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."

Comments

"..know who was using an IP address..." ?

[pipedwho]

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?

Re:"..know who was using an IP address..." ?

[zero.kalvin]

There is nothing wrong in questioning the person to whom the service is registered to. However, I agree automatic guilt assumption is wrong, but I repeat if your name is on it then you should be questioned.

Re:"..know who was using an IP address..." ?

[pipedwho]

Whoever owns the account is liable.

Maybe in Soviet Russia. (Soviet USA?)

Secure your network and keep an eye on what your kids are doing.

And your partner, and your room mates, and your friends, and your employees...

Re:"..know who was using an IP address..." ?

[bky1701]

Which is why the owner of a car is liable if it is stolen and used in a robbery?

Except not. Having your property associated with a crime does not prove criminal activity itself. It at best proves you were an accessory.

Your post is just scare tactics regurgitated from ISP PR departments, to sell more connections by scaring people into closing their public nodes.

Re:"..know who was using an IP address..." ?

[pipedwho]

And if they don't like the answer?

eg 1. There are a number of people in my household, including friends that visit regularly and all have access to the wifi network.

eg 2. The wifi node at the local coffee shop is accessible by anyone within range.

eg 3. The wifi at the place where I work is accessible by hundreds of employees and clients.

Re:"..know who was using an IP address..." ?

[sqrt(2)]

But copyright holders have a right to pursue their rights

Why? Where does that notion come from? The very existence of copyright is a choice by society, it is not supported by any natural law. In fact, as Thomas Jefferson figured out almost 200 years ago, ideas are fundamentally incompatible with the concept of ownership and private property. You have no right to control how your ideas are used, spread, or altered after they leave your own mind. The only way you can protect an idea from being spread is to keep it to yourself. Once it's out, you can't put it back, you can't take it away from people whom it has spread to. An "idea" can be an invention, a song, a novel, just about anything that is the product of human imagination or ingenuity (not in physical form).

"Intellectual property" is a fiction. It's a mass-delusion. It's a choice. It is not inevitable, it is not necessary, and it has not been an aspect of civilization for most of human history. We've accepted it because it was a useful compromise for a long time, but it is rapidly losing relevance and efficacy. As you can plainly see, attempts to maintain the entrenched system are leading to abuses of civil and privacy rights in the name of enforcing copyright law. It's no longer an enabling force for human creativity, it has become a threat to human freedom.

Re:"..know who was using an IP address..." ?

[fisted]

How did this become +5 Insightful? WTF? Is it because it contains the magic words "Europe doesn't have"?
Except that our juridical System (fortunately) doesn't include a ridiculous entity like a "Grand Jury", the rest of the 5th Amendment does have an equivalent in Germany. The main difference being perhaps that it isn't an "Amendment" over here, which speaks for itself.

Whatever.

Re:"..know who was using an IP address..." ?

[ThatsMyNick]

No it does not. I am not liable if the car I loan to my neighbor is used to commit a robbery (unless I knew they were going to commit a robbery and I still loaned my car them of course). I am responsible for losing the car, if my car gets stolen with the keys. The insurance, would probably not pay me. But I am not responsible for what ever is done using the car (murder or robbery or whatever).

Re:"..know who was using an IP address..." ?

[siddesu]

"Intellectual property" is a fiction. It's a mass-delusion. It's a choice....

IP is none of these. IP is a variation of a business model known as rent-seeking in economics. Basically, a natural or legal (such as IP) monopoly creates excess profits, which allow those making them to engage in various tactics that extend the monopoly. Since the profits and the harm from such tactics are distributed very unevenly (few get very rich, while the huge majority loses a little), the incentives and resource availability may prevent political corrective of the rent-seeking even in a democratic society.

Re:"..know who was using an IP address..." ?

[Johann Lau]

What? That's an odd way of saying "thanks for the correction."

But instead you just made MORE wrong claims! Great.

You realize that the United States effectively defined "amendment" and "constitution" in the sense you understand them, right? [..] And that after that small mess, we effectively rewrote your constitution to how it is now?

Citations needed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution#History_and_development

Re:"..know who was using an IP address..." ?

[Tom]

IANAL, but I live in Germany and have both professional and private experience with the laws and courts.

It is not that simple. There is a principle called "StÃrerhaftung" in the german legal system, it means that if the culprit can not be identified, the one providing the means can - under certain circumstances - be brought to trial in his stead. It sounds idiotic, but makes sense if you let me explain:
Imagine your car is used for a traffic violation. Of course they find you through the number plate. You claim that at the time you didn't drive the car and you don't know who did. Say, you were drunk that evening and you remember handing the keys to some friend to drive you home, but you can't remember who. This will usually result in charges being dropped because no culprit can be identified. However, if you try that several times, the court will at one point tell you to a) keep a log book in your car from now on where everyone driving has to write down his trips and b) next time this happens, they will charge you.

There is currently an active discussion on whether or not the same rules apply to things such as an open WiFi. Again, you can easily say that someone else was using it. From the POV of the law, that's a loophole, and too easily exploited by simply doing bad things and then claiming someone else must've done it.

In light of that discussion, this is a part of the legal solution to copyright infringement on the Internet. I've not studied it in detail, but it seems balanced on first glance - the requirement to have a court sign it means that most copyright holders won't bother for small-time filesharers, because it's too cumbersome and expensive.

Re:"..know who was using an IP address..." ?

[Internetuser1248]

I am a US basher, so let me defend that position: All nations are bad, some are worse than others. The US is not the worst. The US probably rates about 18th on my list of evil governments, and it gets a special boost because of it's wide reach. If the DRC or north Korea had the global reach of the US they would be many times worse. They don't though. The US has military bases in the country I live in. They have CIA/NSA spy bases in the country I was born in (two seperate countries). They permeate all our public broadcasting with US culture/news/entertainment. They stand on a soapbox and shout out to the world phrases like 'land of the free', 'leader of the free world', 'greatest nation on earth'... etc. ad nauseam. I bash the US for the same reason that people bash Charlie Sheen for taking drugs, or Bill Clinton for getting a blowjob. Are they the worst? No. Could you find someone in every crackhouse in every city in the world that both does more drugs than sheen, and gets more blowjobs than Cli'ton? Yes. But when you hold yourself up in the public eye, and try to gain fame and recognition, when you put yourself in a position of power and influence over others, you are under more scrutiny than most. If you get the US to pull all it's forces out of the hundreds of countries they are in, and to stop interfering in our justice systems, or foreign affairs and our economies, then I will go after someone else. Russia and China are next on my list, and they would just love to take your spot. So quit complaining.

To be fair, this thread is about Germany. All governments are liars and murderers. So let me share the love: Fuck Germany. I am sitting here in the poor district of Berlin with no money, no work, and no food in my house. The state owes me over 1000 Euros, but they wont pay it because they have deliberately lost the paperwork I filed to claim it. After they first returned it to me complaining that I filed it a few days early. Everyone who deals with this government branch knows they deliberately lose paperwork, and do their best to screw you. No one can do anything about it though. Fuck Germany.

I am sorry that rant wasn't more on topic but the way Germany deals with copyright law in the context of individual breaches through filesharing is fair and reasonable, and I have no complaints about it. They screw over the entertainment and hospitality industry, not to mention the artists with their GEMA (local branch of the mafiaa), but that is offtopic too as this article is about filesharing.

Re:"..know who was using an IP address..." ?

[Kjella]

However, and especially in the context of the every increasing ease by which media can be reproduced, until we can devise a new system which suffers from none of the evils and still ensures reward of intellectual labour, our best hope is to point out how badly the system has gone wrong and attempt to steer it back towards health.

The problem is that "to steer it back towards health" for the most part equals "turn back time". As long as you have the following four components, IP is doomed:

1. Computers
2. Internet
3. 1st amendment
4. 4th amendment

Computers means we can create digital copies that can be copied infinitely without loss. Maybe getting our hands on the first copy may be complicated by breaking DRM or recording through the analog hole or whatever, but it's break once play everywhere. Internet means we can have the technical means to distribute it to everyone as an increasingly faster and faster flash mob. While the 1st and 4th amendment doesn't protect copyright violators, it means you generally can't prevent people from communicating in private. The public sites are a convenience but if you'd like to kill piracy you have to take away one of those four. Either turn it into an appliance-only Internet, shut down the Internet or take away some of the Bill of Rights. Or you can accept that technology has moved forward and that the "good old days" are never coming back.

But you can't know if someone infringed copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

change

[Penurious Penguin]

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.

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 /. champion will humiliate me for admitting this.

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?

YOu ignoring what the OP said

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:YOu ignoring what the OP said

[Anonymous Coward]

That 5th amendment you seem so proud of, comes from Europe.

Wrong. It comes from England. Europe is on the other side of the Channel.
:)

Pirate Party in 4 regional parliaments

[JasperKlewer]

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.