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EU Court Says Hotspot Owners Aren't Liable For 3rd-Party Piracy
Mickeycaskill writes: A preliminary ruling from a European Court of Justice Advocate General has said it is not reasonable for owners of public Wi-Fi hotspots to be held liable for copyright infringement committed by users on these networks. Sony took legal action against a German business owner after a third party allegedly illegally downloaded music to which the record label owned the rights to on the basis the network should have been secured. However this view has been rejected by the Advocate General who says it is impossible for all public Wi-Fi to be secured. His recommendation will now be debated by European judges.
Third party hotspot providers should not be liable for stopping piracy. Anymore then being liable for hackers who use a hotspot to attack other devices. The only exception to this, is when the hotspot provider could be shown to aid or provide direct assistance in obtaining pirated content. If your simply provided access to the internet, you cannot possible be held responsible to know what ever user of that access point is doing.
I realize that the law works differently for little people and all(though it's not as though Team Media have been shy about insisting that basically everyone who in some way facilitates internet use should have a responsibility to protect their precious 'content' for them, from ISPs to search engines); but I'm a trifle baffled by how it could even be a serious question whether somebody operating an internet-connected wifi AP is responsible for the actions of the users of that AP. More or less everyone accepts that ISPs, telcos, and the like can't possibly be held responsible for every last dumb or criminal thing that their customers do or we'd have to shut down basically everything; and isn't a public AP just a particularly small last-mile ISP with even less practical ability to keep tabs on its customers(since it may not have much info on them, compared to ISPs that know where you live or have your billing information; and is atypically likely to be operated as an amenity by technically unsophisticated proprietors of a coffee shop/hotel/etc. rather than by an ISP that may have clueless tier 1 reps; but can't stay in business without at least some hardcore NOC types in the background).
Yes, operating a hotspot for the benefit of your business off the cheapest 'home' internet plan may be a breach of your ISP's ToS; but that's a totally separate issue, to be taken up between you and them if they care so much, and not relevant to your culpability for what 3rd parties do on your hotspot.
I just hope it hold up till a final ruling. I also am pretty sure that posting a 'download your child porn her as anon dor free with a coffee' will not be a legal slogan for anybody.
What is interesting is that providers need to keep connection data for two years. So if they see somebody downloading childporn from everyday at 08:07-08:09 at the stations Starbucks, it is still possible to get a court order to get more data and set up an operation to arrest the person.
Just a bit more work. And that is a good thing as it will prevent random searches. A thing Germany has a bit of experience in and the USoA are getting aware of it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Because logic!
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
I'm always impressed by the amount of intelligence those high courts are able to show (as opposed to the current breed of politicians we're plagued in most of the EU these days).
That's why Polish government is trying to knock out their constitutional court. Hopefully they don't succeed.
It is not a preliminary ruling per se but an Opinion registered by the General Advocate - usually the court follows his arguments but only then it will be a ruling. Nevertheless is this a great step towards a open wifi in some of the EU states. The case centers around a german law which forces you, if running a hotspot, to ensure that your hotspot is not used to violate IP (by using passwords or providing detailed logs afaik - as if that would help). But the law also determines that you can be hold liable if IP violations are committed using your hotspot without those countermeasures. That is what happened in this case as the party seeking this ruling was billed 800,- for alleged IP violations by Sony. As far as the registered Opinion goes it seems that the EU court will uphold the rights of free speech instead of hindering it by making wifi operators liable.
LOL. Americans...
The case that got escalated to the EU court is as described in the blurb, but it's not a new situation at all. It got escalated because Sony sued "the wrong guy", a Pirate Party member and Freifunk activist who didn't just cave when Sony's lawyers demanded 800 EUR because someone had shared music via his open wireless network. The concept is called "Störerhaftung", which means that while you're not liable for the copyright infraction as such, you are liable for the hazard created by operating the Wifi in a way that doesn't prevent the infraction. This concept is the reason why publicly accessible Wifi is a rarity in Germany, and mostly operated by large ISPs, whereas public hotspots are ubiquitous in other European countries. The current "solution" that is used by Freifunk and many other hotspot operators is to tunnel all traffic from the Wifi hotspot through a VPN provider in a different country that doesn't have this liability-by-proxy concept (usually the Netherlands). This way the traffic isn't traced back to the operator of the Wifi hotspot and the lawyers can't collect hundreds of Euros for sending a letter, as they have been doing for at least 10 years. Angela Merkel's party is still fighting to keep public Wifi as useless as possible by requiring all sorts of hoops that a hotspot operator has to jump through to be exempted from being liable by proxy. So, this is not Germany leading the EU to enlightenment. It's one guy in Germany trying to force Germany to catch up to its neighbors.
Wrong /. summary: The Court didn't say anything, an Advocate General did. I don't know if even calling it a "ruling" as TFA does is correct. It's an Opinion and the Court may or may not follow it (p=0.8).
But if they do follow it, does this override national regulations such as German fucking Störerhaftung? And what about the legal enforcement of "captive portals" for free Wifi that break HTTP and are just impossible for HTTPS and non-web services (email etc.)?
The link in the article seems unrelated (other than it's also about alleged "piracy"). The Register has some better background on the current case. It's about a Munich Pirate Party member who offers unencumbered free wifi in his audio/lighting store.
I had to manually replace an ellipsis because /. still eats special chars. Please unleash UTF8 asap!
I previously had a router that often shat its pants and reset to default configuration. Of course, its default was open/no password. /all/ of it??
As all my devices could still work it often took me a while to notice.
As I lived in a built up area, who knows what others were downloading on my unsecured WiFi hotspot?
Should I be liable for
A good ruling...
The owners of public roads aren't liable for 3rd party bank robberies. Heck, not even those of private, secured roads are should the robbers break in.
I think the moral of the story is that the RIAA, Sony, Columbia, etc don't care where the money comes from, just as long as they money comes in.
Besides, it's not like the artist would see a dime of the settlement if it ever came to pass.
This is why the music industry is fucked.
Source: I'm a musician.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
If it's not about the content mafia but about kiddie porn, why are Sony suing here? To protect their child porn stash???
Or at the very least (because financial institutions want to stay in the EU because it's profitable) change the rules so that the UK can ignore the EU court rulings. Because the UK government don't WANT to have these sensible rulings from people they can't pressure. Judicial appointments in the UK are candies to hand out to "responsible bodies" who will do the right thing by them.
It's also why both labour and conservative want to remove the HoL, and why Tony Blair salted so many peers into the HoL (and the cash for honours scandal): the HoL stops the government from doing some shit they want to. Ergo bad.
Indeed, the HoL is also theoretically responsible for the fox hunting still going on. However, mostly because the labour government at the time used them as an excuse not to try in the first place, and when this got enough voters irate, they avoided it entirely and abused government power to ignore the HoL. What they SHOULD have done is raise it every time they can and let the HoL kick it down. AT THE VERY LEAST they would show WHY the HoL should have limits on what they can shoot down, even if it has to be a referrendum to public vote to do so (which would be my preferred option). What they did was show that they would abuse powers for petty (banning fox hunting WAS petty in the scheme of things, even if justified, which it really isn't because it could have been solved by making hunters liable for criminal tresspass if they go over land of someone (including local councils' public land) who refuses them entry. So they didn't have to do it, could have shown in stark clarity that
a) they definitely wanted to
b) the unelected HoL refused
c) they obey the spirit of the separation of powers here, whilst the HoL ignores the will of the people.
Governments, of any stripe, really hate having someone tell them what to do. They're supposed to be telling others what to do.
Fairy snuff. Then this "Intellectual property" which belongs to Sony needs to be protected by Sony, not by the Wifi owner.
Sony, protect "your property" from being listened to. Lock it up, like all valueables you don't want stolen and don't make copies, because that just multiplies what you're supposed to be protecting.
What? You can't make money if you don't sell your copies? Well sell your copies, then. But those copies belong to the person who bought it.
What? You can't let them own it because they'll make copies and give or sell those copies? Then don't sell them copies or the original.
What? You can't make money if you do that? Well, you're fucked. I can't make money selling naked pictures of myself, no matter how much effort I put into it. I don't demand that I get rights to do so, however, and sue anyone who damages my ability to make money (by, for example, selling pictures of their own bodies, or telling people "I'd rather go visit goatse than look at that picture").
People don't make a living stone knapping any more.
Why should you make a living selling copies of other people's work and stealing the work of copying other people did to ensure this is profitable?
I'm oblivious to EU laws and precedent regarding this, but I wonder if this case would have an (positive?) legal implications for TOR exit node operators...
They're owned by private individuals. And the parking lots? Private ownership. Your drive? Privately owned. Toll roads? Private (usually). And so on and so forth.