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German Prosecutors Won't Help RIAA Counterpart
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A German court decision ruled that the European counterpart to the RIAA cannot invoke criminal proceedings over petty file sharing incidents. The goal was to to find out from ISPs the identity of alleged file-sharing subscribers; the requests have been refused as the judge saw the the proceedings as not in the 'public interest', and little or no economic damage was shown to have been caused to the record companies. Offering a few copyright-protected music tracks via a P2P network client was 'a petty offense,' the court declared. Within days, German prosecutors have now indicated that they will no longer permit the use of 'criminal proceedings' to procure subscriber information."
Now if only American court rooms cared at all about the "public interest", rather than the special interests that have so much power, maybe we'd start seeing similar sound-mindedness.
... our courts had this much sense.
There is a war going on for your mind.
The RIAA should be forced to take these cases to Small Claims Court, where they would have little to no subpoena power, be limited in the amount of award, and have to explain to crusty, overworked judges why they're wasting their time.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I wish Canada's courts would have this much sense.
I guess after the whole Hitler debacle, the German people have learned how dangerous a fascist governemnt can be.
Kudos!
I'm glad the German government / courts have some common sense unlike their American counter-parts. First Scientology now this!
- to to
find out from ISPs the... C'mon, even MS Word catches this.How long before the RIAA's bought politicians in the US start threatening the German government for supporting terrorism?
Hooray for Germany! Is it still bad to say this?
This is my sig.
Tags vanish into the ether after saving today. Just me?
Bombing of Berlin will start in 24 hours. Dick Cheny and President Bush decided that the German government is not in the best interests of the USA and must be stopped.
"we are bringing freedom to all of the euopean continent" Dick cheny said after he bit the head off a chicken and sucked the blood out.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's ironic that the RIAA's storm-trooper tactics are supported by American courts, while Germany is the country standing up for individual rights.
Have you been touched?
What this decision says that's really important is that file sharing isn't the big deal the RIAA affiliated companies -- and Elton John -- make it out to be. And the losses due to a few files shared isn't HUGE AMOUNTS OF DOLLARS, like the RIAA sues for. And that there are other crimes that are far more damaging to society than guaranteeing a profit forever (Sonny Bono Copyright Extension into Eternity Act) for an old industry in a new age. And that the public prosecutors don't work for free for the record industry any longer.
Nice to hear someone say all that.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
at least *some* government understands how big of a waste of resources it is going after 84 year old granny whose 7 year old granddaughter downloaded a britney spears song.
Thank heaven the Germans still know what it means.
Dog is my co-pilot.
And once it went out of copyright there, it would be cut free out into the world.
Talk about something to really scare the record companies.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Is it a snozzberry?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
"There's a little Oompa Loompa in everything we make"
Enjoy Every Sandwich
Yet another country passes us on the personal freedom issue.
It's only paranoia if your wrong...
Wait a minute. Did you just sneak in Godwin's Rule? You didn't mention NAZIs, but then again you implied it. Arrrrrgh! I can't tell! My brain hurts!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
I get it! cuz they're nazi's. 'at's a rich un, shore 'nuff...
We can be proud of our country now?
My God, Mr. Bainwol, you certainly got those minerals.
Well, Come on, before ze Germans get here.
Ice Cream has no bones.
On the other hand Germany had its greatest and best musicans, when Copyright (or Author's Right) was virtually nonexistant: Heinrich Schütz, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Pachelbel, Philipp Telemann, Georg Friedrich Händel, Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Josef Haydn, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Robert Schumann...
I agree, mod grandparent informative.
Godwin's Law!
Any chance a German ISP will act as a proxy for people in more MAFIAA-friendly countries?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Despite being famous, great, etc. Mozart died penniless and was buried in a common grave.
I don't know if Mozart ever copyrighted his stuff, but a contemporary of his, Muzio Clementi, did, and made a fairly good living publishing his own stuff (and Beethoven's!) and lived a pretty comfortable life, despite being neither as famous nor as talented as Mozart. He was pretty upset when Mozart stole one of his themes for the Overture of Die Zauberflote.
I don't know if he sicked the Classical RIAA on them or not...
I don't know if it exists in German, but in the english language there is an old expression for this kind of court decision. It's called "common sense" and seems to be all but extinct these days.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
This decision was only made by a small local court and can by overruled anytime by like 10 higher instances (remember its still Germany). So it has to be seen if this decision will stay or not. I also can remember decisions of German province courts to drop the charges for the possession of drugs with a proposal to the German constitutional court to review the laws in regards of that. At first all hemp websites and magazines thought a great time is going to start but a few weeks later that decision was voided by the next instance.
I guess this generation of judges is finally computer literate enough to have looked on the computers of their children and understand what they are doing. That will have teached them that every other family is guilty of this this terrible "crime" that the RIAA is so upset about.
Mozart was Austrian. Do not tell anybody in Austria you ever said this. They will do horrible things to your intestin (and later use it to sell sausages).
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
If the best they've got is David Hasselhoff, then no wonder they are so against having to pay for music. It's just not worth paying for over there!
This is my sig.
Being a German, I am actually surprised to see this. My law lecturer used to complain that over 20000 complaints were filed last year at our local court.
d =19947567
The complaints never even get as far as to a single court hearing anyway. The mafiaa used to do this for reasons I commented on on another article:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=253607&ci
I am for this solely because it is radical; I would like to see the big music corporations knocked over on their fucking heads.
... the GEMA is behind on its campaign contribution payments to the CDU Party.
> a reasonable 5 year copyright term for all new recordings.
Even a 5 yr term is a massive assault on my privacy, the privacy of my home and the circle of my friends. A copyright I would respect wouldnt apply on private information sharing at all and just focus on commercial selling of counterfeited goods, like it was meant when it was first created.
dont forget german death metal
berserker!
Iraq had an elite, well-equipped, army of their own. They are probably in the top 5 or so of countries that could put up a fight. And they didn't, preferring to be smacked down convincingly instead.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It is only nitpickings that a judge is not part of the government. Lets hope for the Americanites that the next president after BabyBush will not be as corrupt as him.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Mozart was from Salzburg. And at the time he was living, Salzburg was not a part of Austria. But it was part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. As a matter of fact I am living in Austria (and in a part of Austria that is austrian or at least habsburgian since the late 14th century).
Learning German in all its glory, complete with irregular verbs, is time-consuming.
Learning adequate conversational German for buying a beer and riding a taxi is not all that hard at all; English has a substantially germanic grammar, and many of the phrase structures are familiar.
Correct. But I'd just like you to go to the Mozart festival in Salzburg, and ask people why they're celebrating the German composer. Then, after recovering from the beating, ask them why they're celebrating the Austrian composer.
:)
Europeans have a funny way of adopting national heroes. Which is understandable, considering that national boundaries were very much in flux until after WW2. See for example the status of Alsace and Lorraine, Polish boundaries, existence of the Baltic states, etc. Doesn't mean that they're not fiercely protective of them.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
As the Austrians like to say: Their greatest achievements in history were to 1) make everyone believe, Ludwig van Beethoven was austrian and 2) Hitler wasn't.
Riiiight.... and the abundance of those "muslim terroists", "turbin-headed children" and "women killers" in Hamburg and the whole of Germany explains the huge number of terroist attacks in Germany, doesn't it? Which is, by the way, ZERO for at least the last 10 years. Geez, what the hell are you talking about? And what is "the Bundesfraus" supposed to be? That word doesn't even exist in german language (and yes, german is my native language).
What does that have to do with privacy? Privacy means having information about you NOT shared or collected, you seem to think it includes sharing other people's information.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Why don't you try posting under your username you insensitive Anonymous Coward.
sieg heil
They can tell you to keep your pants on when walking down the street (thou this is questionable ), and they can tell you not to charge money for information you have bought from others (thou this is questionable) but saying you can't copy a CD, book, movie or computer program for a friend is getting really rather close to "making a law abridging the freedom of speech" unless you want to use a naive interpretation of speech that would cover what you say, but not what you write.
n/t
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Basically, national anthems are all full of crap, and no one genuinely takes them seriously.
That's actually the reason why the third and only the third stanza comprises the current German anthem, this time around the goal was to do away with stupid crap. The Germans found out the hard way that being overly nationalistic and patriotic can lead to very bad things. I you check the lyrics of the third stanza you will see that it is very peaceful (no mention of any enemies or other evils that need to be eradicated) and simply stresses human virtues in order to make the country a better place.
The first stanza is hopelessly outdated, apart from having very nationalistic even jingoistic undertones (owing to its fervent usage by Nazis and Neo-Nazis along with the second stanza) it furthermore describes Deutschland as being bordered by the four rivers Maas, Memel, Etsch and Belt - that would include western France, all of Poland, Switzerland, Austria and a few more eastern European countries. In any case if sung today it would definitely not be in the spirit of the German revolution of 1848.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
Actually, no. Copyright when it was created was meant to provide an incentive to, you know, create stuff by ensuring the author a minimum monopoly on distribution terms during which they would be able to profit from it's creation. It is A SIDE EFFECT that it provides a minimum period in which the author holds a monopoly on charging for it. Copyright applies to all distribution (whether you like it or not). Just be thankful that the US does not allow Perpetual Copyright (though it must enforce it if a Berne Convention signatory extends one to a work - case in point the Peter Pan novel, which holds an actual statute all to itself!)
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
There is no freedom of speech in Gemany, only freedom of expression. You can express any idea you like (provided it does not serve to undermine the "democratic-liberal foundation" of the country which would be treason in most countries anyway) but you may be limited in how you can express it. Copying someone else's works is not any form of expression and copyright will not prevent you from sharing your own works if you want to do so. Citing other works may be important to put some weight behind your idea but science papers seem to manage referencing sometimes really expensive material without infringing on any copyright.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Yes and no. The Holy Roman Empire was not a state, but a more or less loose federation of states. Parts of Austria were part of it as well. So calling Mozart an Austrian is like calling Mozart a German (speaking guy) is like calling Mozart a holy roman is like calling Mozart a guy with a funny wig. All true, but not the point.
(PS.: I'm Austrian as well;...10th century, but that's not the point either)
"The amount of people shared with does not matter in the light of German copyright laws, neither does encryption".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Deutschland, Deutschland über alles"
The line from the German National Anthem usually strikes awkuard feelings in a German because it was severly abused by the Nazis. After all, it means 'Germany, Germany over everything' which the Nazis interpreted quite literally - as we all know.
However, it initially was meant as an anthem to encourage the forming of a single German Reich as opposed to sticking with the 300+ little dwarf kingdoms and principalities the territory of Germany was made up back some 200 years ago. More as sort of an imperative like 'Put germany above your petty territoial interests.'.
It's actually a line from the first two verses of the anthem which are now officially banned from singing due to the Nazi history of abuse of the anthem. It actually is prohibited by law to sing the two first verses in Germany (iirc).
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
ban islam as a cult to be consistent. far more dangerous than tom cruise
"It actually is prohibited by law to sing the two first verses in Germany (iirc)."
I'm happy to inform you that it is not. However the "Horst Wessel Lied" is, since that is original nazi stuff which the Deutschlandlied is not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschlandlied
Your right, stealing my 79 cent taco is a totally justifiable reason for us both to lawyer up and pay $300 per hour to go to court. /"that means everyone can go everywhere and steal a "few" things..." yeah, thats how our justice system works, if a court rules on a very specific issue, it means you get to blow it out of proportion and do anything vagely related to said issue with total immunity //the radio station down the street doesn't hand out free tacos
He never said he wanted to shut the internet down. From TFA:
I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span.
I think it would be an incredible experiment to have everyone wear no clothes to work! Does that mean I want to see you naked? Does that even mean I want to have everyone wear no clothes to work?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Oh... old Babenberger domain :)