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Thousands of Germans Threatened With €250 Fines For Streaming Porn

Posted by samzenpus on from the paying-the-price dept.

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."

9 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. Oh Dear. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    1. Re:Oh Dear. by crabel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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

    2. Re:Oh Dear. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "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.

  2. Bahahahahaha by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Bahahahahaha by Dr+Max · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

      --
      Rocket Surgeon.
  3. Re:Was it advertised as free? by the_other_chewey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:Oh Germany by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.)

  5. Re:Was it advertised as free? by fazig · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  6. Re:Info about "The Archive AG" by mystuff · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.