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Courts in both Germany and Canada have recently denied the entertainment industry the right to subpoena the identities of file-sharers. Of course, as most broadband providers use fixed IP addresses for their customers, an audit trail would still be able to reveal their identity.
The German rights organisation for composers, lyricist and publishers, GEMA, has asked 42 access providers to poison their DNS servers in order to block sites that provide links to eDonkey files. In short, DNS poisoning obstructs the process of converting a URL to a numeric IP address. The GEMA apparently expects the access providers to configure their DNS servers so that "inquiries by end-users are not passed to the correct server, but to an invalid or another pre-defined side." The GEMA also demands that the providers sign a testimony,with which they commit themselves to ensure full blockage under a contractual penalty of 100.000 euro if any of their customers can still reach the targeted site after July 25th.
The music industry has begun to carry out its threat and is sending warning notices to website operators who have set links to the Russian music download platform AllofMP3. On Thursday and Friday at the behest of music industry companies (edel, EMI, Sony BMG Music, SPV, Universal Music and Warner Music) the Munich-based law firm of Waldorf sent warning notices calling on the operators in question to remove the links by July 12. As the law firm has calculated the amount in controversy in the case of private persons to be 75,000 euros, the persons concerned are accordingly asked in these letters to pay the firm a fee of 3,980 euros each. Responding to questions by heise online the lawyer Johannes Waldorf stated that he had so far sent "fewer than ten" such warning notices. In its warning notices the law firm points out that the District Court in Munich had lately by way of a temporary injunction (PDF) prohibited the operators of AllofMP3 from making available as download on the Web recordings protected by German copyright legislation. The injunction itself, which, however, has not yet been served on the operator of AllofMP3, was attached to the letters. In addition the notice says: "By establishing a hyperlink to the Internet page in question you are enabling the acquisition of copyright protected sound recordings of our clients via the illegal download offer. By illegally providing public access you are thereby objectively supporting the illegal dissemination of copyright protected sound recordings [...] or even aiding and abetting such activity
German movie theater chains plan to boycott Buena Vista International`s "Herbie: Fully Loaded" because of its quick move to DVD.BVI plans to release its latest "Herbie" film on DVD in December, just four months after its theatrical release and hardly enough time, theater owners say, for them to make money on it, Variety reported Tuesday.Greater Union Filmpalast and Cinemaxx both say they won`t show the latest "Love Bug" pic. German theaters normally get six months between a theatrical and DVD release."Any major changes should result in a system that is fair for everyone and allows theater owners to make a profit, rather than a one-sided solution for distributors," a Greater Union Filmpalast spokesman said.
The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany (the Bundesverfassungsgericht) has rejected a complaint by a consumer about copy protection measures on CDs and DVDs. The Court did not see such a serious disadvantage in the copy protection mechanisms for the consumer, that it should give a decision before the consumer had followed a normal civil procedure against the manufacturer. The interesting thing about the rejection of the ruling is that the Court added some considerations about the private copying "right": it doubted that the constitution provides such a right.
The public office in Germany thinks the P2P-prosecution of minor uploaders would put an unacceptable pressure on its resources and is said to only proceed with criminal prosecutions against users that have been previously convicted and have sold songs on a large scale. That would be in line with the so-called Bagatellklausel from the reviewed German copyright law, which exempts the exchange of a small number of songs that are exclusively for private use from prosecution. If one still wonders wether the Bagatellklausel was born out of practical considerations or legal charity, the prosecutor's practice seems to have given the answer.
Even the positives had a downside. Music tracks sold legally over registered portals increased in 2005 to 16.4 million individual tracks from 6.4 million tracks in 2004. But, as a result, the sales of CD singles were drastically reduced. Sales fell from 21.1 million units in 2004 to 15.4 million units in 2005. While one could argue that while CD singles sales shrank, the titles themselves were still selling albeit in a different format, Zombik pointed out that the online market is still very small in comparison to traditional channels, only making up around 2 percent of sales.Even though the industry was still suffering from a slump in sales, there was some reason to be cheerful in the news that German artists had seen an increase in popularity last year. CDs from German artists now comprise 35.3 percent of total album sales, an increase from 30.3 percent in 2004. In terms of singles, German artists are now more popular than international
German court has decided that prosecutors can't use experts from music and film industry associations anymore when targeting P2P users, heise.de reports. German rights holders regularly resort to criminal cases to reveal the identity of alleged P2P file sharers. They hand over logs from P2P networks to prosecutors, who then have to decide how serious the case is. If someone is sharing hundreds of unauthorized files on P2P networks, chances are that he'll get a visit from the police who will confiscate his computers and CD-ROMs.In the past police investigators were oftentimes accommpanied by experts from the private Society for the Prosecution of Copyright Infringements (GVU) - an organization that is funded by German music and movie companies. Those GVU experts would access computers, look for file sharing software and explain to the police what would be worth confiscating.A court in the city of Kiel now ruled that this has to stop. Police should not take sides in their work on an open case, and using GVU experts would ammount to "privatizing" their casework. According to the court, persons who have an interest in the case are only allowed to take part in a raid if they are the only ones able to identify their stolen property.This is not the first time GVU is making headlines. The German IT magazine c't reported in February that the GVU had been sponsoring members of the local Warez scene with money and server infrastructure in order to get log-files from those servers.
This is music we are talking about, not nuclear weapons, no doubt the day will come where you will be arrested for allowing your neighbour to listen to your radio.
The Supreme court has decided that T-Online, one of the largest ISPs in Germany has to delete all IP logs to guarantee the privacy of their customers. This ruling makes it impossible for anti-piracy organizations to trace an infringing IP-address back to a customer of T-Online, once their dynamic IP address has changed.The decision (German) does not mean that T-Online is now obliged to delete all their IP-logs, the customers first need to complain. But, if they ask T-Online to delete their IP-logs, the ISP has no other choice than to comply. A lawyer from Frankfurt already sketched a sample letter to make this process easier.The court ruling is the result of a case that was initiated by Holger Voss, a 33 year old man from Münster. Voss was sued for making a sarcastic comment in an Internet forum back in 2002. After the district court and the regional court, now the Supreme court decided that T-Online has no right to store the IP-logs without a legal reason. This ruling can be considered as a huge breakthrough, and it is good to see that at least some countries still value privacy.
