don’t need to ask the ISPs for them. All the media companies want is the name of the file sharer. Unlike the IP address the name of the file sharer is not a “Verkehrsdatum”. It’s a “Bestandsdatum”. This kind of data it is not protected by the courts decision.
The article is missing the point. The court only ruled against a law enacted at the beginning of this year, as brodo rightfully points out. Most file sharers were sued before that time.
Also, you’re linking to the wrong court decision :)
The one you’re linking to is from February and was about infiltrating personal computers with Trojan Horses to spy on political extremists.
http://ww.p2p-blog.com
You p2p users a SCUM, you deserve to be locked up with the likes of kiddie fiddling, corpse shagging, homocydal voilent maniacs.
File sharing is WRONG and you will all BURN IN HELL©
[quote comment="315191"]You p2p users a SCUM, you deserve to be locked up with the likes of kiddie fiddling, corpse shagging, homocydal voilent maniacs.
File sharing is WRONG and you will all BURN IN HELL©[/quote]
Nice life. XD
Screw you, you complacent, misogynistic bumsplat
“You p2p users a SCUM”
True but who isn’t? All humans are made from male’s scum. We’re all made from stardust anyways.
“you deserve to be locked up”
I lock my doors anyways. You know, it’s a jungle out there: terrorists, cops, soldiers, politicans…
“kiddie fiddling”
What’s wrong with hugging your children? If you don’t, they’ll end up like the average US American. Scary creatures.
“corpse shagging”
No corpse ever complained.
“homocydal voilent maniacs”
Are you homophobic?
“File sharing is WRONG”
That is correct, it’s “file-sharing” with a hyphen.
“BURN IN HELL”
Sure but WHAT are we gonna burn there? Republicans? Democrats? CEOs?
There are two kinds of Germans: German shepherds and German sheep.
this article is not true, [quote comment="315151"]The article is missing the point. The court only ruled against a law enacted at the beginning of this year, as brodo rightfully points out. Most file sharers were sued before that time.
Also, you’re linking to the wrong court decision :)
The one you’re linking to is from February and was about infiltrating personal computers with Trojan Horses to spy on political extremists.
http://ww.p2p-blog.com/quote
that’s right, this post is totally wrong
In unrelated news, German dedicated seedbox sales have just gone up 1000000%.
Damn straight. NO company should ever be given the identification details of a person without the prior consent of the person in question. Only official bodies operating on behalf of the law should have that facility.
I dunno, seems sensible to me…
This article is unfortunately totally misleading.
While this isn’t bad news, the court ruling is _only_ about the new data retention laws, i.e. that all ISPs have to collect traffic and location data of their customers and save these logs for 6 months. These new restriction will apply using that data.
However ISPs are still allowed to log IPs for billing or network security reasons for a short period of time. The court didn’t say anything about that kind of data.
If you keep in mind now that there’s still a grace period and none of the big ISPs has implemented that 6 months data retention logging yet I seriously doubt that anything will change. These other IP logs will still be available and can be used by law enforcement.
At least that pretty much what several lawyers and even public prosecutors have told heise.de, publisher of several well known German IT magazines.
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/105338 (German)
no confirmation for this article on any german news-site.
[quote comment="315217"]“You p2p users a SCUM”
True but who isn’t? All humans are made from male’s scum. We’re all made from stardust anyways.
“you deserve to be locked up”
I lock my doors anyways. You know, it’s a jungle out there: terrorists, cops, soldiers, politicans…
“kiddie fiddling”
What’s wrong with hugging your children? If you don’t, they’ll end up like the average US American. Scary creatures.
“corpse shagging”
No corpse ever complained.
“homocydal voilent maniacs”
Are you homophobic?
“File sharing is WRONG”
That is correct, it’s “file-sharing” with a hyphen.
“BURN IN HELL”
Sure but WHAT are we gonna burn there? Republicans? Democrats? CEOs?[/quote]
That deserves a Roflcake.
[quote comment="315263"][quote comment="315217"]“You p2p users a SCUM”
True but who isn’t? All humans are made from male’s scum. We’re all made from stardust anyways.
“you deserve to be locked up”
I lock my doors anyways. You know, it’s a jungle out there: terrorists, cops, soldiers, politicans…
“kiddie fiddling”
What’s wrong with hugging your children? If you don’t, they’ll end up like the average US American. Scary creatures.
“corpse shagging”
No corpse ever complained.
“homocydal voilent maniacs”
Are you homophobic?
“File sharing is WRONG”
That is correct, it’s “file-sharing” with a hyphen.
“BURN IN HELL”
Sure but WHAT are we gonna burn there? Republicans? Democrats? CEOs?[/quote]
That deserves a Roflcake.[/quote]
You EVIL BASTARD may GOD burn out your eyes with FIREY cocktail sticks
I will get your monies
FYI:
Homocydal-
A queer male who makes a habit of killing non-queer males. Prefered method of attack is limp-wristed slap. Can usually be fought off with a solid punch to the face, but not a kick in the balls. That doesn’t work on gay guys.
I can hear Dan Glickman crying.
BOOYA !
I have to agree with mlx in most points, except this one:
“However ISPs are still allowed to log IPs for billing or network security reasons for a short period of time. The court didn’t say anything about that kind of data.”
Actually that kind of data was mentioned in the decission, as the judges stated, that in cases of minor criminal offenses (were “data retention data” can’t be used):
“ist das Risiko hinzunehmen, dass eine Verzögerung der Datennutzung das Ermittlungsverfahren insgesamt vereitelt. Dieses Risiko ist dadurch gemildert, dass den Strafverfolgungsbehörden die ihnen schon bisher eröffneten Möglichkeiten des Zugriffs auf die von den Telekommunikations-Diensteanbietern im eigenen Interesse, etwa gemäß § 97 in Verbindung mit § 96 Abs. 1 TKG zur Entgeltabrechnung, gespeicherten Telekommunikations-Verkehrsdaten erhalten bleiben.”
They particularely state, that there is a risk that minor offenses can’t be prosecuted due to the decission. But the fact that ISP et al. are still allowed to store data for a short amount of time (for billing and network security reasons f.e.) lowers the risk. Thus the decission can be justified.
So I don’t see how that decission changes anything in the short term. Anti-piracy outlets still have to hurry, but the data they (ab)use is still there. In the long run the final ruling might change things, though. But I doubt it.
[quote comment="315217"]“You p2p users a SCUM”
True but who isn’t? All humans are made from male’s scum. We’re all made from stardust anyways.
“you deserve to be locked up”
I lock my doors anyways. You know, it’s a jungle out there: terrorists, cops, soldiers, politicans…
“kiddie fiddling”
What’s wrong with hugging your children? If you don’t, they’ll end up like the average US American. Scary creatures.
“corpse shagging”
No corpse ever complained.
“homocydal voilent maniacs”
Are you homophobic?
“File sharing is WRONG”
That is correct, it’s “file-sharing” with a hyphen.
“BURN IN HELL”
Sure but WHAT are we gonna burn there? Republicans? Democrats? CEOs?[/quote]
Good, sir.
You have just brightened my day.
xDDD
courts around the world do not have a choice, if they convict every user that has a p2p case more people would be in the joint than outside, moreover
the time and money spent on such cases could be used on real cases that have to do with real crimes and would have a real impact on society
i am not fond of piracy but the world is changing
ANDERSON COOPER
good, germany, first italy and now germany, good. respect privacy.
Privacy FTW!!
Well, I’ve had a shufty at heise’s take on the ruling, and as far as I’m concerned the news is all good. Whatever they finally decide this decision means, the article informed me that my ISP, Arcor, doesn’t keep the old-style (security, accounting etc.) logs that remain unaffected by the ruling.
So, the moral of the story is, if you want warez in Germany, use Arcor. They rock.
I’m from Germany, but I’m “unfortunaly” as an exchange student in the US right now…can’t wait, ’til I’m going back^^
They can’t data-retain data not on centralised networks. Rely less on your ISP for your networking, and network direct to your neighbours.
IF “they” start to try to force dismantling of decentralised neighbourhood networks on grounds they’re not retaining data (!), then you’ve got clear and present civil-liberty basic-human-rights violations and police-state building evidence, which can then be leveraged to dismantle data-retention.
Aww, I wanna live there now. =/ Anyone want to adopt me? =_= Go Germany, even though I don’t live there! =)
Downloading is NOT stealing…
http://www.ezee.se/articles-blog/2008/03/20/downloading-is-stealing/
[quote comment="315131"]Well… it’s very bad news for Anti-Piracy companies.
They can’t make $ from one country only.
Anti-Piracy, don’t worry, still lots of countries kissing your feets, you can make good $ from those countries, ignore one country only! LoL
Germany = Real Man !
Don’t fuck with Germans LoL else they will fuck you deeply.
Poor Anti-Piracy companies running in white house for help LoL[/quote]
x(T)1000
Go Germans! I am definitely impressed; going after the hard-criminals is valiant and praiseworthy; doing so while still protecting the privacy of your citizens is phenomenally impressive.
I bow to you.
ooo…
although, if you still give the mafIAA access to all of people’s private data, but shorten the window of opportunity from six months to seven days…you’re still selling out their data…
Tough call, but I’d say, its a great start, and its more than many other countries (most notable the US itself) have done.
again, kudos.
“use Arcor. They rock.”
Are you talking about the same Arcor that blocked YouPorn via DNS even though didn’t had to? Is this the same Arcor that passed a wrong IP address to the police so that an innocent person was raided and accused of exchanging child pr0n?
Germany’s yet another who’s going in the right direction.
sent from: fav.or.it [FID81938]
[quote comment="315279"]I can hear Dan Glickman crying.[/quote]
Not good enough. I want to hear Glickman screaming. :P
I’m very happy for the german filesharers. There were lots of scare tactics on their TV.
http://episodeguide.tuberox.com/
Don’t get your hopes too high!!!
The (preliminary) ruling only applies to the connection data stored because of the new “law on telecommunication data retention”
The court ruling explicitly states that the “old” way for law enforcement to access the accounting data stored by the ISPs can still be accessed “the old way” (as it has been before the ruling!)
Therfor NOTHING changes for filesharers in Germany because of this ruling!
It all depends on wether your ISP logs your dynamic IPs or not and for what period of time he keeps these data (to might make them available to law enforcement on requests!)
The new ruling by the Constituional Court explicitly DOES NOT interfere with those old ways of prosecution (that has been exploited by anti-p2p-companies till now).
The statements of Christian Solmecke are obviously biased by his wishfull thinking how he WANTS the ruling to be applied to act in favour of his clients BUT it definetly DOES NOT reflect what the ruling states.
He is LOBBYING for some one sided INTERPRETATION of the ruling - and it’s his perfect right to do so on behalf of his clients in distress - But it definetly is not in accordance with the words of the ruling and his intentionally (!) for professional reasons (!) lobsided view probably won’t hold up in court for a long time.
NOTHING has changed for filesharers due to that ruling and there is definetly NO REASON to praise it on behalf of filesharers!
They are still subject to data storange (for accounting) as they have been all the time before and these data are EXPLICITLY still accessable by authorities for ANY REASON - including the prosecution of minor “crimes” like copyright infringements!
The only thing that the ruling works in favour for is that the situation won’t become worse for filesharers!
But thats no clean bill of relieve for filesharers at all!!!
If they could have sued you in the past THEY STILL CAN DO IT TODAY and still WILL BE ABLE TO DO IT TOMORROW!
The court ruling explicitly STATES THAT these old ways remain valid (and hence explicitly keep beeing uneffected by the ruling!)
NOTHING HAS CHANGED AND NOTHING HAS IMPROVED FOR FILESHARERS IN GERMANY!
They only prevented it from becoming worse - for now! (sic!)
[quote comment="315217"]“You p2p users a SCUM”
True but who isn’t? All humans are made from male’s scum. We’re all made from stardust anyways.
“you deserve to be locked up”
I lock my doors anyways. You know, it’s a jungle out there: terrorists, cops, soldiers, politicans…
“kiddie fiddling”
What’s wrong with hugging your children? If you don’t, they’ll end up like the average US American. Scary creatures.
“corpse shagging”
No corpse ever complained.
“homocydal voilent maniacs”
Are you homophobic?
“File sharing is WRONG”
That is correct, it’s “file-sharing” with a hyphen.
“BURN IN HELL”
Sure but WHAT are we gonna burn there? Republicans? Democrats? CEOs?[/quote]
OMG, that was hillarious, ROTFLMAO :)
Common sense starting to peer through? So the court has given file sharing the ok. I’ll accept it for the standard of my own country, as the laws here are too murky to comprehend, and they don’t address “fair use” or any other issues that I’m aware of. By the time it’s all cleared up, file sharing may be a thing of the past anyway. Next on the agenda after eliminating the music dinosaur is to eliminate royalties I say. (not royals)
Music “piracy” has always been a good thing for all. Where would we have been without bootleg LPs? And libraries to expand our musical horizons through taping borrowed LPs and tapes? I guess that was piracy too? That’s life, and it would’ve been so much less interesting and enjoyable without all the extra music the industry didn’t and wouldn’t provide.
Of course, all the hissing and crackling you gave us on degradable media always soured the taste. Never more!
“I’m very happy for the german filesharers. There were lots of scare tactics on their TV.”
In the Banana Republic Germany, TV watches YOU!
@17
More drama, please.
[quote comment="315730"]@17
More drama, please.[/quote]
right after ive finished fapping to Ron Jeremy’s latest drivel
This is Germany calling….
contact me, travis@bsaa.biz to enquire about joining the uber-elite, donation-only torrent site, Waffles.fm. (please mention YEMD, josh or kelsey in your email)
This is a general announcement on behalf of lord haw haw..
This “article” ist (sadly) BULLSHIT!
It’s sad, but I have to agree to many commenters: this article is totally wrong and misleading.
You should really correct this, else it has to be assumed, this isn’t the only wrong article here on torrentfreak.
It doesn’t help the cause if you publish nonfactual content; you’re just making yourself (and users that trust you) vulnerable.
Regards,
void.
check this too :
http://pluking.blogspot.com
Check this too !
http://pluking.blogspot.com
Ofcourse GERMANS would do that!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Don’t fuck with the Nazis or they’ll burn you in ovens!!
Meh… i though i could be moving my servers to germany :( but doesn’t seem to be a big win at all, yet.
Chk out dis
http://www.viewmablogs.blogspot.com/
i believe the sharing of data to be a harmful destructive activity that destroys property and lives and warrants the most severe of judicial and police actions
NOT
>Germsns
zomg, another victory from our Marcabian overlords. Soon, they will take away our beloved Co$.
xD
xD
xD
Germ*a*ns. Although Germsns has a certain branded ring to it. ;-)
Actually the problem is that nobody really knows how that decision will play out. It is correct that the decision was only made about the new law that started at the beginning of 2008 (Vorratsdatenspeicherung…by the way you already have or will get the same problem all over the EU because the law is based on an EU law) but there are different opinions about how it will effect the general practice in dealing with file sharing/copy right issues…even the german justice department isn´t quite sure what are the exact consequences. Only time will tell.
Child pronography!
@ Mr Hard
Yeah yeah, calm down you motherfucker! Are you one of these anti p2p fuckers who would prefer death punishment for sharing mp3s…?
Hahahahahaha fuck yourself, peer to peer lives on and is growing larger and larger!
No one is going to jail for filesharing, the “great days” of the riaaaaa-mafiaaaa and all their fucking lawsuits with their ridiculous 100.000.000-$-punishment-per-shared-mp3-courtproceedings are over!
Greetings from Germany you fucking motherfucker, and have a nice day!
I love you and would like to fuck you in your riiiaaaaa-maaaffiiaaaa-ass, kisses and regards & hail to my proxy and my IP-Hider
from Mr. Pirate
TO ALL DOWNLOADERS….!!!!
I am a debut artist who’s just recorded one of the most expensive debut albums in recent history.
We have just released my debut album as a FREE HQ Mp3 download.
It was a tough decision for us to make because of the vast amounts spent on the album. We had two of the biggest record producers in the world work on it…. at Peter Gabriel’s Realworld studio and at Abbey Road studio in london.
Despite all that, we recognise the massive potential the internet and free albums in particular offers. We launched last friday and have already had 1000’s of DL’s all over the world.
Come over and download for FREE.. it takes 2 minutes to DL because we have a dedicated server.
http://www.jackrubinacci.com
Thanks
Jack
Can anyone advise me on what you should do, if you have received (I think are hundreds of thousands at present in Germany) a threatening letter from lawyers telling you pay thousands of Euros for illegally downloading music files, when you know the bill payer clearly hasn’t?
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