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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.
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 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 you have to admit that the German constitution was made in a situation where a massive violation of human rights had just been done, so everyone was exceptionally well aware of the importance of them. Which is why the human rights are right at the start of the constitution and are specially protected.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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.
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.
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) --
I'm of course talking about the constitution of 1949. While it is named "Grundgesetz", it is a constitution. Otherwise, why is the court called "Bundesverfassungsgericht" (Federal Constitution Court), not "Bundesgrundgesetzgericht"? And why is there a "Verfassungsschutz" and not a "Grundgesetzschutz"?
The constitution was named "Grundgesetz" to make clear that it was meant to be provisoric. However it is a constitution, and more importantly, it's the only federal constitution which is currently operative.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.