German User Fined For Having an Open Wi-Fi

Kilrah_il writes "A German citizen was sued for copyright infringement because copyrighted material was downloaded through his network while he was on vacation. Although the court did not find him guilty of copyright infringement, he was fined for not having password-protected his network: 'Private users are obligated to check whether their wireless connection is adequately secured to the danger of unauthorized third parties abusing it to commit copyright violation,' the court said."

Comments

Re:I see.

[Itninja]

If the court thinks you did it on purpose, then yes it does. If it was truly accidental then i think you could still get sued in civil court for negligence. There have been many cases of people not their securing firearms being successfully sued when someone dies as a result.

Re:I see.

[jdunn14]

Though I agree with the sentiment, at least your gun doesn't broadcast it's presence in the house to the potential criminal. That is a significant difference between the two scenarios.

Re:I see.

[GameMaster]

Not sure about the dagger, and IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that in most places in the US you could be, successfully, sued for not properly securing your firearms. It strikes me that leaving an apartment//home unlocked when you know you have a gun in it could be construed as reckless behavior. Owning a gun is a right, but you have an obligation to practice that right in a responsible manner.

actual judgement

[Tom]

The actual judgement is a bit more level-headed than the /. summary makes it to be.

The judge essentially said you ought to have some minimum level of security, elst you're liable for damages, much like everything else (e.g. if you don't put the brakes on in your car and it starts to roll and crashes into something).

The standard requested is pretty much "turn on encryption and change the default password".

Most commentators agree that for home users, not much will change. Unless you're an idiot, you already have these things for your home network. The challenge will mostly be to hotels, Starbucks, etc. with their open hotspots.

Stop, belay that headline...

[mseeger]

Serious case of misleading headline.... The court said: "If you have an open WIFI and someone uses it to fileshare copyright protected material, the owner of the rights may send you a cease and desist letter (effectively insisting that you secure your WIFI) and extract 100,- Euro from you for covering the fees of the legal process."

The user was not fined, he was not punished, he was not ordered to pay for the damages.

CU, Martin

P.S. Who wonders, that lawyers don't get the technical aspects right when the techies confuse the most elemental judical terms....

Re:I see.

[DrgnDancer]

Um... Every book ever written on security? Name a security instrument. I'll show you how to circumvent it. It may not be easy, it may not be practical, it may not even be more than theoretical, but there's probably a way. The question is merely a matter of whether the data you're protecting is worth the effort required to get through your security. For instance there's a trivial way to break full disk encryption, but most people won't use it due to it's violating a number of very serious laws. (Your porn collection may be excellent, but it isn't worth 25 to life)

A few more facts:

[Kjella]

1. The network was in fact not open. It was secured with WPA1 and a default password (source, German)

"Somit ist auch noch einmal zu Betonen: Es ging in der Entscheidung nicht um ein vollständig ungesichertes WLAN! Der BGH hat also nicht über ein offenes WLAN verhandelt, wie lange fälschlicherweise berichtet wurde. Vielmehr ging es ganz allgemein um die bedeutsame Frage, welche Sicherungspflichten die Betreiber von WLAN allgemein trifft."

2. The 100 euro is not for copyright infringement, but rather it seems that in Germany the reciever of a DMCA-like notice is liable for up to 100 euro unless they can either a) Point the blame to someone else or b) Pass some standard of having done everything reasonable to avoid damage. That's at least how I read the law:

" 97a Abmahnung

(1) Der Verletzte soll den Verletzer vor Einleitung eines gerichtlichen Verfahrens auf Unterlassung abmahnen und ihm Gelegenheit geben, den Streit durch Abgabe einer mit einer angemessenen Vertragsstrafe bewehrten Unterlassungsverpflichtung beizulegen. Soweit die Abmahnung berechtigt ist, kann der Ersatz der erforderlichen Aufwendungen verlangt werden.

(2) Der Ersatz der erforderlichen Aufwendungen für die Inanspruchnahme anwaltlicher Dienstleistungen für die erstmalige Abmahnung beschränkt sich in einfach gelagerten Fällen mit einer nur unerheblichen Rechtsverletzung außerhalb des geschäftlichen Verkehrs auf 100 Euro."

The key sentence here is "Soweit die Abmahnung berechtigt ist, kann der Ersatz der erforderlichen Aufwendungen verlangt werden." which translates to something like "When the warning is justified, compensation for the relevant expenses can be demanded." The second caps it to 100 euro for simple cases.