That's plain wrong. It's the recording industry who wants to protect their profits by all means. That's not a specific German problem by the way.
But it's very unlikely that they will ever get that far:
The current laws in Germany are such that a provider is not responsible at all for content they only provide access to. So there's no reason for providers to actually install such software.
Even in the very unlikely case that the legal responsibility would be extended, it would not possibly go beyond what is currently specified for (web)space providers. This means that the blockage of content must be zumutbar (~ acceptable). Blocking whole servers or a large performance penalty is probably not zumutbar, especially if other, legal content would be affected -- something the grounds for the law explicitly state!
You can have a look at the TDG (Teledienstegesetz, ~ Tele Services Statue), including its grounds at http://www.fitug.de/ulf/politik/iukdg.ht ml (German only, sorry). It basically says in 5: (1) You're fully responsible for your own content. (2) You're responsible for content from others if you keep it on your own servers, have knowledge of it and it's zumutbar to block/delete it. (3) You're not responsible for content you only provide access to. Same for content you only cache temporarily.
The recording industry wants to have that changed. Until then, they just spread inaccurate information; ie that this blocking software makes it zumutbar to block that content -- which, even if it's true does not have any effect on content to which only access is provided. It should be noted that -- according to the grounds for the TDG -- this is not because it was deemed impossible to influcence that content but because an access provider does not attribute to the violation of the provider of the content. The "new" blocking system does not change that. (Of course, the interpretation of the recording industry is different, just as it is different in other areas of copyright law... But that's another story.)
I don't see any connection to the Holocaust. Some people seem to be extremy paranoid about this.
I just wanted to have a look on the patent to find out what they actually claim.
I searched for this patent on both IBM's IPN and on various parts of Depanet using the patent numbers they give on their website (which don't look like patent numbers), parts from the title, and the name "sevenval" as the applicant... and could not find it.
Can anyone confirm that these patents actually exist? URL?
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That's plain wrong. It's the recording industry who wants to protect their profits by all means. That's not a specific German problem by the way.
But it's very unlikely that they will ever get that far:
This means that the blockage of content must be zumutbar (~ acceptable). Blocking whole servers or a large performance penalty is probably not zumutbar, especially if other, legal content would be affected -- something the grounds for the law explicitly state!
You can have a look at the TDG (Teledienstegesetz, ~ Tele Services Statue), including its grounds at http://www.fitug.de/ulf/politik/iukdg.ht ml (German only, sorry). It basically says in 5: (1) You're fully responsible for your own content. (2) You're responsible for content from others if you keep it on your own servers, have knowledge of it and it's zumutbar to block/delete it. (3) You're not responsible for content you only provide access to. Same for content you only cache temporarily.
The recording industry wants to have that changed. Until then, they just spread inaccurate information; ie that this blocking software makes it zumutbar to block that content -- which, even if it's true does not have any effect on content to which only access is provided.
It should be noted that -- according to the grounds for the TDG -- this is not because it was deemed impossible to influcence that content but because an access provider does not attribute to the violation of the provider of the content. The "new" blocking system does not change that.
(Of course, the interpretation of the recording industry is different, just as it is different in other areas of copyright law... But that's another story.)
I don't see any connection to the Holocaust. Some people seem to be extremy paranoid about this.
I just wanted to have a look on the patent to find out what they actually claim.
I searched for this patent on both IBM's IPN and on various parts of Depanet using the patent numbers they give on their website (which don't look like patent numbers), parts from the title, and the name "sevenval" as the applicant ... and could not find it.
Can anyone confirm that these patents actually exist? URL?
What I did find, however, were: