German Court: ISPs Must Hand Over File Sharer Info 136
itwbennett writes "The German Federal Court of Justice has ruled that ISPs have to turn over to rights-holders the names and addresses of illegal file sharers, but only 'if a judge rules that the file sharer indeed infringed on copyright,' said the court's spokeswoman, Dietlind Weinland. The ruling overturns two previous rulings by regional courts and is significant because the violation doesn't have to happen on a commercial scale, but applies whenever 'it is possible to know who was using an IP address at the time of the infringement,' the court said."
Re:"..know who was using an IP address..." ? (Score:5, Insightful)
But copyright holders have a right to pursue their rights
Why? Where does that notion come from? The very existence of copyright is a choice by society, it is not supported by any natural law. In fact, as Thomas Jefferson figured out almost 200 years ago, ideas are fundamentally incompatible with the concept of ownership and private property. You have no right to control how your ideas are used, spread, or altered after they leave your own mind. The only way you can protect an idea from being spread is to keep it to yourself. Once it's out, you can't put it back, you can't take it away from people whom it has spread to. An "idea" can be an invention, a song, a novel, just about anything that is the product of human imagination or ingenuity (not in physical form).
"Intellectual property" is a fiction. It's a mass-delusion. It's a choice. It is not inevitable, it is not necessary, and it has not been an aspect of civilization for most of human history. We've accepted it because it was a useful compromise for a long time, but it is rapidly losing relevance and efficacy. As you can plainly see, attempts to maintain the entrenched system are leading to abuses of civil and privacy rights in the name of enforcing copyright law. It's no longer an enabling force for human creativity, it has become a threat to human freedom.
Re:"..know who was using an IP address..." ? (Score:5, Insightful)
No it does not. I am not liable if the car I loan to my neighbor is used to commit a robbery (unless I knew they were going to commit a robbery and I still loaned my car them of course). I am responsible for losing the car, if my car gets stolen with the keys. The insurance, would probably not pay me. But I am not responsible for what ever is done using the car (murder or robbery or whatever).
Re:"..know who was using an IP address..." ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? Where does that notion come from? The very existence of copyright is a choice by society, it is not supported by any natural law.
Why? Because it is a "choice by society" of course!
The very existence of alienable private property, especially in land, is also "a choice by society." Now I do prefer being a holder of property in a "free" society rather than being a middle-European peasant bound to the inalienable estate of a seignour, as my ancestors were (bound peasants that is), but the study of history show that "natural law" is anything but natural. Property is not, as Locke argued, an admixture of nature and labour, but the ability to assert proprietorship by whichever societal mechanism exists for its enforcement. In the bad old days that was the sword and/or the consent of Church. Today it is by appeal the the courts and thus ultimately the coercive force of the state. A right is only a right inasmuch as you can enforce it. It's the idea that rights exist in 'nature' that is the "fiction" here.
"Intellectual property" is a fiction. It's a mass-delusion.
Arguably all law is a shared delusion. More practically however, intellectual property is a state-granted monopoly, the intention of which is to repair, inter alia, a well-understood market failure, namely the 'free-rider effect.' Inasmuch as it is enforceable in the courts it is a right.
You are correct, however, that it is not 'property' in all the senses we use that term in regard to the more traditional species of property: 'personal property' and 'real estate' ... As "Big Tobacco" discovered today in the High Court of Australia.
It's a choice. It is not inevitable,
Agreed, nor is alienable real estate, gun ownership or universal suffrage.
it is not necessary
It is necessary inasmuch as the market left to its own devices creates a disincentive towards R&D. It is unnecessary as there are alternatives to encourage research, as was shown, for instance, in the old Soviet Union (which famously required no copyright law).
Nor has digital media, the internet or alienable real estate. Humanity is permitted, one hopes, to progress?
As you can plainly see, attempts to maintain the entrenched system are leading to abuses of civil and privacy rights in the name of enforcing copyright law. It's no longer an enabling force for human creativity, it has become a threat to human freedom.
I think you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Yes there is a good argument to be made that IP has overreached to the point that it has become corrosive to the very aim it was conceived to serve. Yes the increasing criminalisation of IP law and the ever more draconian penalties being dispensed for the relatively minor injury any individual infringement constitutes are certainly inimical to liberty. However, and especially in the context of the every increasing ease by which media can be reproduced, until we can devise a new system which suffers from none of the evils and still ensures reward of intellectual labour, our best hope is to point out how badly the system has gone wrong and attempt to steer it back towards health.
Re:"..know who was using an IP address..." ? (Score:4, Insightful)
However, and especially in the context of the every increasing ease by which media can be reproduced, until we can devise a new system which suffers from none of the evils and still ensures reward of intellectual labour, our best hope is to point out how badly the system has gone wrong and attempt to steer it back towards health.
The problem is that "to steer it back towards health" for the most part equals "turn back time". As long as you have the following four components, IP is doomed:
1. Computers
2. Internet
3. 1st amendment
4. 4th amendment
Computers means we can create digital copies that can be copied infinitely without loss. Maybe getting our hands on the first copy may be complicated by breaking DRM or recording through the analog hole or whatever, but it's break once play everywhere. Internet means we can have the technical means to distribute it to everyone as an increasingly faster and faster flash mob. While the 1st and 4th amendment doesn't protect copyright violators, it means you generally can't prevent people from communicating in private. The public sites are a convenience but if you'd like to kill piracy you have to take away one of those four. Either turn it into an appliance-only Internet, shut down the Internet or take away some of the Bill of Rights. Or you can accept that technology has moved forward and that the "good old days" are never coming back.