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German Prosecutors Won't Help RIAA Counterpart

Posted by Zonk on from the will-never-happen-here dept.

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."

7 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Re:History reversed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Reminds me of this story:
    http://justicefornone.com/article.php?story=200505 27204356114&query=holocaustHolocaust

  2. If a Country Really Wanted to Rip the Music Indust by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 4, Interesting
    If a country really wanted to rip the music industry a new one, they'd institute a reasonable 5 year copyright term for all new recordings. How many old albums are still in the top 10,000 after 4 years anyway.

    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."
  3. Germany, eh? by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?
  4. Re:An old english expression by Scherf · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yes it does: "Gesunder Menschenverstand". If you translate it directly it would mean "a healthy human brain". Quite fitting, isn't it?

  5. Re:If only... by thefirelane · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It sounds nice when something happens you like, but in reality the courts are simply there to interpret the law as written... not just do whatever they feel is best. We have lawmakers who are supposed to work 'in the public interest'. Admittedly, they are not... but fixing that should be the priority, not making some new legislative/executive branch combo out of the court system.

  6. Re:This is great by turing_m · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Both scientology and the MAFIAA are businesses without scruples. But apparently Germany allows Amway and other MLM schemes in there, go figure.

    --
    If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
  7. Re:This is great by NewYorkCountryLawyer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I see your point, but I guess one problem is that the RIAA can argue (reasonably if mendaciously) that they can't bring the John Doe cases in an appropriate venue because they don't know where they are. Actually... no they could not make that argument.

    Once one has an IP address, one can identify the state and the region of the state in which the user of the IP address is located. There are websites that are freely available to the public that provide this information. So the RIAA could easily bring the suit in the right location.

    But that's not the way the RIAA lawyers work. They do things in the sneakiest and most unfair method that they can get away with.

    Judge Garcia, in the New Mexico case, realized this about them right away, when he said in so many words "whoa...cowboy...why on earth is this being done ex parte when it would be pretty easy to give the defendants prior notice, and the federal rules require you to give them prior notice?"
    --
    Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful