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German Court: ISPs Must Hand Over File Sharer Info
itwbennett writes "The German Federal Court of Justice has ruled that ISPs have to turn over to rights-holders the names and addresses of illegal file sharers, but only 'if a judge rules that the file sharer indeed infringed on copyright,' said the court's spokeswoman, Dietlind Weinland. The ruling overturns two previous rulings by regional courts and is significant because the violation doesn't have to happen on a commercial scale, but applies whenever 'it is possible to know who was using an IP address at the time of the infringement,' the court said."
So, how do they know how many people live at the residence serviced by the named account? And by extension which one was using the computer at the time the alleged offence is supposed to have occurred?
According to TFA, they have to already have been ruled to have infringed copyright, meaning they presumably already had the information the ISP would be giving, in addition to some proof of the supposed infringement. Basically, this isn't supposed to do anything, which makes me wonder why they want it at all. Hedging their bets on the judges they bought, perhaps?
Great Intellect...
But you can't know if someone infringed copyright unless you know all of the circumstances of the copying, including the identities involved.
There are many ways a person may not have been infringing copyright (statutory, fair-use, license, ownership, etc.) even if they were definitely involved in copying.
If you must prove that someone infringed copyright without knowing who they are first, it is an impossible standard.
Of course, I expect that this merely technical truth will be disregarded entirely.
A bunch of state governments and a central federal government? Interesting.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Something big needs to change in the way we use the internet. The concept of ISP's being the gate-keepers who double as loose hussies for Authoritaria is a dead end. Is a P2P wireless distributed internet immune from censorship and central planning possible? Do I know exactly how to do this? No. But it can be done in theory, though not without a massive tantrum from Omnicontrolus, and a few bits of austerity. This may sound silly, but if something similar doesn't happen, then I think it's just going to be a perpetual fight with incremental casualties leading eventually to death, or some pathetic and crippled version of something previously beautiful. I think some of us might take for granted how much fighting it takes just to hold on to what we have, while taking grievous blows to privacy and still losing a little here and little there in the process.
/. champion will humiliate me for admitting this.
Perhaps it's a big-headed notion, but a formidable effort toward such a schema might at least distract these ravenous fiends enough to prevent them from purging freedom from the spectrum altogether. Maybe with the help of private satellites and (I don't know yet; do you?), it is realistic enough to try. I'd rather take some blows to bloat and luxury than to freedom.
In Germany, you can be fined for having an unencrypted AP -- if someone uses it for "illegal" file sharing. It'll be the same elsewhere soon enough. And it will get worse and worse, until you can't connect without a chip up the arse or job in "intelligence". Some say "Darknets", but is that not something the ISP's could crush easily enough? I actually don't know; I'm asking.
We've had the DHS (of all agencies!) taking down domains in the US. The "UK" wants to retain all user's ISP data. The "US" wants likewise. What makes people think they aren't already? I suppose the level of patience, or passive retention of the ISPs and governments confuses some. I personally believe no data is destroyed, but I am sure a credible
I guess what I am saying, or spewing, is that it's going to take a lot development and hard work to even have a chance of things not sucking ultra badly in the future. And it's going to take a change on the same scale as their own ludicrous and grotesque proposals, but on the positive side. And their proposals are only becoming more and more insane. How insane will they get before one succeeds?
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
"most of europe does not have" which is wrong and what the GP was railing against. Instead you cocnentrated on the minutia. The fact is that that 5th amendment you seem so proud of, come mostly historically from the magna carta and UK law , hundreds of year before the US was even "discovered".
"The Fifth Amendment (Amendment V) to the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, protects against abuse of government authority in a legal procedure. Its guarantees stem from English common law which traces back to Magna Carta in 1215. For instance, grand juries and the phrase due process (also found in the 14th Amendment) both trace their origin to Magna Carta."
So before you ask people to learn about history.... learn about yours. That 5th amendement you seem so proud of, comes from europe.
The Constitution was ratified in 1787. The amendments to the constitution came some years later once they realized they forgot a bunch of shit like basic human rights.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Constitution
Here in Germany, we just went ahead and included the basic human rights from the beginning.
The influence of big media companies on the judicial system is exactly the reason why the German Pirate Party now has seats in 4 out of the 16 regional parliaments. My German friends say they feel oppressed by the legal harassment they face from law firms, extorting money from ordinary citizens in return for not being sued for large sums of money.
However, the information can only be given to the rights holder if a judge rules that the file sharer indeed infringed on copyright, said Dietlind Weinland, spokeswoman of the German Federal Court. The Federal Court is the highest ordinary court in the German judicial system and its decisions can only be overturned by the constitutional court.
But who is "the file sharer"? Do they have to identify who the actual sharer is before proceeding? Are they going to jump to the (not always true) conclusion that the person named on the account is the file sharer? Are there other provisions in the law to hold an account holder that is not the fire sharer accountable? Do the German courts realize that the law is still allowing the sale of a very insecure operating system in Germany?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
You need to add all of Asia to this list.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Well, there's one positive in that ruling: There has to be a judge in the process. So it's not that the media cartels can just go to the ISP and say "we believe there was an illegal upload from that IP address, tell us who had it." They have to convince a judge that their evidence is sufficient.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The solution is simple: we should all have our computers infected with a botnet, so that we can put the blame on it whenever we have copyright-infringing material on our computers.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
All of that lasted 4 years, while your "started in" implies it's still the case. So unless you offer more, I'm pretty sure you haven't got the faintest fucking clue, just flag flag flag.
The way it is working in Germany, first hand experience from a couple of years back:
Basically, for the first infringement, the fine is lower than the costs of going to court. If you are stupid enough to get caught a second time, you're asking for it.
The ruling from the federal court is quite important, as different Landers have different positions on copyright enforcement. Until that ruling, local branches of large ISPs and small scale ISPs could still had some leeway... now they no longer have it.
Hosting services don't usually use dynamic IPs, and also tend to register a top-level domain, so the ruling here is completely irrelevant. Their identity can simply be looked up in the registration record of the domain. Also it's hard to hide your identity and at the same time make money: You must have a way to tell your customers (or advertisers) where to pay money. Your identity can then be revealed by following the money.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
An ISP can with certainty tell exactly which customer was using a specific IP at a specific time, but not who was using this customers connection. As countless verdicts around the civilized world has ruled, the owner of the connection is not defakto responsible or liable for abuse. The exact user must be determined in order to prosecute, and thus if this isn't possible no prosecution can occur.
There are multiple vectors available for abuse at any connection, from unsecured wifi, over hacked wifi to various form of unauthorized cabled access where the physical traces later was removed.
Now, as it is impossible to determine if a connection was abused by someone unauthorized at some point in the past, it is always impossible to rule out outside abuse and thus it is futile to persue the owner of the connection.
So please stop wasting the time of both the ISP, the customer and the courts. There's nothing to gain at all.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
So, how do they know how many people live at the residence serviced by the named account? And by extension which one was using the computer at the time the alleged offence is supposed to have occurred?
By asking I suppose. Like if the police find a body in a house, they don't give up their enquiries just because two or more people live there. In this case :-
... they hanged the lot! But not everyone lives in some sort of squatter commune where they all share computers and a gateway to the web. They could soon narrow it to me for example, I've no doubt.
www.murderuk.com/serial_john_christie.html
You know what is wrong with Slashdot?
A news item comes along (concerning Germany) which you would think would be of great interest to Slashdotters, but after a couple of posts the discussion goes off at a tangent to become a flame war about the USA 5th amendment. This flame war I estimate accounts for about a third of all posts, but what is worse is that these float to the TOP of the discussion in threaded view because the thread takes root so early. To see comments about the news item itself you must scroll a long way down.
I think we need a variant of Godwin's Law to the effect that any mention of the 5th Amendment is the effective end of sensible discussion.
The less people respect the idea of IP, the more draconian enforcement you need.
I agree
The divide between the public opinion on one side and the law, the entertainment industry and their lobbyists on the other side is growing.
I agree.
What you see as a crackdown I see as desperation, as more and more obnoxious threats are required to keep the population at bay.
When is a crackdown not desperation and threats to keep the public at bay? So we are in agreement there too.
They're not winning the hearts and minds of the young generation, they're just hoping to intimidate them into not file sharing.
I agree. They're not doing much to endear themselves to the older generations either. More importantly they seem to have perverted IP to the extent where it is, as I wrote above becoming "corrosive to the very aim it was conceived to serve," where it becomes a fetter to innovation.
Most people don't kill because they feel it's wrong, not because the law says so.
As I have so often pointed out. And wouldn't it a diseased society where all that stood between us and that killer's blade was the law! Of course we are not concerned here with the people who don't break the law. But point taken, a better analogy might be the War on Drugs(tm).
The situation is like a rubber band being stretched and stretched but sooner or later it will snap.
"Once our generation takes the reins of power marijuana prohibition will end. It's only matter of time" -- me in 1979
...
You're right, I don't expect the fight to be over in 10 years, but I expect them to still be on the losing side trying to hold it all together.
You agree. Well we're in agreement then.** :)
[**With the small caveat that I'm not ready to conclude that they really are on the "losing side," much as they like to cry poor.]
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke