Sharing 2,999 Songs, 199 Movies Is Safe In Germany

unassimilatible writes "Torrentfreak is reporting that German prosecutors will now only pursue larger-scale file sharers on the Internet, as they are tired of being the entertainment industry's profit collector. 'Prosecutors in a German state have announced they will refuse to entertain the majority of file-sharing lawsuits in [the] future. It appears that only commercial-scale copyright infringers will be pursued, with those sharing under 3,000 music tracks and 200 movies dropping under the prosecution radar.' And the money quote: 'It seems that the legal system in Germany has had enough of this "abuse" of the criminal law system for "civil" monetary gain.' If only an American politician would make this point. Why should taxpayers underwrite their government becoming enforcers for the entertainment industry? Then again, when you see how much politicians are being paid, an answer suggests itself."

"In return"

[Anonymous Coward]

Beginning next month, copyright holders can just ask ISPs directly for the address of filesharers, so they don't need the public prosecutor anymore. Until then, having the public prosecutor investigate copyright infringement was the only way to get the name and address of the filesharer. No case was actually pursued. It was always just a vehicle to get the necessary information for a civil suit (actually just a way to get people to sign cease-and-desist declarations and pay up: The civil suit also rarely goes to court).

Re:logic error

[moronoxyd]

Correct.
But to sue somebody, they have to know whom.

So what they do in Germany, they send the IP adress of a suppost pirate to the prosecuters, who investigate the matter. While doing this they ask the internet providers for the identity of the person who used that IP address at that time.
In most cases, they stop investigating once they come to the conclusion that no crime was commited.

Now the lawyers of the recording industry get the opportunity to look into the files of the prosecuters, get the information of the suspected pirate and sue him in a civil case.

Only in one part of Germany

[Reality Master 201]

Germany is a federal state, comprised of multiple independent states with their own governments. According to TFA, this only counts for prosecutors from the Nort-Rhine Westphalia.

Come on. Learn a little something about the rest of the world.

Re:logic error

[Anonymous Coward]

This system already exists in the US. You have guys filing suits like suing Tom Cruise for killing Abraham Lincoln and faking the moon landing; the court throws it out as frivilous.

          Hopefully, they will eventually do the same for the pigopolists here in the US they are in Germany; tell them they can go after the big targets but not personal-level sharing.

Interview with the district attorney

[nkuttler]

part 1 [google.com] and part 2 [google.com]. Beware, google translation ahead.

Summary of TFA's source

[stsp]

English summary of TFA's source [sueddeutsche.de], an interview with chief prosecutor of the German state North Rhine-Westphalia [wikipedia.org] for all ye non-German speakers here:

• He is saying that they primarily want to focus their resources on prosecuting copyright violations which have a commercial background.
• They consider 3.000 illegally shared audio files and 200 illegally shared movie files lower bounds for commercial background, respectively.
• He is saying that they derived these numbers from the assumption that, on average, an audio file was worth 1 euro, and a movie file was worth 15 euro, resulting in commercial damages of 3.000 euro each.
• He's saying that, inspite of this, illegally sharing copyrighted material is still illegal.
• Furthermore, he states that in his jurisdiction (the biggest one of three total in North-Rhine Westphalia), there were around 25.000 cases related to copyright infringement filed in court within the first half of 2008.
• He is saying that in his experience, most of these cases get filed to get at the identity of people behind IP addresses in order to sue them for damages.
• He's saying that network operators charge the prosecutors (that's him) 17 euro per hour for matching up IP addresses to people. They can do this according to German law.
• He also states that all these cases add considerable overhead to their day-to-day operations because they are binding a lot of their resources.
• While he's saying that copyright infringement is to be considered a criminal act, he also says that it is a lesser criminal act than others.
• The interviewer compares filesharing to consuming Cannabis, which the interviewer says is being treated similarly. The interviewer says that both copyright infringement and consuming Cannabis were primarily done by younger people.
• The chief ackknowledges the interviewer's remark that both of these are primarily done by younger people. He says that juvenile behaviour should not be criminalised in each and every case, and that focusing their entire resources on such cases was out of proportion.

Re:Strange question

[L Boom]

It's even trickier: Universal recently argued that there is effectively no such thing as Fair Use [arstechnica.com] and that any use is potentially infringement.

The reason? They want to avoid liability for being sued over frivolous lawsuits. If Fair Use is inherently questionable, then they can sue anyone they want whenever they want without consequence while they stick ordinary people with huge legal fees and no chance of recovering them from the people who dragged them into court in the first place. The whole point, of course, is simple intimidation.

Re:"In return"

[Wdi]

Mod parent up. This is the only relevant post so far.

There will be a new law which gives copyright holders the tools to request infringer user data directly from ISPs which are required to store it for some time. Before that, it was not possible to get this data without a criminal warrant due to personal data protection laws, and so an enormous case load resulted for the public prosecutors. They do not want to play along any longer for smaller cases where no criminal trial will ultimately result. Copyright holders are of course still eligible for compensation by infringers by means of a civil suit. This whole process has just been streamlined. That is all. No free passes for anybody.

No logic error

[Timosch]

Yes, they do (and also their German version), but they need to get the names behind the IP addresses. So they start a criminal trial, ask the police for the IP data, then start their civil law suit and let the criminal case go to hell. That is exactly what this stuff is about. You should have RTFA.

Contributions to RIAA/MPAA

[h8sg8s]

Amazing that the RIAA/MPAA don't "own" more of the laws in the US with their contribution record. Democrats: $11,163,030 Republicans: $2,104,737 I had always assumed the "Law and Order" party (Republicans) would be the major force and benefactor of the industry. I'm going to have to re-think my support based on these numbers. Five to one contribution rate over the GOP is a pretty telling statistic against the Democrats..

Re:First they came

[nabsltd]

I guess German broadband speeds aren't as good as those in Japan or Finland [slashdot.org].

At 60Mbps, you could keep 200 torrents running at better than 30KB/sec. That's only 7 hours to download a 2-hour movie at the normal size that most people use with MPEG-4 compression.

Re:German commies

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany is more democratic than USA. They are nr. 13 and 17, respectively.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

Re:It's OK

[pcolaman]

Not sure what's offtopic about responding to an inaccurate post...

not a logic error

[wzzzzrd]

The RIAA is using civil suits.

In germany, the RIAA abuses the criminal courts to get the ID of file sharers. They file a criminal report on which the authorities have to act. Then they demand access to the records in order to obtain the identity of the "terrorist". Criminal charges are dropped in 99.9% of all cases, but the RIAA has the identity and files a civil suit.