Sharing 2999 Songs, 199 Movies Becomes ‘Safe’ in Germany
Written by enigmax on August 14, 2008Prosecutors in a German state have announced they will refuse to entertain the majority of file-sharing lawsuits in future. It appears that only commercial-scale copyright infringers will be pursued, with those sharing under 3000 music tracks and 200 movies dropping under the prosecution radar.
During the last few years the legal climate in Germany has become more and more weighted against file-sharers, with hundreds of thousands receiving threats of legal action. Based on information gathered by anti-p2p tracking outfits, an offense is reported which the public prosecution service is obliged to investigate due to the fact that copyright infringement is a criminal issue in Germany. The ISP of the alleged infringer would then be forced to hand over the personal details of those accused, who would then be threatened with legal action.
Very often the legal action is not carried out but the threats are used as leverage to get ‘compensation’ from the alleged infringer to hand to the rights holder. It seems that the legal system in German has had enough of this ‘abuse’ of the criminal law system for ‘civil’ monetary gain.
In an interview with Jetzt.de, prosecutors from the Nort-Rhine Westphalia area state that those sharing files for personal, non-commercial uses, will no longer be the target of a lawsuit.
Christian Solmecke, a lawyer working at lawyers Wilde & Beuger and currently defending around 500 file-sharers against the German music industry told TorrentFreak: “That means, that the music industry in Germany has no chance to find out the real address behind an IP-address at the moment,” which is clearly a major obstacle for someone looking to take legal action.
The dividing line between personal file-sharing and commercial file-sharing needs to be defined clearly under the law, and the prosecutors have gone some way in offering this definition. “The guidelines say that no investigation should be done if the damage is lower than 3000 Euros (approx $4,500),” Christian told us. “The guideline says that the damage of trading one song is 1 Euro ($1.50). That means, that you could have 2999 Files on your computer and the prosecutors will not investigate.”
The damages for a movie are being touted at 15 Euros (approx $22.00) each, so presumably anyone sharing less than 200 movies will be considered a non-commercial file-sharer and should avoid prosecution. However, the prosecutor has indicated that those sharing brand new movies still in theater cannot expect to receive the same treatment.
Christian told TorrentFreak: “This decision is very new, we do not know what consequences it will have or if all prosecutors in Germany will follow the new guidelines.” However, the German music industry is clearly unhappy, labeling the decision as “a catastrophe” and refusing to accept it.
Should this decision spread around Germany, P2P tracking outfits such as Logistep AG and the German company Digiprotect will have to look elsewhere to make up their revenue. There are indications that Digiprotect is already branching out into the UK, in a new partnership with everyone’s favorite anti-p2p lawyers, Davenport Lyons.
Via P2P-Blog
Previously: EA Choose BitTorrent for Warhammer Online Distribution
Next: RIAA Pays $107,951 to Alleged Filesharer
54 Responses
Great news!
sounds marginally more sensible. However, prosecuting ANYONE for filesharing, so long as they aren’t charging/making a profit is still pretty mad.
Nice to know Germany is atoning for it’s crimes for getting off easy now.
Germany leading the world in ethics… who would have thought…
^LOL
This is sadly somehow true…
So I guess I’ll stick to Futurama when I say: Good News Everyone!
Don’t get all over exited yet.
This is simply the decision of SOME very frustrated state prosecutors for their district only in order to reduce the amount of filesharing cases.
Other state prosecutors AND courts might see things differently.
I’d say, stay well below 10% of those figures for the time being.
And expect HEAVY political lobbying …
There needs to be a clear line between commercial and non-commercial pirates. Pirating for personal has never and will never result in considerable loss for any company. Organized production and distribution of pirated material on a commercial scale however, will have a noticable impact on company revenue.
Way to stick it to em Germany… there trying to rule the world.. and we all know thats what you want to do..
stifle that competition!
do you think you could make a concentration camp for anti-p2p? that would be just super
I might add that in the near future laws will change again (I think this fall). After that change in law media companies can obtain the addresses “behind the IP” by applying to a court. There is no longer a need for filling criminal charges. Thus the prosecutors offices are out of the loop.
It’s unclear how the courts will handle such cases, i.e. if they will comply with the prosecutors benchmarks or make up their own. The term “gewerbsmäßiges Ausmaß” (used in the newly drafted law) which is used to characterise the “amount of infringement” allowing the courts to reveal the addresses is new to the german law system.
lol, a “catastrophe”
The genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region is a catastrophe. The 20+ year war with the LRA resulting in millions displaced and thousands of orphaned child soldiers/sex slaves is a catastrophe. The fact that 1 in 6 people do not have access to safe drinking water is a catastrophe. This is _not_.
Not a huge win for us by any margin but it does show that there is hope and sanity out there other than just greed and morons.
Definitely a step in the right direction… and as usual the music industry wants to fight it calling it “a catastrophe” while the movie industries have stayed quiet when it should be them actually making a noise, take a second to think how much 3000 songs cost the music industry to make verses how much 1 movies costs to make… then multiply that by 200 for the movie industry.
Clearly shows who the evil greedy motherf*ckers are.
If this does catch on, it would even the playing field a bit and would be a compromise on both sides: non commercial sharing would be ok, but not unlimited.
Then again, we all know how much the MAFIAA play sensibly and comprimise… dont we?
Ryan
http://www.ezee.se
The Nazi jokes seem pretty inappropriate. They systematically murdered millions of people, something that is clearly not happening here. The entertainment industry is a global threat, and it’s not like the US or other countries are without draconian copyright laws. They’d criminalize it everywhere if they could.
Germany, will you have me?
No news is good new. This is bad news. Trust me. It may look positive at first sight but in reality it’s a red herring. Over and over again, it’s exactly the same as “First they came after the [...] in the end nobody was left to protest when they came after me.” There are all kinds of exceptions. The term commercial-scale or better “gewerbsmäßig” is horribly abused here which is just as disgusting as using intellectual and property in the same sentence. A layman would think and has all reason to that non-commercial file-sharing that is no money and no ad revenue involved would never qualify in the first place. Some politicans already claimed that sharing or downloading a WHOLE album would qualify as commercial-scale.
If it’s all about numbers than sharing hundred thousands of files in the public domain or otherwise legal to distribute would most definitely qualify as commercial-scale too. Another examples: Isn’t open-source software such as Linux used and distributed commercially? Therefore “commercial-scale” is complete utter bullcrap. It just shows how clueless jurists are, how outdated and rotten laws are. If you rely on jurists to solve your real-world problems, good luck! You’ll need it but no amount will help.
Jurists are inherently incapable of applying common-sense or logic. They are extremely money and power greedy. So they redefine commonly (mis)understood terms to fit their own needs all the time. Really, this time they are just too damn lazy to go after everyone.
Non-commercial file-sharing must be free and legal. Don’t accept anything less!
If this sort of thing ever happened in the USA, the RIAA/MPAA would simply write another law as needed.
6 and 12 are right.
That said, the articel is rather useless…
>>15
yup, very simple by just increase damage of trading one song from 1 euro to 10 euro. i hope this is not another scam to do that
Wow, I love how Germany is still associated with Nazism over 60 years after the destruction of it.
On a lighter note, I’m glad to see some number system setup so beurocrats and lawyers can’t put false labels like “light filesharer and Heavy filesharer” on us without any actual basis for it. I still wonder how they are going to count how many songs and movies.
I agree with the distinction between commercial piracy and private sharing. Not sure what that crossover point is - 3K songs seems like a lot. I only have about 4K on my MP3 player. That’s an entire lifetime music library. The RIAA would never go along with that. Of course, US law doesn’t make a distinction between for-profit commercial piracy and people sharing, so it’s a moot point.
Yeah, Germany is still kinda obsessed with Nazism… both the politicians when forbidding something (sometimes it’s ok, but usually not), as well as creating nazi “clubs”…
But anyway, actually I heard this a few days ago already, but back then it was 2k songs and 200 movies… I think… anyway, nice that it shines up here…
3000 songs is a lot?!? Yeah maybe if you only to radio stations playing the same 100 songs over and over again. You can easily collect and share ten thousands of freely distributable songs. Of course, you can do the same with music that is not freely distributable but the numbers alone tell you nothing. Diskspace is cheap anyway. Why would you delete anything if you still remotely like it? So the numbers mean absolutely nothing. Either you don’t like music a lot or your life-span must be extremely short if you think a couple of thousand songs out to be enough for everyone. There is no frickin’ crossover point.
@ 20 judging from the comments here it seems other nations people are way more obsessed about the past then most germans.
“Legal system in German” umm slight error there…
The idea that you should be able to freely obtain recorded works becomes invalid when the producers of said works have stated that they don’t want this to happen. This is an obvious truth that most of the comments here are not grasping on to. Can someone explain this? I really don’t see the problem.
So do that mean the anti-p2p groups will just keep track of how much sh!t is downloaded over a few months on a particular IP, wait till it hits the big red €3000 and then come after you for the lot of them?
I don’t think things will really be done any differently. Remember what the RIAA said they are only going after people who were “frivolous” filesharers sharing over 800MB of content?
“The idea that you should be able to freely obtain recorded works becomes invalid when the producers of said works have stated that they don’t want this to happen. This is an obvious truth that most of the comments here are not grasping on to. Can someone explain this? I really don’t see the problem.”
It’s not about “I should be able to get free stuff”. It’s about “I should be able to share the stuff I have with others if I want to, or have them share their stuff with me.”
If I buy a CD it really doesn’t matter what the producer wants me to do with it. If I want to share it I will, because it’s mine.
What about pornos?
enigmax, you are right that logistep and co must look for other ways to get revenue, but that is not due to the decision by the Oberstaatsanwälte in NRW.
If I remember correctly it is that from september on those lawyers that make moeny out of piracy can only demand 100 euro maximum for the so called Abmahnung (the cease and decist letters) the MAFIAA lawyers send once they get the name out from the files that the DAs must create once these lawyers file a criminal complaint for copyrightinfringement.
So even if the DAs now say in case of petty crime we don’t ask the ISP anymore for the name of the account holder behind an IP, these MAFIAA vulture lawyers like Clemens Rasch with its Pro Media GmbH in Hamburg will have to use the “civilian information intitlement” right to get the name where he can sent his money demand.
But non the less it is good to see resoning in those DAs that they don’t want to treat petty criminals that are compareable to kids stealing chewing gum in the supermarket like hardcore criminals with search warrants and the impounding of the whole computer system like it was the case so far when MAFIAA accused a german internet account holder.
This petty crime handling was specificly refused by the mafiaa bought politicos in berlin after that those vultures insisted that even schoolkids must be treated like hardcore criminals for the betterment of this MAFIAA guys that harm society with their greed!
@10: Amen, except that I think it might have been a mishear. They really said “It’s a cat’s ass trophy” for the filesharers. I.e. Yay, you just won something of trivial value.
@12: Amen. The truly sad thing is that the overwhelming majority of the ones calling Germany “Nazis” are too dumb to realize that they themselves live in a nation that’s the closest modern inheritor of fascism (draconian laws, lots of hoo-hah about “morals,” and the marriage of business and government). Not to mention that I’ll eat my shorts if even one of them lived during the Holocaust or has firsthand knowledge.
(America might perpetrate a nuclear holocaust, but I doubt it. We prefer to keep our Third World slaves alive to keep working.)
Forgot to say… yay them for capping fines at reasonable values. Beats the crap out of thousands of dollars per violation.
Wow, At least someone in the World has common sense! Leave it to the Gemans to show Common Sense, I wish the Us Dictatorship would follow suit!
JT
http://www.FireMe.To/udi
How do you define your computer?
Like, could you have 2999 songs on one computer, 2999 on the other, etc.?
But since the songs are stored in the hard drive, could you have two hard drives in the computer with 2999 songs on each?
Or could you make partitions?
The possibilities of exploiting this ruling are lovely.
Lucky Germans
That’s awesome. Nobody is ever seeding more than 200 movies at once, so this really only affects people that use… ugh… Limewire.
Here’s the question: can the copyright owner still file civil suits, bearing the cost of investigation and litigation themselves?
If so, then this is the way it has been in the U.S. for many many years (copyright infringement has never been a criminal activity in the U.S. but a civil matter, with some exceptions which are comparable to the bar set by these prosecutors).
If not, yes, Germany is better than the U.S. For now.
@ Andrew Aug 15, 2008 at 00:30
yes, they still can (and probably will) as long as label bosses are stupid enough to pump money into these vultures like Rasch and all those millions into RIAA and IFPI.
(Btw. Ray Beckerman has the taxstatements of the RIAA put online. Interesting how stupid the labels are in paying so much to RIAA!)
So far the way it is done with the criminal proceedings even against the smalest ones they can find are only because there is currently NO other way for the rightsholders to get the names of the account payer behind an IP.
It was so far not possible for them to do it like they do in america where the rightholders can go directly to court and deal then with the supoena against the ISP.
This will change in the new draft of copyrightlaw amendments that will likely take affect on in september.
But according to an article by the lawyer mentioned obove, that new procedure will not be better for the rightsholders, since a) a judge still must give his OK for them to get the address data of accountsholders and b) now it is them who must pay in advance to get the court procedings running. According to the Lawyer Solmecke. around 200Euro court fee per case.
http://www.wb-law.de/news/it-telekommunikationsrecht/406/zivilrechtlicher-auskunftsanspruch-wird-musikindustrie-nichts-nuetzen/
German law is in general soft compared to US laws.
This is not the last call in Germany. The ruling will only stick when the “Bundesgerichtshof” supreme court made the final decision and that will take some time until they make the call.
Even than there is also the EU regulation which might have some saying too.
It is good a verdict with see some common sense here. And some people might think good place to be, but wait. Isn’t there the “Gema” fee everybody full age has to pay each month. Extremely annoying this old socialism taxing to enjoy music or TV and ain’t cheap.
@24
No. Just because one created the idea, doesn’t mean that one should have dictatorship over others over it. You are not talking about any “right” for the artist to do something. You are talking about the “right” for the artist to RESTRICT others from doing something. In effect, it is not a right - it is an enforced tyranny.
When one buys a CD, it should be one’s own property. It shouldn’t matter what the original creator thinks, because it is ONE’S OWN POSSESSION, not the creators. The idea that the original creator should have control over other people’s private possessions is ridiculous, and that is what copyright is trying to do.
Ok, it’s no perfect solution, but I could live with it. At least, IF you get caught, you pay just the price as if you bought the tracks on iTunes. It is a large amount for a working guy, but it doesn’t ruin your life.
@39 when they get you for the first time you only pay 100€. first time em proud to be german ;)
Crikey… I’ve got 2,946 tracks - I guess I should quit now!
This article is - believe a german reader - WRONG!
Wrong in many ways.
In the future the music industrie doesn’t need to go to a court to get the allowance to ask rthe provider for the personal data behind the IP… They can ask directly, without any court involved.
Until then the courts don’t work at the music industries attempts to get the data when the user had not more than 100 files…
So every of this idiots will have to pay. Now and in the future…
my friends’ friend in germany was hit with 7000 euro fine for “sharing music”. fucking ridiculous
39 - Then by the same token, the inventor of some useful object can have no rights to it once he shows it to someone else. It’s not hard to see how that can really hurt the inventor if someone else comes along and sells his invention. What is his motivation to share an idea with the world if he knows it will be taken from him? How can he hope to earn a living?
Intellectual property must be treated differently from physical property. If you loan your friend a hammer, there is still only one hammer. If you loan your friend your CD or give it to him without making a copy, there is still only one CD. But when you copy it you are creating something that was not there before.
It is interesting to note that Benjamin Franklin did not take out a patent on his Franklin stove because he was confident in his ability to build and sell a model that would compete with anyone who tried to copy his design, so maybe he would have been on your side.
But for me, it is simple. One of my favorite bands, Rush, is a hard-working honest group and they have stated very clearly “please don’t steal from us”. regardless of my own opinion in the matter, should I not respect the wishes of the musicians? There have been several who have made their stuff freely available for download, but in general I don’t think that works for them as a business model - they need to pay their bills too.
Marc (43), I’m German as well and you are wrong as well.
There are indeed plans for copyright owners to bypass courts and go to the ISPs directly, but they wouldn’t get any data from that.
Why?
1) The Constitutional Court is right now dealing with the data retention law that might have been a source for data - it has already made clear that the data, if data retention is not revoked altogether, may not be used for anything but SEVERE crimes. That’s not one of them.
2) ISPs are not allowed to keep data if it’s not necessary for billing purpose. I have flatrate, most of us do, hence they don’t need any data. Just write a letter to your ISP asking wether he keeps IP/connection data. If he does, demand that he deletes yours and does’t save it anymore. If he does not comply, terminate your agreement immediately and go for another one who doesn’t keep data.
And, to another commenter: It’s true that the article only deals with NRW’s attorney. But you should know that others have already announced that they would adopt a similar stance.
I think that going after the big guys helps, but isn’t the solution. How long does it take for a new one to come out? they’ll always be one step behind. I think going after individual users is the key (getting them scared enough that they rather spend a couple of bucks)
@45
No, I am saying that everybody else should be able to do what they want. I am not talking about other people selling the inventor’s inventions. I am talking about having other people to be able to communicate the other person’s inventions, and for them to make their own derivative inventions.
The fact is that Rush is not to be respected as long as they use force, and as long as they have any delusion that it is “stealing.” I do not respect Rush at all - why should I ever pay them? Payment is through respect, and respect is earned, not given.
@45
Indeed, it must be treated differently. It must exempt all non-commercial activity. For example, when creating a copy, you can still return the original copy to the friend. You are not keeping the original copy, so you are not stealing the original copy. The other copy was CREATED, not stolen. It makes no sense to say that the CD is in the possession of the original creator when it is clearly in the possession of somebody else.
For example, when you borrow a hammer, perhaps you had some kind of ability to make hammers, and perhaps you wanted to make a copy of it. Why shouldn’t you? It does not deprive anyone of anything.
You say that it must be “approached differently” but the only difference is that it is dirt cheap to create CDs whereas it is more expensive to have the scrap material for a hammer and more arduous to create a hammer (whereas the computer does everything for you in an instant). There is no need for any cost - because it doesn’t cost anything to create it. To artificially inflate the price from 0 to something really expensive is not anything reasonable - it is a forced extraction of money. You may think that creators would then not get any money, but why can’t there be a better solution? If it were merely about getting the creators money, then we can simply levy a general tax on the whole population to pay them. That should be enough.
Think about it. Wouldn’t the world be better if there was some dirt-cheap method of creating food, since nobody would go hungry? But then by your logic would argue that the farmers would get no money, and farmers need a way of making money. That is exactly what the computer is doing to software and other media, and to prevent the public from accessing it and creating it en masse and to try to extract money from people for it, is nothing other than stealing from the public good.
You may think that the only motivation for creativity is money - this is as far from the truth as you could get. Perhaps you are too corrupted by the money world to see anything differently, but you must realize that money is meaningless, and that people are creative essentially because it is MEANINGFUL. They want to communicate their ideas to the world, make the world a better place, or to spread their ideas to other people and earn prestige for such great ideas. If you do not think people would do such things for such motivations, then you must be blind to the whole humanity.
@45
Finally, yes, perhaps the original creator needs money. But other people should have their right to do what they see fit with it, other than immoral things like plagiarism. If somebody else wants to sell it, why shouldn’t they? All that is needed is that the other person who sells it must pay a royalty to the original creator. But for the original creator to say “I want this person and NOT that person to sell it for me” is simply unwarranted tyranny of the original creator over others.
If this does not make enough, especially since the ability to re-create it has a price of zero, then how will they make a living without artificially inflating the price and forcing everybody either not to have it or to pay them, you say? Government tax can fund them, if you want them to make a living so much. Give them permanent welfare. You should have no problem with that, since it should be about getting them money.
But I think it is better, instead of being funded for past works, instead to be funded for every new work the create. The motivation to create would be strengthened because they would have to create a new thing each time to get money, and there would be much more creativity if such a thing were to happen.
I always stayed away from the new movies ( also because they are low quality cam crap) lol, and honestly what is the new music? All the good music was already written, done so these new musicians will all suck because they can’t do anything new & good. 15 Euros/ movie is ridiculous !
I agree with Trabb- this is pathetic to let you commit the crime ( and u don’t realise it ) then they send you the check ?!! Pathetic. I don’t think this will ever happen in EU. It’s non-sense. To all those morons who bring the word nazzi here-go get a life you fanatic twats-Gernany is now less nazzi then most of the countries I’ve been too ( including US), and I’ve been to most EU countries & US. stupid cunts.
“sharing”, who in bittorrent actually shares 3000 songs at once, surely some ppl have packs but it’s usually just a couple albums at a time, your not really sharing the other stuff you keep on your hdd’s even if you have more than 3000 songs
i wonder like some rls’s come out as 1 big mp3 file with cue’s, is that considered one song or? ;}
also new movies still in theaters?, in germany? or in the US? cuz like what if a movie is in theaters in US but not yet in germany or might not even be shown in theaters in germany or movies that aren’t even shown in theaters? (limited or straight-to-dvd), there are even movies (often non-US) that are already out on dvd but then appear in theaters
law needs to be more specific
This is good news for all P2P sharers in germany
"we do not know what consequences it will have or if all prosecutors in Germany will follow the new guidelines."
awesome, so what are my odds of getting one of the cool prosecutors?
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