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."

German commies

Bush should break off diplomatic relations with such an evil country. That will show them ...

Re:German commies

"German prosecutors only pursue larger-scale file sharers. Bush attacks Paraguay."

logic error

The RIAA is using civil suits.

Re:logic error

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.

No logic error

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.

Re:logic error

Yes, and if the english summaries of this were actually done properly, people wouldn't be confused like this. If you can read german, do yourself a favor and read up on this on a german website.

For a civil suit, you need to know who to sue. An IP address only won't fly for that in germany - you need identities. But the ISPs are not giving out customer details to private companies. So what the industry does is filing a criminal suit first, so the police has to investigate, subpoenaing the infringers identity from the ISP. Then, the criminal suit is retracted - as there has been no commercial infringment, so there's no success to be found there - but because of court documentation, the infringers name, address etc. are still known to the RIAAish organization. They then use this information for filing a civil suit. The new policy closes this loophole. You could still be prosecuted for downloading even one song, but there is now pretty much no way to get your IP unless you're _probably_ guilty commercial copyright infringment. Where the line is to be drawn is upon the courts to decide. FYI, downloading an only very recently or not yet released movie _does_ probably count as commercial - as it probably hurts the commercial interested of the rightsholder.

It's overally a quite sane way to go about, given how things are(tm).

Re:logic error

Which takes up time in court, Which wastes tax money, Which you and I pay.

Sorry, but that is irrelevant. If you suggest that we should create a system in which only "fair" lawsuits could be brought to court, I'd ask you who would decide which is fair.

In any case, the court can always ask the looser to pay court costs if they decide that the lawsuit had no merits.

Re:logic error

Why should only the looser pay? What about the tighter??? This is fricking tension discrimination!!!

Re:logic error

It is entirely within your power to stop the RIAA suits as well.

Turn off your file-sharing software.

What about legitimate file-sharing, such as creative commons, open source, and free as in free beer content? And how exactly do you define "File sharing". File sharing can be done through anything as simple as e-mail or ftp.

The RIAA's been known to target the most trivial instances of file sharing, and in some cases you [afterdawn.com] don't [techdirt.com] even need a computer [metafilter.com]

Re:logic error

Sure the RIAA is guilty of abuses. They should be punished.

There are legitimate uses of file sharing. They should not be prohibited.

There is an enormous population of people using p2p software to copy movies, music and software with no plans to ever pay the producers for what they use. This should at least be acknowledged.

It is the people in that third group provoking companies to lash out.

I personally have taken a different course and just don't buy what isn't worth buying. I'll do without. I'm not entitled to every song I kind of like but not enough to pay for.

Now, please proceed to mod me down again. I'm as on topic as anyone else in Slashdot, but I'm disagreeing with you and that is usually enough.

I, for one,

welcome our German overlords.
Wait, what?

Re:I, for one,

France, is that you?

Signed/Unsigned tags

What on Earth do those mean? When I click on them, I still don't see any relationship between the articles that've been tagged with them.

Re:Signed/Unsigned tags

Articles tagged signed can become negative.

Articles tagged unsigned however, can become twice as positive as signed articles.

Capiche?

Re:Signed/Unsigned tags

I'll float you on that.

Re:Signed/Unsigned tags

I think the system needs to be fixed.

"In return"

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:"In return"

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.

Only in one part of Germany

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.

Anti-equivocation and conflation post

I've already seen it:
This is akin to the local sheriff saying he will no longer prosecute muggings where the victim did not go to the hospital.

This equivocations seem to say that these people want *all* the laws enforced without any regard to a prioritizing by benefit to society.

The key they mentioned was "criminal law for monetary GAIN."

They are right in refusing to criminally prosecute citizens where no appreciable harm was incurred for the monetary enrichment of a single party. Its like watching a car speeding a little but otherwise safely and *NOT* pulling them over and giving them a ticket.

There isn't a single country in the world in which you would want all the laws enforced consistently.

Summary of TFA's source

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:In other news...

Well, sure. Why should taxpayers underwrite their government becoming enforcers for car owners?

Re:In other news...

Your argument would actually have merit if there were a private organization (say, the Vehicle Owner's Association of Germany or some such) that was filing suit against thousands upon thousands of individuals with at best flimsy evidence. Furthermore, if numbered among their victims were people that were bedridden, paralyzed, legless or otherwise physically unable to drive a car, and if they continued to pursue those cases when clear evidence was presented that the person in question could not possibly, under any conditions, be the perpetrator then yes, you might have a point.

Court time is a limited resource, and prosectors in Germany are making the point that it shouldn't be spent on hundreds or thousands of frivolous lawsuits. Not all crimes are the same, and some "crimes" have no business in court, particularly when they're only there as part of a multinational private-sector terror campaign having nothing to do with redress of grievance.

The Courts have better things to do.

Re:First they came

OTOH, it doesn't really take much to be up to 200 "movies".

A nice long running single TV series will get you to that point.

My current total is up to about 2200.

Re:It's OK

Yeah, when we shot or hanged all of the leaders, took all of the money from the banks, looted the museums and split the entire country in half for almost 50 years it was just a slap on the wrist.