Thousands of Germans Threatened With €250 Fines For Streaming Porn

PolygamousRanchKid writes "Thousands of German users that have used a porn website to stream shows have received threatening letters from a local law firm demanding €250 ($344) per certain watched clips, Chip.de reports. Apparently, a Swiss-based firm that owns the content hosted by porn site Redtube has tasked a law firm with collecting fines for each of its shows that was streamed online in the region. The law firm has apparently received a go ahead from a local court, and as many as ten thousand warnings may have been set to users, for porn shows watched in August."

Comments

Oh Dear.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd better cross Germany off the list countries to live in.

Re:Oh Dear.

[crabel]

Not so fast. First of all, the lawyers "cheated". They avoided the term "streaming" in their applications to court and made it look like a typical filesharing case. The courts granted most of their applications because of "unbefugtem öffentlichen Zugänglichmachen über eine sogenannte Tauschbörse" that means "unauthorized sharing of files through a file sharing network". German internet law blogger Thomas Stadler explains in his blog, why their applications are invalid (for various reasons). German link: http://www.internet-law.de/2013/12/warum-die-streaming-abmahnungen-der-rechtsanwaelte-uc-unwirksam-sind.html

Re:Oh Dear.

[somersault]

Out of morbid curiosity - who uploaded the content, and why isn't the law firm chasing that guy?

There's a possibility that the porn company uploaded it themselves, just so that they could execute this plan.

Th **AA have been caught doing similar things, so it's not unprecedented.

Of course it's very possible that a normal user uploaded them too.

Re:Oh Dear.

[gl4ss]

"I feel no pity for the people who stream porn though, just what exactly did you think would happen if you weren't buying the videos?"

nothing? the people doing the infringing were the uploaders and the site.

how many people have been prosecuted for watching tv content on youtube? nobody.

but where did they get the list of viewers? from redtube? hacked someone? ???

Re:Oh Dear.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I feel no pity for the people who stream porn though, just what exactly did you think would happen if you weren't buying the videos?"

nothing?

how many people have been prosecuted for watching tv content on youtube? nobody.

I agree with you. The poster you are responding to falls into the trap: "I don't like it, so I'm OK with them being hit with a stick". As you mention, change the title from a porn show to Family Guy episode (which are all over YouTube) and a million Americans searching for "Brian dies" on YouTube. Every one of those millions of people owe Fox $300, right? How would the poster feel now? How does he know any video on YouTube isn't copyrighted by someone who can hire a lawyer? Music video, TV show clips, a little indy show from another website?

The previous poster needs to work on their ability to abstract a concept from their own biases.

Bahahahahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

It should tell you something when a business decides that 10,000 of its consumers are criminals. Your business model is broken, you can sue all you like but it still wont fix what's really broken.

Re:Bahahahahaha

[Dr Max]

It should tell you something when mearly going to a website and viewing something can make you a criminal. It's not like torrenting where you can argue that by downloading, you're also uploading to others; they just went to a site and pressed play. If a music station forgot to pay for a songs royalty, would the record label be able to sue anyone listening to that station at the time? What if a billboard had an unauthorised copyrighted image on it, is every motorist going past it going to get a letter and a fine?

Re:Bahahahahaha

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

That *is* their business model.
I read up on this yesterday (German Language) and the situation is more complicated than it seems.
The providers affected are all over Germany, so various local courts were involved. The one in Köln really screwed things up: what the people are supposed to have done is Downloaded the file(s), what they were accused of was Sharing them and Köln went along with this. The difference is that the provider does not have to give out addresses on Downloads but they do if Sharing is involved. The actual "Abmahnung" letters which went out said nothing about Sharing at all. The Law Firm based their claim on the Downloads being in Cache so they were available for others. To make things worse, the largest provider in Germany (T-Online) is based in Köln. Other courts rejected that argument, others asked questions and the Lawyers withdrew their request.

I have a related problem at the moment - a couple of years ago someone accused me of sharing some other porno film, again T-Online was involved. My wlan is wpa2 with a 63-byte random, generated mixed upper/lower string and it accepts only one Mac address, I have checked both PCs which were on at the time for Trojans / Virii with a bootable scanner and there was nothing. Under German law there is no redress - if they claim it then I must have done it. I'm fighting this one out at the moment.

For me this is a reason not to use T-Online. My main account is now somewhere else but I *need* Internet for when I work at home and two independent providers (Cable and DSL) made sense back when the Cable provider was unreliable. I think I'm going to have to dump T-Online which means dumping Telekom for my phone.

Was it advertised as free?

[asmkm22]

Shouldn't the company be going after the porn site that streamed it? Anyone know why a German court would OK this?

Re:Was it advertised as free?

[mwvdlee]

It's much harder to shame a pornsite into paying €2.500.000 damages than it is to shame 10.000 people into paying €250.
I don't know about Germany, but it some european countries, just downloading something isn't illegal.
But a court case doesn't have to have merit if the damage they can do (publically shaming somebody by exposing their sexual tastes) and lawyer fees required to defend are much greater than the $250 blackmail money asked for.

Personally, I'm wondering how this law firm got the contact addresses.

Re:Was it advertised as free?

[Anonymous Coward]

This techdirt article from a couple of years ago suggests a precedent was set then that viewing a streaming file is considered to be making a copy of it, and therefore the viewers are also liable for copyright infringement. Stupid, but this is sometimes what happens when old laws are applied to scenarios they weren't intended for and the court doesn't have enough room to manoeuvre out of it. I don't read German well enough to look at the decision and see whether it suggests that the court tried to find a way around a badly phrased law, or if they were just being vindictive, but it seems likely enough that they tried and failed.

Re:Was it advertised as free?

[the_other_chewey]

I don't know about Germany, but it some european countries, just downloading something isn't illegal.

It isn't illegal in Germany as well. Pretty much all lawyers except the ones sending the letters
think those letters to be a hilarious. They all advise to ignore the letters and wait to be taken to
court (which almost certainly will never happen).
Sadly, it will probably scare enough people into paying to nonetheless be profitable.

Personally, I'm wondering how this law firm got the contact addresses.

Well-informed speculation is that they used ad tracking on redtube to get IP addresses (external
ad servers see the request IP and the referer string...).

Then they tricked the courts into assuming distribution on behalf of said IP to get a court order for
the client's identity. I'm not exaggerating: The court filings very carefully avoid the word "streaming"
and imply downloading and P2P distribution without actually saying so.

Only about two thirds of the courts actually fell for it, but each one was good for thousands of identities.

Re:Was it advertised as free?

[righteousness]

Unlike the US and the UK, Germany has a civil law system in contrast to the common law system used in certain countries like the US and the UK. Therefore judges in Germany are not bounded by decision made in former rulings that are not clearly codified in written legislation.

Re:Was it advertised as free?

[Sique]

It was helped by a gross misrepresentation of facts before the court: Suggesting distribution while never explicitely saying so. For about 1/4 of the letters requesting the court to allow for identification of the persons behind the list of IP addresses, the requests were denied due to missing evidence. 3/4 nevertheless were agreed on, and there is much speculation going on if the court has messed up downloading and distribution, helped by a very wishi-washi formulated letter of request.

Re:Was it advertised as free?

[fazig]

According to more recent reports (German) the Court was fooled by this alleged law firm. They've presented the incident to the court as peer to peer file-sharing of copyright protected data, the Court ruled accordingly.

Re:Was it advertised as free?

[Kickasso]

Use an ad blocker, kids.

Re:Was it advertised as free?

[AmiMoJo]

Isn't deliberately misleading the court itself an offense?

Re:Was it advertised as free?

[garry_g]

That's another point of criticism - while P2P or download is a deliberate action, leading to local storage of files, streaming videos from a free site that is not by definition a pirate site makes it near impossible for users to know they are breaking copyright laws ...
Which is why the letters to the court left out the word "streaming" - for streaming, no court order would have been issued (most likely, anyway). Which, in turn, should get the lawyer knowingly misleading the court disbarred or at least fined ...

Oh Germany

[buchner.johannes]

The status of German copyright laws is ridiculous. Any law firm can send out threatening letters, literally saying "pay us X Euros or we will take you to court". It's like the Mob.

Re:Oh Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

And the difference between that and anyone else's law is what precisely?

Let me help you there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abmahnung

The difference has to do with standing, i.e. who can actually bring a lawsuit. This is a misfeature specific to German law, rooted in a culture of conformity and Obrigkeitshörigkeit: if you stick out, lots of bystanders make it their business to force you to conform, and the law encourages and reflects that culture.

(Argumentativeness despite ignorance, and irrational belief in one's national superiority, are other misfeatures of German culture, so you will doubtlessly respond with a litany about how (1) this isn't true despite the evidence, or (2) how other countries are worse than Germany, or (3) how beneficial all of this is and how stupid foreigners are for not seeing that. Take your pick and save us both some time and respond just with a number.)

Re:Oh Germany

[hweimer]

In Germany, a lawyer sending a cease-and-desist letter can ask to get paid for his services from the recipient of the letter. However, the fees associated with this (making up most of the €250 in this case) are essentially lump sums set by law that are unrelated to the acutal amount of time spent for each case. If a lawyer sends out thousands of letters, this means huge profits, which are often shared with the rightsholder through illegal kickback schemes.

This is a well-known problem, but most lawmakers (who were often legal professionals before), prosecutors, and judges see copyright violations as the bigger issue so they tend to welcome this process as a private-sector law enforcement despite the fraud that is usually associated with it.

Info about "The Archive AG"

[bradley13]

Three links of possible interest, concerning "The Archive AG" - mostly in German:

Company information

Article in the Handelszeitung

Web site

The address appears (on Google maps) to be more than just a mailbox. The two people running it are Germans - it's not clear why their company is in Switzerland. Downloading in Switzerland is legal, by the way, justified by the fact that we all pay these surcharges on empty media.

For anyone who has been threatened by The Archive AG, the article in the Handelszeitung includes a reference to an IT attorney who is apparently advising many people in this case.

Re:Info about "The Archive AG"

[mystuff]

This was reported on the Dutch site Tweakers as being a hoax, as reported by the layyers office itself here. Translations here and here respectively.

What do you call a bunch of unhappy Germans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sauerkrauts.

Re: Ah, so every german is a judge.

[__aajxhe7746]

Truly, you have a dizzying intellect