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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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%.
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