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Sharing 2,999 Songs, 199 Movies Is Safe In Germany
unassimilatible writes "Torrentfreak is reporting that German prosecutors will now only pursue larger-scale file sharers on the Internet, as they are tired of being the entertainment industry's profit collector. 'Prosecutors in a German state have announced they will refuse to entertain the majority of file-sharing lawsuits in [the] future. It appears that only commercial-scale copyright infringers will be pursued, with those sharing under 3,000 music tracks and 200 movies dropping under the prosecution radar.' And the money quote: 'It seems that the legal system in Germany has had enough of this "abuse" of the criminal law system for "civil" monetary gain.' If only an American politician would make this point. Why should taxpayers underwrite their government becoming enforcers for the entertainment industry? Then again, when you see how much politicians are being paid, an answer suggests itself."
In other news, German prosecutors annnounced today that they will only be prosecuting auto thefts when more than 200 are committed, and car break-ins when 3000 are committed. "Our goal is to prevent organized crime", said their spokesperson, "we don't care about the occasional junkie or joy-rider."
Ok, I admit that the above paragraph is a bit down the slippery slope, but the point is that the slope exists. This problem should be solved by the legislative branch, not the executive. If the law is faulty, it should be re-written by the legislature, not kluged by the prosecutors. Otherwise we have unelected officials effectively making the law.
[ Full disclosure: I've never, TTBOMK, either sent or deliberately aquired any copyrighted work without proper consent. On the one occasion in which my copyrighted work was posted without my consent the poster - who had received a version withgout copyright notice attached - happily complied upon the first request. ]
How is that relevant? The entire premise of the article is that the number of songs or movies stolen to warrant legal consequences has dramatically increased.
and you can pay $500 + for a low end intel cpu with AMD dead as amd makes a lot of chips there.
Also BMW will not take that sitting down.