No Three-Strikes Anti-Piracy Law in Germany
Germany’s new Government coalition has spoken out against legislation that will allow alleged pirated to be disconnected from the Internet. The two parties, CDU and FDP, agree that such a law is not going to solve the piracy ‘problem’.
In the coalition agreement that’s currently drafted both parties have agreed not to allow Internet disconnections for alleged copyright infringement offenses.
The decision is huge blow to the lobbyists of the movie and music industries, but not really unexpected.
Before the elections FDP’s legal expert Sabine Leutheusser already said that her party opposed to a three-strikes scheme for copyright infringers, calling it a disproportionate measure that would violate fundamental rights of German citizens. This standpoint is now included in the coalition agreement.
In other countries like the UK and France the so called “graduated response” legislation is still on the table, despite huge opposition from the public.
You need to get your facts straight.
It’s not about copyright infringement but about child pornography first and foremost.
Though there are plans to expand the law for copyright infringement, the main use is to disconnect pedophiles.
And there is no 3-strike. First strike, and you’re out!
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Those that say its not about piracy should read this:
ED2K Network Losing Key Germany-Based Servers
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9006/ed2k_network_losing_key_germanybased_servers/
Server operators start closing down operations there after courts rule can be held liable for $28,000 USD in damages for each song it facilitates the illegal sharing of.
Over the past two weeks, ED2K users have been noticing that their very-reliable German-based servers have been disappearing. First, about a dozen “Big Bang” servers started refusing connections. Shortly afterward, the half-dozen “DonkeyServer” servers stopped indexing the users’ files.
With no word from the operators as to why the servers are no longer functioning, network users worldwide have been speculating as to the reason.
Now it appears that the root cause of the server disruption has been linked to a recent judgment by a regional German court in Hamburg (Az. 308 O 273/07). The ruling clearly defined a monetary value for which to hold server operators liable for the illegal file-sharing of copyrighted music they facilitate.
Even though a server may not contain any actual portion of a copyrighted song, if the mere facilitation of the copyright infringement is found to have occurred the server operator can then be held liable for 20,000 Euro (about $28,000 USD) per song!
This is more than 3 times the amount that a simple file-sharer is fined for actually sharing a song. The $20,000 Euro fine against a server operator is fixed for each file, while the simple file sharer is fined on a gradually decreasing scale for the second, third, and additional files involved in the infringement.
This trend by German authorities to target server operators for their “facilitation” paints a troubling picture for file-sharing in as a whole. For at what point does the responsibility of the user end and the operator begin? It could effectively mean a large-scale shutdown of servers by people no longer willing to risk being held liable for the actions of users, a practice which seems to be already occurring.
Will this now mean that ISPs and cellphone providers will have to begin the arduous and unnerving practice of monitoring users and the content they either share or access on their networks as well?
Of all the countries in the world you’d think that at least Germany would have learned long ago about the dangers involved with intruding on the free flow of ideas, thoughts, and information among its people.
Someone should challenge this b/c was about 2 years ago and should not be current in law. Public outrage should help. Just like people are against 3 strikes and it is perfectly legal to run a server, but easier in some parts of the world than others. Sometimes after the servers are raided, they are just given back to the operators and put back online b/c there is nothing illegal on them.
providing a service in which people could do something is not illigal. Remember winny folks and how the cartels tried to go after the creator; then the courts said that providing a service in which people could do something is not illigal. There should be more servers put up and perhaps tell all of your friends to check it out. Its hardly dead beside what the entertainment parasites say, although the last pr piece from the cartels did say that there were like 1million people using it and it did hurt the numbers b/c of bad pr for saying it had a bad user count.
They tried to say that limewire had like 500,000 or something close also which is not true.
[...] Freakbits (en anglais) souligne que quelques temps avant le scrutin, la juriste du parti libéral-démocrate, Sabine Leutheusser, avait laissé entendre que sa formation politique était opposée au principe de la riposte graduée contre les personnes enfreignant le droit d’auteur. [...]
english translation pls?
Also – monetary exchanges are only for performace based works – if there’s no one playing the guitar then that person is free to make money other ways.
[...] Para infelicidade da indústria de entretenimento, o novo governo alemão não planeia aplicar um sistema de resposta gradual em três etapas contra a partilha de ficheiros semelhante ao que a França está a planear. Pelo menos a avaliar por um acordo estabelecido entre os democratas-cristãos da CDU e os liberais democratas do FDP a que o site Heise teve acesso (tradução Google Translator via Freakbits). [...]
[...] No Three-Strikes Anti-Piracy Law in #Germany http://freakbits.com/no-three-strikes-anti-piracy-law-in-germany-1019 [...]
GROUPAMA was caught in a software PIRACY case of $200m and has made an unofficial affidavit (claiming that it was not guilty) to divert BEFTI investigators from the evidences officially collected one month ago at a different office.
In its affidavit, GROUPAMA argued that bank secrecy entitled it to limit the scope of Police investigations to a building that was not the place where evidences about the infraction were officially collected.
After the fraud was discovered and denounced by the victim, as GROUPAMA managed to have the General Prosecutor of Paris to state that Police was ‘right’ to ignore the criminal file and focus only on the irrelevant information provided by GROUPAMA itself, there is room for serious doubts in the way that affair was conducted.
As a matter of facts, FINAMA and GROUPAMA have reported false information to the markets regarding their own accounts (where the fraud describbed below has never been reported).
This unfortunate event is more than likely to compromize the confidence ratings of French (bank and insurance) regulated markets on the proven basis that the numbers cannot be trusted.
All the details, including the General Prosecutor reply, the BEFTI investigation file and the unofficial affidavit cooked by GROUPAMA have been made publicly available:
http://remoteanything.com/archives/groupama.pdf
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[...] the piracy problem. In the coalition agreement that’s currently drafted both parties have agreed not to allow Internet disconnections for alleged copyright infringement offences. The decision is huge blow to the lobbyists of the movie and music industries, but not really [...]