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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."
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."
Thank heaven the Germans still know what it means.
Dog is my co-pilot.
...and why not exactly? It is part of their national anthem and has no Nazi-party origins or connections. Contrary to what WW1 British propaganda said about the Hun, "Deutschland über alles" is not a claim of racial or national superiority, since "alles" means "everything", not "everybody". It was originally meant as "uniting the country is more important than petty state interest" when the country was united in the second half of the 19th century; it is basically a federalist motto.
Then again, it's in German, and everything in German looks scary... including Geschwindigkeitbegrenzung and Streichholzschächtelchen.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
not really. this comes from the first stanza, but only the third stanza is the actual german national anthem.
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
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
Albeit its older ager (it had been composed by Haydn for the Austrian Emperor, the words as used in the 20th century had been written in 1841, and it had been the anthem of the Weimar republic since 1922) the first stanza of the Deutschlandlied indeed was part of the Nazi anthem, and the "Deutschland über alles" was sung with particular fervency.
As you said, the words do mean "Germany above everything", but I fail to see how you can find that alright. Your country above your family? Your love? Your honor? It's an evil concept when taken out of its original context (1848 revolutions, when nationalism was liberal and meant freedom from the German monarchs, and progress) and applied to a modern industrial nation, as the Nazis did (when nationalism became utter hell).
You are wrong in your believe that the words are part of Germany's current national anthem. Due to its mentioned older age, post-war Germany decided to keep the anthem, but not to sing the defiled first stanza. Instead, only the third stanza is sung, "unity and justice and freedom". Freudian slips are frowned upon and for a politician would mean nearly immediate resignation.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Mozart died penniless, because he was spending his money everywhere. He gambled, and when he and his family went on a way with a coach, there was a second coach accompanying him with his piano, so he could play whenever inspiration got him. He had literally hundreds of toupets, and coats.
;)
Mozart demanded three florins for a hour of music education he gave. The maid who was working for him and his wife, got 12 florins per annum as a salary. So basicly with half a day of work he made as much as normal people in a year.
Later one his widow died with a wealth of five million florins, just because of the income from her late husbands work. It was not the income thad made Mozart penniless.
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).
The RIAA's opening gambit is to get the name and address of the person who paid for an internet access account, and then to sue that person.
In the US it brings fake copyright infringement lawsuits against "John Does", with no intention of prosecuting those cases, but with the sole aim of getting the name and address information. They bring the action hundreds or thousands of miles from where the John Doe lives and could actually fight back, in a court where they could never get jurisdiction over that John Doe, and they bring on the discovery motion ex parte so that the defendant never finds out about until it's too late. (Process described in my article How the RIAA Litigation Process Works). They don't tell the judge it's a fake case. They just pretend it's a regular copyright infringement case, and that this is just some early discovery in the case. Then after the order is signed authorizing them to subpoena the ISP, they drop the sham case.
In Germany they've been using -- up until now -- sham criminal proceedings to accomplish the same result, because in Germany they couldn't have gotten the identity information in a civil case. The German judges and prosecutors have finally realized how they were being used, and have put a stop to it.
It appears that some of the United States judges are starting to catch on as well.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful