Germany Accepts Strict Piracy Law

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.'"

Comments

well, if that's what you do to gum thieves

[yagu]

From the Fine Article:

GERMANS risk two years in prison if they illegally download films and music for private use under a new law agreed yesterday.

Also from the Fine Article:

Günther Krings, the Christian Democrat legal affairs spokesman, said: There should be no legal distinction between stealing chewing gum from a shop and performing an illegal download

So, you can get two years in prison in Germany for stealing chewing gum from a shop? Cool.

This is all rehashing rehashes, but it bears repetition lest we find ourselves slowly and finally boiled in this slowly heating water. It's more heavy-handed power and money grabbing by those who have the money and power (entertainment droids and politicians). I only hope one of the first "caught" with their hands in the downloading cookiejar is some son or daughter of one of the anointed government members. Also from the article (emphasis mine):

The German music industry also claims to be suffering from piracy. The recording industry suffered a fall in turnover in 2005 for the seventh year in a row to 1.7 billion (1.2 billion). Sales have fallen almost 45 per cent since 1998. The German branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry estimates that the equivalent of 439 million music CDs were copied illegally in Germany last year.

First of all, what supports their estimates? Secondly, I've still yet to see causal studies whereby there are directly related losses because of illegal downloads. I have seen some convincing studies showing strong correlation between downloading and sales.

Re:well, if that's what you do to gum thieves

[commander_gallium]

How much does it cost to keep someone jailed for two years? I'd imagine it costs more than a DVD does.

Re:well, if that's what you do to gum thieves

[timeOday]

It's been said before, but if you're going to steal, create a company first and make sure to steal millions so you don't get punished. You think anybody served jail time when the music industry was convicted of price fixing? Of course not. You think anybody from Sony will serve jailtime under hacking laws for the rootkit fiasco? Of course not, unthinkable.

Re:well, if that's what you do to gum thieves

[A beautiful mind]

How much does it cost to kill someone? If someone wants to do it it costs nothing.

Still, those people who do murder someone should be jailed and it costs a lot of money. Thus, cost can't be a factor in prison sentences. If not cost, then what?

Justice. It is why this law in Germany is so bad - because it is not just.

Re:well, if that's what you do to gum thieves

[zenthax]

First of all, what supports their estimates? Secondly, I've still yet to see causal studies whereby there are directly related losses because of illegal downloads. I have seen some convincing studies showing strong correlation between downloading and sales.

Of course they have because the keyword there is losses. Companies do not experience losses by piracy, meaning it doesn't actually cost them anything. Rather piracy deprives them of potential revenue, meaning all this discussing of losing money to piracy is all dependent on a theoretical situation where a person would buy it. Basically if you were to steal a stick of gum, that becomes a loss for the store/company/etc. Because essentially at the end of the year they have to deduct the cost they paid for the gum from their total earning. It would be a big fat red minus on they finances. Where as piracy means that companies aren't able to generate MORE revenue, meaning instead of taking actual losses, they just don't get to make more money. Basically they don't get to add nice black pluses to their finances. Now the losses all these IP companies talk about are NOT the red minuses but the black pluses they MIGHT have gotten. It basically being upset that not enough people decided to buy your product, and then whining to the government to make people buy it. Reminds me a bit of auto insurance here in the States.(Yes I know there are good reason for getting auto insurance)

Re:well, if that's what you do to gum thieves

[fermion]

One can take this another way. The damage caused by music piracy is about equal to the value of petty theft in a grocery store.

In the US, quick google lookup shows the average supermarket loses around 2.5% of retail sales to shrinkage. However, only half of that is due to external forces. So, if we use the german analogy, perhaps the true loss to the industry is a little more than 1%. A percentage loss is, of course, better than unit sales as the percentage allows us to judge the impact.

What is interesting, according to various articles, is that Germany has about 82 million people, but only 127 million CD sales, a nearly 50% drop over 7 years. So each german is buying 1 maybe 2 cds a year. And you are trying to tell me that a country that is so uninterested in music is going to download the equivelent of 5 CDs a year. I mean at the height of the sales they were only buying 3 or 4 CDs a year. I guess copying music over the internet is so much easier than just copying an album from a friend that it encourages the people to steal that extra CD that they did not even want in the first place.

I guess not that Germany is a completely a western country, they must learn that the best way to grow a bussiness is to supply products the people want. And, of course, if artificial barriers are erected to try to force consumers to buy stuff they don't want, then those consumers will just find another way to get they stuff they do.

Re:well, if that's what you do to gum thieves

[arivanov]

TFA does not answer the most interesting question. AFAIK in germany you can copy a copyrighted work as much as you want within your household under fair use provisions. This is supported by an extra levy on CD writers, blank media, etc. Does the new law change any of these provisions in favour of the plutocrats or not?

Re:well, if that's what you do to gum thieves

[MooUK]

I did a small-scale study of my own recently. The results aren't hugely reliable with the study I did - amongst other things it was pure convenience sapmpling - but I did try to ensure there were a range of backgrounds. The study was focused on students at my uni.

I found that that around 60% of my respondents felt sharing music should not be illegal, and a similar number felt a lot of people actually ended up buying MORE music after finding new bands or artists by downloading their music.

If you want something more reliable and reputable, the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA released a study very quietly recently that more-or-less says the opposite of everything the industry groups have been saying. It was mentioned on here a week or two ago. Here's a link to the slashdot article: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/18/04 21250

Re:well, if that's what you do to gum thieves

[dodald]

When you kill someone you take their life, the question you should ask is how much is a life worth, not how much killing costs.

The original statement said it costs more to jail someone than the DVD is worth.

It did not say it costs more to jail someone than it costs to DOWNLOAD a DVD.

Punishment should be DIRECTLY related to the cost/impact of he crime.

Re:well, if that's what you do to gum thieves

[sirnuke]

"Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility" Ambrose Bierce

Re:well, if that's what you do to gum thieves

[Finn61]

I'm glad you raised that often overlooked point. Of course it is also a pure fantasy that every single downloader would have otherwise paid real money for the product, but that's how they create these crazy numbers. My gut feeling is a lot of downloading is purely opportunistic.

Re:well, if that's what you do to gum thieves

[a.d.trick]

Punishment should be DIRECTLY related to the cost/impact of he crime.

No it shouldn't. That's why we have murder and manslaughter. In both places the victim ends up dead, but the pushisment is different, and rightly so.

Re:well, if that's what you do to gum thieves

[Tim C]

Punishment should be DIRECTLY related to the cost/impact of he crime.

Someone else has already pointed out the murder/manslaughter distinction, so I'll leave that. There are other distinctions too, where the end result is the same but the exact circumstances of the crime can make a large difference to the punishment.

Even ignoring that, however, there's another factor that can greatly increase the punishment - the perceived ease of commiting the offence and likelyhood of getting away with it. If it's seen as not really being of any consequence, and is hard to detect and prosecute people, you're going to get more people thinking "why not?" and doing it. To help combat that, you make the punishment harsh; the theory being that people will think "I probably won't get caught, but if I do... it's not worth it". That's part of the reason why these laws all have such stupidly high penalties. It's not just the companies lobbying for unrealistic punishments, it's meant to bea deterrent too.

Wow

[Andy Gardner]

That's just crazy, two years!? You wouldn't get that if you went out and stole the DVD itself.

Re:Wow

[scenestar]

and thats the great part about it.

It just shows how ineffective and out of context the lobbied laws are.

real street crime hurts society, wheras "pirating" is more or less socially acceptable. (at least alot more than shoplifting)

Re:Wow

[iminplaya]

This isn't about protecting society. It's about protecting powerful business interests.

It just shows how ineffective and out of context the lobbied laws are.

For whom? This is going to create great investment opportunities for some. None of these people care whether it's effective or not. This is about cash flow.

Re:This is not justice

[amliebsch]

Once all the Germans were war-like, and mean
But that couldn't happen again;
We taught them a lesson in 1918
And they've hardly bothered us since then.

no legal distinction

[nurb432]

Except for the reality of the situation that one is theft and one isnt..

Must be nice to have enough power to go buy your own laws when you feel like it.

Same as stealing chewing gum?

[corngrower]

... 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.'"

I'm sorry, but I just don't think they're quite the same. An illegal download doesn't prevent the 'owner' from benefiting from the origninal. Whereas when you steal a physical object, it does. If I steal a loaf of bread from you, you no longer have that loaf of bread to eat. If I copy the recipie for making that bread without your permission, it does you no harm (unless, possibly, you're the proprieter of a bakery.) I'm not claiming that illegal downloads are morally ok, just that its not quite the same thing as stealing a physical object.

Actually, it's not true - yet

[theonlyholle]

This is not a law yet - it's a proposal that the cabinet agreed on. It will only become law if it finds a majority in parliament, which may or may not happen, but it hasn't been voted on yet and Germany is still enough of a democracy to wait for that to happen ;)

Re:Two years for stealing gum?

[slavemowgli]

Actually, theft can get you up to five years. But yes, anyone who steals some chewing gum (a regular amount, that is - not an entire truckload) won't get a prison sentence, much less one of two years (and if you did, you could fight the verdict as being not appropriate for the offense). In fact, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't even get a trial - it's just not worth it.

germany's copyright laws have been privatized

[Lazy Jones]

Germany's is the first government that has officially conceded to all lobbyism efforts on behalf of the industry and adopted a policy that supports the industry's demands fully while completely disregarding the rights and needs of its citizen.

Many people believe that this is due to corruption, it can no longer be attributed to "goodwill" towards the industry and stupidity alone. In any case, it goes way beyond being irresponsible and neglecting the government's duty to take care of its citizens and the long-term effect of this will be civil disobedience and loss of respect for laws in general.

That is outrageous!

[SocialEngineer]

Most popular music out today isn't even worth a stick of chewing gum!

Mission Impossible

[Toby The Economist]

Facts;

1. It's incredibly easy to copy digital media.
2. It's done privately.
3. It harms no one directly and immediately.

No law in the world will stop this people downloading digital media, unless the power of the police is extended to the point that the download behaviour of every individual is monitored.

Unfortunately and utterly unbeliveably and to my utter, inexpressible disgust and revulsion, the law has in fact taken that step, with the new European Data Retention Act.

Welcome to the Police State.

Re:Privacy

[arivanov]

They have strict privacy laws. As strict as it gets. Possibly one of the strictest in the world. Last time I looked you cannot even get a phone bill for a company phone without it being anonymised. Last numbers used to be deliberately scrambled so that the employer can see what is the call pricing category but without being able to see who has been called. So on so fourth.

The problem is that it won't be enforced

[babbling]

The problem here is that this law isn't going to be enforced properly.

By sneaking in these laws, they prosecute one or two people in the country every now and then. The laws stay in place, people don't care about them because they figure it "won't happen to them", and the movie/music companies are able to bribe politicians into creating even more ridiculous laws.

If only they would attempt to enforce this law en-masse, they would end up with at least 10% (probably more) of the population in jail. Then people would start caring about this and everything would be set right.

Instead, they're going to slowly introduce even worse laws, but only prosecute a tiny percentage of the population. It is an unfortunate situation.

The law is NOT accepted

[johl]

The article is factually wrong. "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." This is not true. Neither has Germany "accepted" such a law, nor is it true that it will come into effect on the date mentioned. On Wednesday, the ruling coalition of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats presented their draft of a proposed law containing many of the things mentioned in the article. This law will be discussed in both chambers of the parliament within the next 6 months. Individual politicians of both ruling parties, as well as many from the opposition have already called for changes to that draft. At this point, one can only speculate how the result will look like and when it will be passed.

my wages havent increased 12% yearly...

[cheekyboy]

Hello looser evil government people (that dont know what real work is)

Since my wages havent increased 12% yearly over the last 10 years like many govt people, I hereby
like to claim a 'stolen' amount of cash of $100,000 . The corporates who earned massive returns
have the cash, I would like to see them locked up and my cash returned, because in an infaltion economy
everyone DESERVES inflated revenue, even if their business models are crap.

So wheres my tax discounts eh?

Levy should be repealed

[Barbarian]

Unless there is also a levy that compensates shopkeepers for stolen goods, the levy on CD writers and media should now be immediately revoked.