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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."
What on Earth do those mean? When I click on them, I still don't see any relationship between the articles that've been tagged with them.
Well, given that the RIAA have attempted to sue people who don't own a computer, I'd be inclined to disagree...
Slashdot: news for Apple. Stuff that Apple.
Why? Bush should say something about how terrible it is, and do absolutely nothing. Let's face it - the entertainment industry is not exactly packed with Republicans these days. Republicans need to be about as friendly to the entertainment business as the entertainment business is to coal and nuclear. If the whole world and all of your allies want you to let your political enemies be driven out of business by too much copying, why should you really stop them? Come on liberals, copy away. The pen might be mightier than the sword, but its still a weakling compared to the greenback
This is my sig.
Yes, and if the english summaries of this were actually done properly, people wouldn't be confused like this. If you can read german, do yourself a favor and read up on this on a german website.
For a civil suit, you need to know who to sue. An IP address only won't fly for that in germany - you need identities. But the ISPs are not giving out customer details to private companies. So what the industry does is filing a criminal suit first, so the police has to investigate, subpoenaing the infringers identity from the ISP. Then, the criminal suit is retracted - as there has been no commercial infringment, so there's no success to be found there - but because of court documentation, the infringers name, address etc. are still known to the RIAAish organization. They then use this information for filing a civil suit. The new policy closes this loophole. You could still be prosecuted for downloading even one song, but there is now pretty much no way to get your IP unless you're _probably_ guilty commercial copyright infringment. Where the line is to be drawn is upon the courts to decide. FYI, downloading an only very recently or not yet released movie _does_ probably count as commercial - as it probably hurts the commercial interested of the rightsholder.
It's overally a quite sane way to go about, given how things are(tm).