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."

Comments

If a Country Really Wanted to Rip the Music Indust

[Nom du Keyboard]

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.