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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."
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.
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.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
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.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
"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.