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Germany Accepts Strict Piracy Law

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the slap-on-the-wrist-that-takes-the-whole-hand dept.

A beautiful mind writes "The TimesOnline is reporting that Germany has accepted a new piracy law, currently the toughest in Europe, which comes into effect on January 1, 2007. From the article: 'Germans risk two years in prison if they illegally download films and music for private use under a new law agreed yesterday. Anybody who downloads films for commercial use could be jailed for up to five years.' Many politicians defended the new law, amongst them Günther Krings, the Christian Democrat legal affairs spokesman, who claimed: 'There should be no legal distinction between stealing chewing gum from a shop and performing an illegal download.'"

2 of 478 comments (clear)

  1. Evidently the law does distinguish by aminorex · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I seriously doubt that anyone in German has been imprisoned for two years for taking a stick of chewing gum from a shop. Well, unless they were in a politically despised class such as Jews or Historians.

    --
    -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
  2. Without Entertainment DROIDS you'd be left with... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    As an entertainment droid, I get a little pissed off by the yahoos (most everybody, in other words) who think it's okay to steal music. 2 years is not justifiable. What WOULD be justifiable is if all the garage bands and dancers and singers and actors and writers and, well, us ENTERTAINMENT DROIDS just took a year off so that you bastards could just all wallow in your own lame attempts at amusement. How much you wanna bet that masturbation would become the hot trend in such a world?