Slashdot Mirror
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."
So does this mean if I accidentally leave our apartment unlocked one morning, someone breaks in, steals one of our daggers or guns, and commits a crime...that we could be charged for aiding a criminal?
Living With a Nerd
In soviet Germany, WiFi unsecures you!
Or your wallet, anyways.
He was fined 100 euro because a single user downloaded a single song illegally. One song. A hundred twenty-five times its retail value. And he didn't even download it. Copyright is out of control.
So all those German citizens daft enough to allow thier machines to become part of a botnet are, technically, at risk of prosecution?
So, I guess now the German people are being expected to work for the benefit of the copyright lobby. This sounds like the tail wagging the dog -- first the government works for the industry's benefit, and then it starts to require the people it is supposed to represent to do the same.
Palm trees and 8
I hope there is slightly more to this story than the summary suggests. It seems absurd unless they have a law against sharing your internet connection. I personally have an open guest network with no protection, but then so do every major company, all libraries, schools, the trains and even the busses here in copenhagen.
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
While some of you slashdoters cannot even grasp what this means:
You can leave your wifi open, you can download anything you want, and the maximal fine will be 100 EUR!
I call that a big win where users would be sued up to 10.000 EUR for downloading/sharing music - this will put a dramatic lid on those things.
Cheers.
What exactly do they mean by adequately secured?
Your wireless router or access point must be secured by a either bicycle lock, a knotted jumble of bungie cords, an aggressive dog or cat, or a large glob of superglue.
So, if this is how things are to be, I think that this guy should pass the buck to the manufacturer for not complying with local law. Such devices should be regulated in such a way that they cannot be sold to customers without ALREADY being secure out-of-the-box. Otherwise, I think that this should have no merit.
Maybe if this was extended to enforce a more responsible attitude for people leaving their PCs infected and sending out spam for months, I'd be all for it. Stupidity is no defence, so if you're irresponsible behaviour is causing misery for others, and potentially allowing a criminal offence to take place then you deserve to face charges.
Driving a car with no license, or instruction is an offence and whilst spamming thousands of people isn't actually dangerous, it affects more individuals.
Saying this, maybe wireless routers/modems shouldn't even have an option to operate in an open mode. Likewise, maybe ISPs shouldn't allow customers to send mail out on port 25 to random machines - just route it all through their own mail server. If a machine is sending a huge amount of mail, it's simple to block it until the user fixes their system. Surely it's not that fucking hard!
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
A cousin of mine served in the US Army and was stationed in Germany. He once received a citation because his car was unlocked. Yes, in Germany, there is a law stating you must lock your car, though I don't know if it applies while the care is secured in a garage.
Someone go find the RIAA/MPAA or whatever the equivalent in Germany is, use their wifi (would WEP or WPA-TSK count as "adequately secured to the danger of unauthorized third parties abusing it to commit copyright violation,'?) And start downloading everything you can think of. Lets see if they sue themselves.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
Welcome to my world. My passport was stolen. I was "lucky this time", according to the officer, because they could have charged me with false identity terrorism aiding or somthing. I live in a democratic, western country and not in America and this almost happened to me. 'luckily the police officer was being nice'... jeez...
Here be signatures
is that it often comes down to a failure to do right and a need to blame someone. If someone steals a gun and commits a crime with it, they should be 100% civilly responsible. Allowing the victim of the theft to be sued is nothing more than indulging the blood lust of the victim and their family who want anyone connected with it to pay dearly.
Free public Wi-Fi is one of the most important public services of the 21st century. It gives anyone who can come up with the $200 for a netbook the ability to access the sum of human knowledge. It allows people to communicate over long distances in many more ways that a simple voice conversation. Anyone who comes up with the money for an unlimited internet connection and jeopardizes some of his privacy (or some convenience, if he uses some kind of proxy/encryption) to let anyone access the internet without paying high fees to greedy monopolistic corporations is doing good for society. Saying that he's doing evil since he's also allowing copyright infringement is like saying cars are evil since you can use one to get away from a robbery. All technology can be used for good and evil, but the internet being freely available to the public does hundreds of times more good than it does evil.
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....
Comparing copyright infringement to murder is sickening.
Perhaps, but the comparison between prohibited copying and armed robbery of ships, which often involves murder, has been around so long enough that nobody outside the FSF bats an eye at calling it "piracy". The ship has sailed; the slope has slipped.
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings