Parents Not Responsible For Their Teenager’s Music Piracy

enigmax
November 16, 2012
109
germany,
piracy
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A ruling handed down yesterday by Germany’s highest court represents a blow to rightsholders in their quest to clamp down on illicit file-sharing. The court ruled that the parents of a teenager who had made available more than 1,100 songs on file-sharing networks can not be held responsible for their son’s infringements, nor be required to monitor or hinder his online activities.

When it comes to punishing file-sharers en masse, Germany is almost certainly the toughest jurisdiction in the world. While hundreds of thousands of individuals have been sued in the United States, legislation in Germany means that internet account holders are almost always held liable for activities taking place on their connections.

However, a ruling handed down yesterday by Germany’s highest court appears to be an exception to the rule, and one that could prove a considerable hindrance to regular rightsholders trying to protect their copyrights and trolls aiming to generate cash from settlements.

The story dates back to January 2007 when rights holders noticed 1,147 audio tracks being shared on file-sharing networks from a single IP address. Evidence in hand the record companies who monitored the infringements made a complaint to the prosecutor who traced the IP address back to a married couple.

A search of the couple’s residence was subsequently authorized and in August 2007 the computer connected to the infringements was seized and found to contain two pieces of file-sharing software, Bearshare and Morpheus. Importantly, the couple were not the owners of the computer, it belonged to their 13-year-old son.

Despite the evidence the parents of the teenager refused to pay damages to the rightsholders and the case ended up in court.

The plaintiffs insisted that the couple had fallen short in their parental supervision responsibilities. The district court agreed and ordered the couple to pay 200 euros damages per track on a sample of 15 tracks to a total of 3,000 euros. Other costs of 2,380 euros pushed the grand total to 5,380 euros.

Refusing to accept the decision the couple launched an appeal but that failed on the basis that they had failed to take technical measures to stop their son installing file-sharing software and had not adequately monitored his online activities.

Yesterday, the Federal Court – Germany’s highest court – overturned the decision of the Court of Appeal and dismissed the case.

The Court ruled that the parents had met their parental obligations when they informed their child of “basic do’s and don’ts” including that file-sharing copyrighted content online is illegal.

Furthermore, the Court ruled that the parents were not required to monitor their child’s online activities nor install special software to restrict his online behavior. This would only be required should the parents have “reasonable grounds” to presume that their child would engage in infringing activities online.

It will be interesting to see how this latest ruling affects demands for cash settlements from Internet account holders. Will a defense of “my child did it but I told him that it was illegal” prove enough to defuse a case? Time will tell.

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That_Anonymous_Coward

A ruling for the people here, and flipping off the US DoJ about taking Mega assets… is the tide turning in Germany?
- Guest
  
  It was a good result by the German court to reject the US request regarding the seizure of assets of Megaupload request. There is an article on Techdirt about it here: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121114/11135421045/german-court-sees-through-doj-fairy-tale-rejects-attempt-to-seize-megaupload-assets.shtml Article headed German Court Sees Through The DOJ Fairy Tale, Rejects Attempt To Seize Megaupload Assets.
  
  “The Frankfurt judges have since rejected this request, because it contains insufficient evidence. The US legal team failed to demonstrate that a web hosting service for the illegal upload of copyrighted files, amounts to a criminal offence.
  
  According to the German ‘Telemediengesetz’ (communications legislation), a hosting service for foreign files will generally not be accountable unless the host had active knowledge of illegal activity. The judges also emphasised that the concept of knowledge is limited to positive knowledge. Therefore if the service provider believes that it is possible or likely that a specific piece of information is stored on their server, this is not sufficient evidence of knowledge of abuse.
  
  According to the court ruling, there is no legal obligation to monitor the transmitted data or stored information or to search for any illegal activity.”
  
  I bet that those in the MPAA are absolutely furious with this decision. I hope that this ruling will now be filed by the defence in both New Zealand and the US with getting the case dropped. Let’s hope that the New Zealand court comes to the same conclusion as the German court with stating that there is NO evidence that a web hosting service for the illegal upload of copyrighted files amounts to a criminal offence and throws out the extradition.
  - That_Anonymous_Coward
    
    I am familiar with that story, hence me mentioning it.
    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121114/11135421045/german-court-sees-through-doj-fairy-tale-rejects-attempt-to-seize-megaupload-assets.shtml#c389
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  Germany’s higher courts are generally of a very high standard. Indeed, it was the constitutional court of Germany which deemed the Data Retention directive illegal in Germany, forcing the body politic that a decision made in Brussels could not overturn basic civil liberties and basic right of privacy in Germany.
  
  This is the sort of ruling which shows exemplary understanding AND application of both law and common sense.
John Space

Parents are never held responsible nowadays. Never. Your child is a murderer? Blame everything (comics, the Internet, etc.), except the parents.
- Animefan
  
  Don’t blame comics!! blame shit movies made by hollyshit! anime and manga don’t teach to murder!
  - Armadillo Dave
    
    Yeah but they teach you how not to have a life.
- hexentier
  
  LOL
  Are you in all seriousness implying that when a person becomes a murderer, it’s his/her parent’s fault?
  I do however agree with you on the other points. I love how society looks for someone to blame when a person goes off the rails, as long as that person him/herself doesn’t get any of the blame themselves. it’s ALWAYS because of everyone and everything else, never because they couldn’t be ar$ed exercising some self control or taking responsibility for their own actions. Lame
  - Midas
    
    Genetics could be involved.
- http://ax11.myopenid.com/ Tom
  
  …and Heavy Metal! Don’t forget about Heavy Metal!
  - http://www.frontier-space.com/ Lethn
    
    Violent computer games apparently cause children to go ape as well.
    - Ivok
      
      [CITATION NEEDED]
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  What you, in essence, are saying, is that the person with whom a child growing up usually spends 1/3 of their time with, should then be held responsible because the child turned out “unsuccessful”?
  
  That would only be possible if the parent monitored every action taken by the child up until the age of 18 and ensured the child did not come into contact with anything which might push it off the “proper” path.
  
  There are certain things parents can be held responsible for, but I would say that in 9 cases out of 10 the parent does not exist who can own a computer and still tell the far more tech-savvy child where to go or not.
- http://nejtillpirater.wordpress.com/ Nejtillpirater
  
  Not the same if you’re using the parent’s ISP account, there are terms and conditions that the person who has signed the contract has agreed to fulfill, including not breaking the law.
  - Guest
    
    Not in this case it doesn’t
    - Guest
      
      Further to my comment. The article states “The story dates back to January 2007 when rights holders noticed 1,147 audio tracks being shared on file-sharing networks from a single IP address. Evidence in hand the record companies who monitored the infringements made a complaint to the prosecutor who traced the IP address back to a married couple.
      
      A search of the couple’s residence was subsequently authorized and in August 2007 the computer connected to the infringements was seized and found to contain two pieces of file-sharing software, Bearshare and Morpheus. Importantly, the couple were not the owners of the computer, it belonged to their 13-year-old son.
      
      Despite the evidence the parents of the teenager refused to pay damages to the rightsholders and the case ended up in court.”
      
      It would appear that the account in question belonged to the parents but the computer which was used belonged to the son so what you say is incorrect. This clearly shows that the person whose account is used is not responsible for the actions of other people that use the account.
  - MadAsASnake
    
    They did not break the law, and what the German court has said is that it is not their job to monitor other users for every possible infraction, nor install technical measures (the likes of which do NOT exist) to prevent such notional behaviour.
  - icec0ld
    
    Implying the 13 year old kid could have his own ISP account. lol
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    The law is quite clear in most nations that you are unable to sign yourself into a responsibility which you are practically incapable of fulfilling.
    
    In most household todays the teen of the house also tends to be the system administrator since the parents don’t know how the computer works.
    (I’m all for teaching adults to use computers and security, btw. In my experience, the ones that can be taught become fairly avid filesharers almost automatically.)
    
    And so, NTP, you are in fact advocating that only adult people with the skillsets to be a system administrator, IT tech support, or a DBA should be legally allowed to subscribe to internet access.
    
    Much the same way you can not buy a car and without knowing it hold yourself responsible for what the car does if it has been hijacked or stolen.
    
    If you knew anything about IT, once again, you would know this. Since you have claimed expertise and years of experience with IT for four years in a row, your argument simply isn’t sound on any level.
- Guest
  
  Why should they be held responsible?! Children are not the same people as their parents.
Anonymous

although ordinary, sensible people will see this ruling as one where common sense has been used, the entertainment industries are going to be absolutely livid! it is about time a court ruled that when someone paying the internet account bill isn’t responsible for what happens over that connection, even when a person living in the same house has used the connection for a ‘less than legitimate purpose’. any result other than the one above has just been given so as to allow the entertainment industries to extort money from the internet bill payer, pass the buck on responsibility and prevent those industries from having to do anything themselves to protect their own material.
hmm

wunderbar
http://profiles.google.com/pianogamer Knut Harald

The implications of the opposite ruling would be ridiculous… parents required to surveilance all kids’ computers usage? Basically, parents who weren’t well educated in bittorrent technology and file sharing clients etc. wouldn’t be able to let their kids use a computer, since they’d have no chance of knowing what their kids were doing. (Not saying parents shouldn’t get educated in what their kids are up to,but today’s situation is that many parents have little chance of ever getting as educated as their kids in computer usage.)
- Noemailisrequirediam
  
  Maybe it’s time for the parents to remember or to learn that Internet is an open world and they can’t let their kids do what they want.
  That’s a pretty bad ruling IMO.
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    Fine. the minimum requirement is that you as a parent refuse to allow the child on to the internet without supervision. That you install and maintain security on your computer expressly designed to prevent your children from using it.
    
    And that you refuse to allow your child to hang around any places where it might come across a conenction not similarly supervised. No friends, in other words, nor should it be allowed anywhere near a public wifi.
    
    When social services come to part the child from you I’m sure they’ll listen to the excuse “It was for his/her own good”.
    
    So no, this was the ONLY ruling which wouldn’t have necessitated new parents to chuck their at-home computer out of the window.
    - MadAsASnake
      
      … not to mention criminalising smartphones and other moblie devices for minors…
  - MadAsASnake
    
    So you believe that teenagers should be actively monitored 100% of the time. Like you would have put up with that when you were 13. BTW, that is one way to end up with seriously fucked up kids.
Sabel44

All these rulings mostly go the “rightsholder”‘s way in the lower courts but if you are determined to go to supreme court or european court, they don’t take chances with legislating through courts.
Fuckingtrolls

As A Parent I May not be Held Responsible for My Child’s Downloading Habbits, But Where do you think they are going to get the cash to pay For a Laywer Or The Fine From? Um Hello. How many parents of kids under the legal age off working are thinking, Shit.
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Roswell1701

This makes me think of that old anti-drug propaganda commercial… A guy finds his teenage son’s stash and asks him, “Where did you learn about this stuff?” And the teary-eyed kid shouts, “From you! All right?! I learned it from watching you!” You’ve got to love it. :)
- ThumbsUpThumbsDown
  
  You’re right! ……Didn’t dawn on me…….The Mom and Dad probably are dyed in the wool Pirates!…….
  - MadAsASnake
    
    No doubt some will be. And some wouldn’t know how to open a word doc.
  - Roswell1701
    
    AAARRRRRRRR! :)
vootann

Germanys highest Kangaro oCourt has bellowed lol

http://www.Privatized-Web.tk
DIARIAA

Here in the USA, the first person to be sued by the RIAA for sharing MP3s was 12 year old Brianna Lahara, whose mother was actually PAYING for a music download service, albeit an unauthorized one (Kazaa Gold)

The RIAA vultures got their money and continued their abominable extortion racket, a total of 30 thousand music fans threatened with lawsuit, many of them young children.
Das

a blow to rightsholders? did the copyright mafia buy TorrentFreak?
- Guest
  
  If the copyright maffia bought TorrentFreak then there would be no articles on this site that writing about judgements that go against the copyright industry.
Anon

TF is spinning this.

“parents were not required to monitor their child’s online activities nor install special software to restrict his online behavior. This would only be required should the parents have “reasonable grounds”

1,100 songs would appear “reasonable grounds.”
You can bet this ain’t over yet. Nice try, though.
- Guest
  
  Newspapers spin stories all the time so why should TF be any different. As for saying that this aint over yet. Well this ruling was given by the Supreme Court which is the highest court in Germany. So where can the rightsholders appeal this ruling? If the rightsholders don’t like the decision they can always argue to the European Court.
- Andrew Lee
  
  You’re missing the damn point…. The parents had no clue until it was too late.
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  “You can bet this ain’t over yet. Nice try, though.”
  
  Actually, you should go back and read the article once more – Germany’s highest court more or less sets the precedent in stone now.
  
  And by all accounts the only court capable of overturning the federal court would be the constitutional one. It is quite given that in any case such as this they would rule in the defendant’s favor.
  
  So yes, Anon, it’s over. For all intents and purposes whatever the 13-17′year old kids in Germany choose to download or not, no one can be held legally culpable.
  
  Choking on those popcorn yet?
  - MadAsASnake
    
    Not quite – if the trolls can prove that the parents knew and or encouraged and did nothing about it they might win a case – but on IP evidence alone? That won’t even tell you who did it let alone the circumstances.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      That’s the point – you have to realize the point “Anon” comes from (assuming he’s not just trolling while aiming at ruining the rep of the pro-copyright crowd).
      
      And that point is this: If the world at large accepts that ip adresses aren’t valid grounds for a suit some 99% of the legal ground the copyright industry has to stand on falls out from underneath their feet.
      
      That being the case, anyone sympathetic to the MPAA/RIAA or Ifpi will be out in force, grasping any argument what so ever as long as it can retain the concept that an ip-holder should be held accountable by law.
      
      Because if that bastion can not be held, copyright can not in reality be enforced anymore. That bastion just cracked wide open in Germany.
  - Guest
    
    No, he’s choking on industry phallus. As he always has.
    
    What a fucking whiner.
  - Roswell1701
    
    Only 1,100 songs?… Sounds like a slow night, not to mention a slow download speed… :)
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      Not everyone sits on 50-100 Mbit/sec like me. :)
- MadAsASnake
  
  1100 files on a computer is nothing. You can put that on a memory stick.
- Anyone
  
  it’s the highest court
  it is over
- Guest
  
  Going by how you think that downloading music is punishable by the death penalty, no one would give two shits about what you consider reasonable.
  
  You’re just mad that your heroes, the ever-accountable RIAA and their alphabetical clones across the world, have taken a hit that nullifies their primary business model: suing intimidated children. If your side was so honourable the RIAA would continue boasting about how many settlement letters they sent out after they started their campaign years ago. They don’t anymore. Because it was, and is, horrible PR when you state that your mission is to bully children and their parents into paying you money that you don’t deserve. Money that is NEVER given back to the artists you claim children steal from.
  
  Don’t worry, you’ll still have that special spot under Pelouzey’s special desk.
- Pelham123
  
  You don’t know what “reasonable grounds,” “spin” or “supreme court” mean.
  
  Why are pro-copyright trolls so stupid, even for trolls? Makes me wonder whether these dudes are plants paid to make the MAFIAA look bad. It’s the explanation that makes the most sense.
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Jimmy

Love it – **aa want to turn parents into copyright police – Germanys highest court quite rightly tells them to go screw themselves – outbreak of common sense prevails! :)
MaryHinge

Germany seems to have one the most honest systems of democracy in the world. but they had better be carefuls here, because zis vill flood zer counrty vvis file sharers and cause a baby booms innit. get my drift?
- MadAsASnake
  
  … too late… already flooded …
- Anyone
  
  the problem is that the lower courts in germany are utter shit
  they convicted an old lady without a computer for filesharing, and she didn’t have the money and means to fight it all the way to the supreme court where more sane heads prevail
  
  and with the “Störerhaftung” Germany is still a great land for copyright trolls, until the supreme court overturns that
http://torrentfreak.com/ Rob8urcakes

As much as this decision is gratefully welcomed by parents in Germany and indeed Worldwide – it also discriminates against childless couples, gay and lesbian marriages where they choose not to adopt kids, and people who are otherwise incapable of having children, etc.

In short, this good and noble decision quite simply doesn’t go far enough because it doesn’t help protect all people from the greed of monopolistic media Companies who have leached quite enough cash from us and our children for decades.

Time for a change in the law to allow filesharing, and to force the so-called media industries to adapt to the the 21st Century method of distributing media in manner that we, the consumer, want it to be delivered.

In fact, the USA should be sued for legally allowing Companies and Corporations to be treated as just another citizen of the USA. That is a step toward Corporate Fascism that MUST CEASE NOW!!!
- Fioravanti
  
  Ahem… A childless couple still could be responsible for their child internet activity. Oh yes, they are in serious danger.
0omg

the world is going into a madness …… the dark ages are close again …. what is next?
death penality for download …. madness at is best….
Chronoss2008

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Eddy123

I think this ruling is a win for common sense, some appear to disagree, so let me come at it from a different direction.
If my teenage son downloads child porn, or if he is involved in terrorist activities, who is the one arrested and taken to court to answer for his crime, it wont be me.

It seems that, all over the world, we have private companies using the courts to do the polices job, private companies who have a vested interest I might add. If a crime is committed the police should investigate. Doesn’t seem too difficult to understand for me.
- MadAsASnake
  
  In most jurisdictions, copyright infringement is a civil matter. It is for the copyright owner to decide whether to take action, not the police.
  - Eddy123
    
    I know its a civil matter, but my principle point stands.The perpetrators commit the crime, they are the guilty party.
    - MadAsASnake
      
      Yeah – Police don’t prosecute civil matters. It is for the wronged to prosecute, not everyone else to act as proxies. That is the principle. It is not for ME to control the behaviour of others on behalf of copyright holders, nor do they have the right to prosecute me just because I pay an ISP bill. If they want to prosecute, they can pay for their own enforcement and gather their own evidence. It is NOT my responsibility.
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    In a civil action it is even more important to ensure that civilians do not take on police powers. Or should be.
Kevin Weiss

this is a good thing that they ruled as such – shows how difficult it is to enforce petty copyright infringement. kinda remarkable that they still have these “make an example out this person” lawsuits. what was the total penalty assessed in the original court case – 5,000 euros or something?
- MadAsASnake
  
  Which is a lot of money for a household and nothing to MAFIAA.
Who

“The court ruled that the parents of a teenager who had made available more than 1,100 songs on file-sharing networks can not be held responsible for their son’s infringements”

um…not really sure if this is such a good ruling or not folks, as this has also happened in the US and it didn’t work out for any one so far.

BTW folks to ANY one that thinks they are NOT responsible for there kids YOU ARE WRONG!

violent kids IS DO TO BAD PARENTING!
IF my kid steps out of line i let them know they are in the wrong.
- MadAsASnake
  
  And you monitor them 100% of the time just in case?
  - Who
    
    no not 100% all the time but if some one else is watching I ask them to let me know what they have done wrong and take action.
    - MadAsASnake
      
      Really? And how well do you think that works with something like filesharing – which most folks think is totally fine – how would you even know? That is the point here.
    - http://7-books.net/ JohnM
      
      So if a bunch of criminal thugs in America order you to hand over your 13 year old son so they can destroy his life forever, just because he has shared a few crappy pop songs with his mates, you will blindly do so?
      
      The digital age may have increased the number of both songs and mates that he can do this with, but to a modern teenager “shared a few songs with my mates” is exactly what he has done. And the sooner the moronic thugs running the pop music industry wake up to this elementary fact and deal with it like grownups instead of spoilt toddlers, the sooner the civilised world can use the internet without constant fear of the metaphorical 2 am knock on the door.
      
      The American courts may be controlled by the MAFIAA but it seems that the NZ and German ones are not. Let us hope their attitudes spread. Perhaps we should put them on BitTorrent?
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      There are any number of parents whose “model child” turned out to be a date rapist and a casual hooligan beating people on a regular basis.
      
      The problem is this – as a parent, YOU are NOT the “normal” environment the child emulates. That would be the environment where s/he spends his/her days.
      
      Which is school, or hanging out with their friends. If said friends are mainly crap, that’s how your child turns out as well.
      
      There’s even a biological imperative built right into us that as soon as we hit the teens and approach full maturity, we are compelled to rebel and start cutting the cord in preparation for assuming an independent existence.
      
      So no…you can’t ever take responsibility for your child unless you actually are in full awareness of what the child is doing. And there’s no politician ever lied so much to his constituency as a child lies to their parents come the teens. Usually.
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Jeeves

Who wants to make some kids with me so we can blame them for the downloads :D
- MadAsASnake
  
  You could always blame it on the dog…
  - Violated0
    
    Better yet would be to blame your neighbour or friend. This court has shown that you only need to monitor the use of their connection if you have suspicion that they are infringing. So if they ever get busted you can play “Oh what a total surprise when I never believed (s)he would”
    - MadAsASnake
      
      Yeah – but “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”
      
      (apologies to Steiner)
  - ThumbsUpThumbsDown
    
    So, who wants to make a dog with……..forget it.
    - MadAsASnake
      
      not going to a happy place there…
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      A clear sign that someone’s been spending too much time close to 4chan’s less supervised section there…
  - Anyone
    
    or blame it on your computer
    
    works for the MAFIAA with their faulty DMCA takedowns
  - Roswell1701
    
    Dude, you’re brilliant. That explains everything… The bone under my desk, the paw prints on my keyboard, the hot poodle pics from the Westminster Dog Show in my photo library…
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ThumbsUpThumbsDown

Copyright Holders here prefer to miss the point:

The Legal point is that the Supreme Court refused to hold the parents accountable for the actions of a third party who accesses their account using separate independent means. Great ruling from the point of view of a Court process that does its utmost to allocate criminal responsibility toward a known party proved to have actually committed a criminal act. Also a great ruling for what it tells us about claims that an IP address can be used to charge unknown parties…..

But, how about something much more fundamental? Of course, I’m asking about the thirteen year old.

Copyright Holders have lost that thirteen year old forever from their side of the debate. At thirteen, he is asking questions for which they can not possibly find answers. At thirteen, he can write the book on the social implications of perpetual Copyright; and, on why PIPA, ACTA, CISPA, and TPP were unforgivable Corporate treachery against the civil liberties of average citizens. At thirteen he can not be sold the argument that existing Copyright Law protects him as a Creative Artist; or, that it represents socially responsible custody and control of Intellectual Property.

He will NEVER understand the sharing of 1200 songs in the same light as the gospel according to Chris Dodd.

So, why have Copyright Maximalists lost this new generation of thirteen year olds? After all, they’ve been “losing” them for decades….

Because twenty years ago they “lost” his parents. Think about it: How many of us would willfully raise our children to be blind to the Corporate repression and thievery eating at the hearts of our democracies?
Anyone

now we just need a ruling from the Bundesgerichtshof disabling the Störerhaftung (that the account holder is responsible) and sanity would return in Germany
Who

@JohnM : you missed the point of my comment and that of this posting so STFU.

@MadAsASnake: I don’t consider file sharing wrong. I consider the entertainment industry wrong. if my children downloaded something I say good job as I have told em all about how the system is corrupted and they are just trying to make more money off of people. I also showed them how the IPA failed and now that the DMCA is around how it is hurting the people. AND showed how TRUE copy right law works.
- MadAsASnake
  
  Great – that doesn’t come across in your post. Pretty much everybody has different sets of values… I have no idea about what you call right and wrong. When I was growing up, I copied what I wanted – on cassettes. Everybody did. The idea that this was “wrong” was put out – and laughed at by pretty much everyone. My parents could not have cared less. That didn’t make them bad parents. There was lots more important stuff to worry about. as parents. Still is. This is a sensible ruling. It is not saying that parents are not responsible for their kids, it’s saying there is no legal reason to ride their asses 24/7 on behalf of the copyright cartels.
  - Who
    
    “The court ruled that the parents of a teenager who had made available more than 1,100 songs on file-sharing networks can not be held responsible for their son’s infringements, nor be required to monitor or hinder his online activities”
    
    “can not be held responsible” “nor be required to monitor or hinder his online activities”
    
    this IS stating that the court IS NOT HOLDING his parents responsible PERIOD.
    
    or did you miss read it?
    
    like I said, there was a case similar to this in the US not to long ago and it still hasn’t sunk in to the industry head. hence look were we are still.
Guest

This will all end when grandma or grandpa get pulled into court. Anyone can hack into a wifi router and download/seed when the account holders are sleeping and no one will know.The copyright idiots do not mess with older people.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/04/29/92-year-old-dvd-bootlegger-is-a-hero-to-u-s-soldiers/

The Times ran a touching profile of Strachman, a World War II veteran and prolific movie bootlegger who over the last eight years has sent more than 300,000 popular Hollywood films to troops overseas.

“It’s not the right thing to do, but I did it,” Strachman told the Times.
- Who
  
  there was a big stink over this back in the 2000 and the government and the entertainment industries both said that be cause they are putting there lives on the line for the USA they are EXEMPT from copy infringement.
  
  I like how they put this: “the industry loses billions to illegal copying each year”
  BULL SHIT they do! they got it back words they MAKE MORE do to it.
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  Actually, we have the cheat sheet in hand here.
  
  Senior couples have been sued for “downloading” german gay porn, atari games, and music.
  
  Dead people have been used in court cases as part of people downloading music.
  
  Peopler who don’t own computers have been receiving extortion letters claiming they downloaded.
  
  And so on. The problem is that the industry has spent a lot of wordwalling burying this avalanche of notices that their method simply doesn’t work.
  
  They won’t ever listen. Ever. So the answer is that the consumers and most of all, voters, do not give them the choice anymore.
IHaveNoBalls

Wow, it only took them a 5 years to get justice. I’m impressed.
JG

So… If the parents are not responsible… Does that mean then the right holders can then re-file going after the 13yo son instead? Hold him responsible for his own actions… He was briefed by his parents that sharing music was not acceptable online behavior, or at least the article included that in the High Court’s decision of what the parental responsibilities were… So he would have the mens rea & know that his actions were illegal…

If he can’t be held responsible (likely due to his youthfulness) then I can see a lot of people getting in touch with young German kids having them work as a proxy for their illegal downloading… Ich werde kauf dir ein iPad, wenn man die neuesten Hollywood-Filme downloaden für mich.
- Who
  
  he is 13 years old, they only got 5 years till they will probably sue him directly.
  and they probably don’t give a rats ass about any kind of statute of limitations.
- Giggitti
  
  Alright, I have seen this story on the news a few days before the rest of the world caught up with it. The dude is already age 18+ or something and now uses a paid music flatrate (or so he said in the interview), He believed back then that everybody used file sharing to get music and movies and what not. He was using the technology available to make things easier. Or some ship like that. After that rulling the case was closed I believe. Parents are not responsible, kid was too young, civil case (no one was harmed despite MAFIAA talkin out of their ass – smallest violin in the world.jpg).
  
  I say fk those copyright clowns, and good thing they tried to push a family that had the guts and the money to put up a fair fight. Like MAFIAA playing minesweeper blindfolded just flaging each possible location.
  Congrats to them, good luck to other people who don’t have enough cash. Also just for the record: “Störerhaftung” applies only if you don’t secure your wLan. Most broadband in Germany is DSL or cable. The ISPs throw basic routers at you with every contract you sign and even the simpletons around here that have enabled wLan use WPA which the courts see as a reasonable protection and thus you cannot be held liable if somebody steals the keys to your network. Of course you would have to prove that in the first place but … details, details. As far as I know they have to prove that you downloaded the file. Kinda dodgy anyway.
zuoduo

http://lnk.co/KQ35L
RIAALOLZER

Nice try RIAA-ssholes
Pingback: German Court: Parents Are Not Responsible For Piracy By Minors | The Tech Journal
http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell

The bottom line is that parents cannot monitor their children 24/7 to make sure that they are not ‘pirating’ stuff. The whole idea behind parents being responsible for the ills of their children is if those parents could have prevented their children from doing the thing in question by reasonable oversight AND it is physically harmful to someone else or property.
tmc8080

Maybe the laws have changed since then, but if this were about trespass & destruction of remote computer resources via hacking there have been contrary rulings in Germany under similar circumstances.
fuisui

http://lnk.co/KQ35L
http://twitter.com/meekcritic Meek Critic

Does anyone else find it disturbing that the couple’s home was searched? They’re treated like criminals just because of unauthorized sharing of copyrighted material.
- Giggitti
  
  That’s how we roll up in Germany. D8
  
  District attorney gets a mail from some rightsholder mob/some fuckin bloodsucking lawyer bureau with license to act in the name of rightsholders. Orders the ISP to reveal account holder and then issues a search when people don’t play ball or there are concerns the alleged infringer might destroy evidence… the usual.
  
  Funny thing… what happened to all those friends the kid shared all that stuff with? This is the typical bullshit scheme scare tactic crap! If the fella has shared the stuff and they just go after him they probably thought… “Hey, that guy has the monay! Let’s sue his ass!”
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Parents Not Responsible For Their Teenager’s Music Piracy

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