German court reverses itself, puts the brakes on bizarre “porn troll” case

[silicon_toad2000]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/german-court-reverses-itself-puts-the-brakes-on-bizarre-porn-troll-case/

...orders, issued over the course of the last few months, had compelled Deutsche Telekom (a major German ISP) to handover user names and addresses corresponding to over 50,000 German IP addresses that were accused violating the copyright of a handful of porn films. Each order was approved by a three-judge panel, which unanimously had to agree to send the order to Deutsche Telekom.

Those names and addresses were then used to send letters to tens of thousands of Germans, accusing them of copyright infringement of one of four porn films. The letters went on to order them to stop viewing the films on the streaming site Redtube.com (NSFW), and pay €250 ($345) to a shady Swiss company called The Archive. That money, the letter stated, would put a stop to future litigation.

At least two law firms in Cologne and Berlin have taken up the charge of representing people that they feel have been wrongly accused of copyright infringement by a Regensburg-based law firm, Urmann and Colleagues (U+C). Since the summer, U+C has requested 1,000 IP addresses in 50 different applications to the Cologne court. Neither The Archive nor U+C have responded to Ars’ request for comment.

The court appears to have erred in its judgment, believing that these cases involved file-sharing websites—such cases happen very regularly in Germany. But, as these accusations involve streaming, rather than direct infringement or downloading, the judges now say (PDF, German) that individuals cannot be held liable for what appeared on a streaming site, rather than a download or file-sharing site.

[GhostShip]

It seems its common place these days for judges to simply make orders without reading the information in front of them, the problem is the damage has already been done and I suspect a lot of people have suffered stress and anguish with the making of such claims against them, this really isnt good enough.