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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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
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