Privacy Prevails: German ISP Forced To Delete IP Logs
Written by Ernesto on November 06, 2006The highest appeal court in Germany has decided that T-Online, one of the largest German ISPs has to delete all IP logs to guarantee the privacy of their customers. This ruling makes it impossible for anti-piracy organizations to trace an infringing IP-address back to a customer of T-Online, once their dynamic IP address has changed.
The decision (German) does not mean that T-Online is now obliged to delete all their IP-logs, the customers first need to complain. But, if they ask T-Online to delete their IP-logs, the ISP has no other choice than to comply. A lawyer from Frankfurt already sketched a sample letter to make this process easier.
The court ruling is the result of a case that was initiated by Holger Voss, a 33 year old man from Münster. Voss was sued for making a sarcastic comment in an Internet forum back in 2002.
After the district court and the regional court, now the federal appeal court decided that T-Online has no right to store the IP-logs without a legal reason. This ruling can be considered as a huge breakthrough, and it is good to see that at least some countries still value privacy.
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15 Responses
That’s nice to hear.
Privacy = Piracy :-D
Whoa, that REALLY good! Hope the same thing will happen in Sweden… naw, of course it wont…
HAHA
God I wish I could see the looks on the faces of the dip in charge of the IFP, RIAA, and Dan “the boyscout molester” Glickman right now. – CJ
Well, it’s not the Supreme Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht), but the highest appeal court (Bundesgerichtshof). But anyway, good news.
Seems at odds with the new EU terror legislation requiring that ISPs log all internet traffic, and stores these logs for at least 6 months. Perhaps it has yet to be made into German law, in which case… enjoy it while it lasts.
Privary does not mean piracy.
Those who dowload or share copyright protected material, could benefit from privacy, but compared to the number of all people online, those are by far a minority. Of course, if you ask any Ass. that has the job of protecting the pockets of those who produce such material, they will say spying on all users just to catch the very few who commit piracy acts is normal. But is it really?
Why not spying on all those corporations out there in order to track those criminals like the ones behind Enron before ruining the lives of thousands?
Why not track all those companies that do business on remote fiscal paradises so that they win big at the expense of the poor?
It’s all about being greedy. I cannot but salute the decision, and at the same time I can only imagine it will be ruled against it rather sooner than later.
I’m not involved in piracy or anything else against the law. But PRIVACY is my RIGHT. So does anyone knows how this think work around the other EU countries? If I’m sure such high court rullings can be take effect or be able to used as examples inside EU.
It will be struck down. The RIAA is going to hide behind the anti-terrorism wave and ride it to victory in the near future. Beware.
@makko, nice written.
thats awesome,
i hope other countries follow suit
IPaddress and privacy, in my opinion the IPaddresses are not owned by anyone, in that case what is the harm in storing public data/information? for instance for various reason if government/police dept. want to know about the internet user, will be usefull information.
Some clarifications if I may;
The ruling was made by the Federal Supreme Court ( http://www.dict.cc/?s=BGH )
The court (BHG) has NOT ruled about the legality or iligality of the IP-number logging behaviour!
The BGH has only made an adjudication ( http://www.dict.cc/?s=Gerichtsbeschluss ) that the objection from the ISP against the rulings of the 2 lower courts is non-admissible due to a technical fact that the ruling of the lower courts does not create costs for the ISP from more then 20.000 Euro which would be necessary for the BGH to decide over the matter at issue.
So in the end unfortunately not THE breakthru pro-decision for the freedom and privacy of ordinary citizens and “non-terroristic”-filesharers.
Hope that helps ;-)
P.S.
a PDF-copy of the “Beschluss” in German on Holger’s page:
http://www.kein1984.de/bgh-entscheidung.pdf
oh and Ernesto, better not link to the spiegel regarding “The decision” because those text cost money to read in a few weeks. Better link to the heise article regarding the decision! (the heise headline is stupid!) http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/80614
Thanks, kdsde
But I had to link to the Spiegel artile, because there was no other source available
Updated the link.
All talk is OLD now.
Check out:
http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de for the latest fucking thread to internet users in Germany.
In short words:
Some politician (a true hero in the field) changed rules as he dropped a important privacy law from our constitution so that ISP’s starting from 2009 now need to save data for more than 6 months. This is due to EU debts for the whole econonmy area to come sooner or later.
Further all German mobile phones will get logged in means of the cell-location information.
We know where you are: We are your big brother.
ISP’s need to log the IP for 6 months.
Also some stupid E-Mail logging law was initiated to log E-Mail contacts. How stupid can one politican be? Stupid as all of them!
This doesn’t make sense because they won’t log my E-Mail traffic since it is encrypted with SSL/TLS/GPG.
However, German E-Mail service providers like GMX, web.de, etc. will collect data — the thing they already do since they run the service with their stupid users.
We are not free anymore.
Countries (especially politicans) fear the thread of their own missing knowledge into technology and the fast change of the world so they want to make sure to gather more information about people.
Osama smilies two times: First his success in NY, after his success of changing the thoughts of our stupid politicians.
Why? Because they tell “we have a terrorism thread”. Oh really? I can fear it in my stupid village of stupid people every day that someone want to drop a bomb on my stupid village.
Know what? Majority of people live in stupid villages and don’t have to fear any thread because they have their own thread in their own village with their own stupid people and this has nothing to do with the islam!
This is a quantum jump back into history!
You know how the Nazis collected all Jews?
Simply with the INFORMATION of their living, housing, ancestors, etc.
The same thing as when a country starts collecting personal data.
Sorry this is a critical comparison, but INFORMATION is a critical issue.
In sum: I don’t trust Germany. Never trust this country, never even if the food tastes good and the facade looks shiny.
I drop all torrent connection from/to the country.
PS
Austria had a similar constitution change as Germany, so take care.
PSS
Actually it seems that the culprits are not the politicians, but some people to own them as a instrument.
Who are these people? Some lobby like a oil company? Some unknown lobby yet?
What does a politician know about Internet after study law for 10 years? NOTHING.
So he has consultants to tell him what is needed and what not.
A lobby again.
A problem to our world. Our freedom.
Fight our your babies will get “chipped” one day.
“You are just a number.”
“Now go to school, work and pay for the system.”
“Your freedom? Sorry, what did you say, we changed some constitution long a go. I don’t know anything anymore, I’m only a part of this system and do my job.”
will SMARTHIDE or HIDE-IP work on this?
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