The copyright holders first go to a criminal court with the purpose of obtaining the customer information of the infringing filesharers. The law enforcement agencies then need the customer info, in order to proceed with the legal investigation. If the copyright holders get the names of the alleged pirates, they start a civil lawsuit.

However, since last week it has become harder for law enforcement agencies to obtain customer information from ISPs. The higher federal court in Germany has ruled that ISPs are not allowed to keep IP-logs without a legal reason (billing for example). This means that users with a dynamic IP address cannot be tracked down if their IP address has changed.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.