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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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/
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